Looking down at the sad eyes staring at me, I had to wonder if mine looked the same to him. “I’m weak. All I want to do is sit on the couch and feed him treats.”
The problem was, Garrett had bought him for me to not only keep me safe but also because I’d never had a dog. It was his way of ticking both the boxes for us. However, Dave knew my story and why I was here, so saying this in front of him was the wrong thing to do.
“I think you know better than anyone how important it is to be safe, Zuri. You know as well as I do how much bad shit can happen and that you need to use whatever you can to stop it and protect yourself,” he said quietly.
I felt the blood drain from my face and had zero doubts that Garrett didn’t see it when he frowned and looked between the two of us.
“What do you mean?” he asked Dave.
Keeping his eyes on mine, Dave lifted his chin and gestured in Phil’s direction to remind him that we had company. “Zuri will talk to you later, and she will be talking to you, or I’ll be over to tell you myself.”
Oh, fuck my life. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Garrett, it’s just that I knew once he had all the details, he’d treat me differently. He’d either look at me like I had an infectious disease, or he’d go nuts when it came to my safety.
I knew I had to be careful. I’d spent the last year living like I was afraid to breathe until recently.
I’d even been running through ways to tell him everything in my head, but I could never get the guts to go through with it.
That’s why I’d been on that damned chair hanging up the frame in the first place instead of waiting until later that night. It’s hardly like one of the first things you do is hang up pictures when you move. Usually—at least for me—that was done once you’d put everything away. I’d planned to tell him that day and was freaking out, so I’d picked up the frame and started messing around with placement and that level thing, with the bubble in the fluid inside it, to make sure it was even before I’d even put a nail in the damn wall.
Sighing, I nodded at Dave and focused back in on what Phil was saying. If Garrett ran screaming from the house later on, at least I’d have Clyde to keep me safe.
Seven hours later…
After another five hours of training with Phil, I’d been left alone with my thoughts and Clyde for too many hours. So, when Garrett opened the front door and slammed it behind him, I almost pooped my pants. It wasn’t a hulking grand slam, like a dramatic movie one, but more of a muted bang if that was possible.
Placing his vest next to the door, Garrett held his hand up in the air as he bent over, then undid his boots and toed them off. This I already knew was his ritual. He never wore his work boots into the house because he said he knew what he stood in all day, and he didn’t want to trek it through his home—which I appreciated.
Once he’d straightened up again, he moved closer to where I was sitting on the floor, spinning a puppy treat around on the wooden floor. It was my makeshift fidget spinner, bacon-flavored for your delight.
“Okay, I’ve spent the last six and a half hours going through movie, book, and crime show plots, trying to figure out what DB was talking about today. I’ve thought of an arranged marriage to an abusive husband, to controlling parents, to you witnessing a crime and running to save yourself, to being a princess from some unknown island who wants to live a normal life away from royalty.”
I had to bite my lip to stop the smile that wanted to break free at these ideas.
“Will you please put me out of my misery,” he begged and then turned a glare on Clyde. “And you can fucking bark like you’ve been trained to, asshole.”
Moving onto my knees so that I could get up off the floor, I tried not to look graceless as I stood up, but my muscle game was weak, so I probably did.
“Phil said because you’re being trained with him, Clyde considers you to be a safe person when you arrive. If you come with someone else, he’ll pick up the scent of the person—like he did with Dave today—and bark to warn me. He also said if you drove erratically, he’d do it then, too. There are some exceptions to the rules, but if you pull up normally and everything is as he knows it, he won’t react and bark. It was one of the biggest complaints about protection dogs once they went to their new homes, so they began to train the dogs at Phil’s around that.”
Raising his eyebrows, he glanced down at Clyde, who was sniffing his leg and wagging his tail, not at all upset by what Garrett had said to him. “I apologize, Clyde. Your momma’s driving me insane is all.”
Sitting down on the sofa, I rubbed my lips together while I waited for Garrett to take a seat. When he chose one of the armchairs instead of next to me like he usually would, I had to breathe through the sting in my chest, but it also spurred me into just saying fuck it and letting it all out without waiting for him to ask again.
“Dave helped my dad when I needed a place to be safe,” I started, lifting my head to look at him. His face was blank as he listened to me. “Just over two years ago, my dad was involved in a case—”
“Wait, your dad’s a police officer?”
Frowning, I realized I probably should’ve started with that nugget of information. “A detective for the New York Police Department.”
Whistling, he nodded slowly. “Lots of work there.”
Cocking my head slightly to hide how confused the comment made me, I continued, “He’s done it for twenty-nine years.” I explained, then added, “Well, maybe not being a detective for that long, but he’s been in the NYPD for that long.” Then, with nerves riding me, I clapped loudly, “No, thirty-one years now, it was twenty-nine when it all happened.”
Sensing how nervous I was, Clyde whined and came over to shove his head between my knees, allowing me a moment to take a deep breath and calm the hell down.
“Zuri,” Garrett called, and I slowly raised my head. “Settle down before you have a heart attack at twenty-four, baby, yeah?”
Knowing he was right, I gave myself a shake and nodded. “I’m good now, and it’s probably better that I just get it all out.”
When he gave me an encouraging nod, I braced and just went with it. “Almost two years ago, my dad was on his way home when a call went out to request any personnel in the area attend a report of a man who was holding a woman hostage on the roof of an apartment block in New York. Dad was in the area, so he rerouted and got to the scene almost immediately. He spoke to dispatch, who told him that there were three ongoing scenes in the city, so SWAT and other units would be delayed getting there. That included the hostage negotiator.”
Groaning, Garrett rubbed his face with both hands. “Yeah, there’ve been some cutbacks, so things were already stretched thinly. Even bringing in teams from other areas was going to be delayed by traffic jams and the rush hour, which was made worse by a ton of roadworks and maintenance that they had going on. Basically, the whole thing was a nightmare from the very beginning.”
“So was it just your dad?”
“No, some other officers were able to attend to help him out, but the chief told him that he was to go up there and assist because they had high profile situations with multiple persons at risk in other locations across the city at that time.”