“Whoa, what happened to that house?” The Uber driver’s voice pulled me out of my morose thoughts. He was motioning toward the blackened and burned shell of the house that was across the street from mine. It was the house where Brighton Walker and his daughter, Avett, had lived until trouble came calling in a pretty dramatic way.

My buddy Zeb had bought the ruined dwelling and was slowly working to restore it, but the progress was slow and the building looked like it had seen much better days, because it had.

“Fire, but nobody was hurt.” The driver muttered something I didn’t hear and pulled into my driveway. I tripped over my own feet as I climbed out of the back of the car and I hated that my hands shook as it took several tries to get the key in the keyhole on the front door. I’d never been much of a drinker. When your mom was an addict and clinically unhinged, that tended to make indulging in anything that had the ability to lead to a habit leave a bad taste. The last few months I’d been drinking to forget and to stop the memories, but leaving my car behind and being hungover in the morning was starting to wear thin.

I needed to find a better way to cope with all the things that were eating at my insides. Unbidden, an image of wide, golden eyes looking at me like I’d kicked the puppy she was holding when I told her Kallie was pregnant with my baby and I had no clue what I was doing and no time for another innocent soul in my life rolled through my hazy mind. It also baffled and confused me why that news made her look like she was going to fall over. I wasn’t exactly thrilled that Kallie was having my kid, but I couldn’t see a reason why that would affect Poppy, especially as drastically as it had.

Once I was inside my house I tossed my keys on the fancy table that Kallie had insisted on buying for the hallway. The dumb thing cost a bundle and all I used it for was a key holder and a place to toss the mail when I remembered to check it. It was another reminder that I should have put my foot down, should have found a better balance, not that any of that mattered now.

Sighing, I kicked off my boots, pulled off my T-shirt with one hand, and plopped myself down on the couch. When Kallie still lived here I would have had to completely strip and shower before I was allowed to sit on the ridiculously expensive, pale gray piece of furniture. It was not a couch that was man-friendly … especially when that man was rolling around under cars and was shoulders deep in engines all day. I’d been horrified when the delivery guys dropped it off, but Kallie cried and told me I didn’t understand her decorating vision, so I relented. Now I didn’t give two shits if the dumb thing ended up with grease stains and dirt all over it. I was going shopping for a new one as soon as I had a day off and was sober enough to remember I needed a new couch.

I put my feet up on the coffee table, turned on the TV, not bothering to turn it down when screaming, bitching housewives from some county came on the screen. With any luck the SoCo would do its job and I would drift away before the loneliness suffocated me.

The last thought I had before I let my eyes shut was that if I’d taken the puppy from Poppy there would have been something waiting for me to get back home … hell, I would have had a reason not to go out in the first place.

Maybe a puppy was just the kind of practice I needed before my actual baby made its appearance. And if pretty Poppy Cruz wanted to give me a hand figuring out how to be a good puppy parent, I definitely wouldn’t complain. For the first time in months I went to sleep with an almost smile on my face instead of the frown that felt like it was as much a part of my skin as my tattoos.

Poppy

Trying to get the rambunctious puppy to walk on a leash was turning out to be more of a challenge than I thought it would be. He was tiny, but his little body was strong and he was determined not to cooperate. I was sure we made quite a sight as I struggled in vain to get him to walk next to me. Instead, he danced and leaped around at the end of the lead like a balloon with the air rushing out of it as he bounded from one smell to the next.

I was freezing because I hadn’t bothered to change out of my scrubs after work and the weather was fast turning toward winter temperatures. My heart might be firmly located in Colorado but my blood was still used to the Texas sun and sweltering heat. It didn’t help matters that I could probably stand to add a few pounds on my naturally thin frame. I’d never been built with the kind of curves that could stop traffic like Salem was, and after my husband abducted me at gunpoint and ran with me across state lines, all while doing the most horrible things imaginable to my body and my mind, I’d lost what little appetite I had to begin with. I could go several days without eating because wayward thoughts and memories of being violated and tortured had a sneaky way of creeping into my mind when I least expected them. They always made my stomach turn. I knew I should do a better job taking care of myself, but it was easy to forget that I deserved better, so I was constantly reminding myself to take each little victory as a sign that I was on the right path. There were days I ate three square meals and managed to keep it all down, but there had yet to be a night that I didn’t wake up in a cold sweat with a scream locked in my throat and my heart racing so fast it felt like it was going to explode.

I rounded the corner at the end of my block and came to a halt. The puppy took that as a sign that we were done playing and started jumping all over my lower legs and pawing at my shins. He whined at me until I picked him up, and as soon as he could reach my face, his little tongue started darting all over my chin and cheeks. I wondered if he could feel the tension that made my limbs stiff and the anxiety that tightened all my muscles. I felt my breath catch in the back of my throat and there was no stopping my eyes from rapidly blinking to make sure what I was seeing was real and not a figment of my imagination.

He looked like one of those black-and-white art prints that hung in every diner and restaurant I’d ever eaten in. The one that was a throwback to another era when cool was something you had to cultivate and couldn’t buy on Amazon. He was leaning against a black-and-silver car that looked like it should be on the cover of a hot-rod magazine and not parked on a busy and crowded Capitol Hill street. He had on dark jeans and a dark canvas jacket that had the logo of his garage embroidered on the front. His ankles were crossed on the curb in front of him and one booted foot bounced up and down, giving the impression that he’d been waiting for me for a while. His arms were crossed over his chest and his eyes were locked on mine as I stood still, unsure what to do. He had an effortless kind of charisma that radiated off of him. It was equal parts intimidating and irresistible. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to rush toward him or run as far from him as possible.