Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 91423 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91423 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
They said she was being looked after at home. I let it slide at the time because arguing when you’ve just been chased into a hole in the ground doesn’t really make much sense. But now I’ve poked my head out again, and I need the one thing in my life that remains innocent and untouched. God knows that description no longer applies to me.
The house isn’t that far from here. Not really. An hour, maybe, by car. I don’t have a phone on me, because those can be tracked, and that means I can’t call a ride share, but fortunately there’s still a few old-fashioned things in place. Like a taxicab sitting outside the hospital on the rank.
I guess this is a place people come to in taxis often, owing to how much the human body can suck a lot of the time. I tap on the window, and it is wound down to reveal the impatient face of the sort of guy who knows the city inside and out and isn’t going to want to go all that far.
He’s a guy in his forties who looks like he’s been pissed off since his twenties. He’s got at least two decades of road rage building up in him. When I look into his eyes, I see a potential fucking Vesuvius.
I tell him where I want to go. He starts to wind the window up. Asshole. I’d let him do it, but the rest of the rank is empty and I want to go now. So I put my hand in the window and thanks to the people who make new cars, it stops going up. He looks at me, instantly pissed off.
“If I give you five hundred bucks, can you drive to this address, wait for me, and drive back?”
“I’m a taxi,” he says, winding his window back down. “So. Yes.”
“I know you’re a taxi. I was asking if that’s enough money.”
The driver nods, acting like he never tried to taxi ghost me in the first place. “That’s enough.”
I get in the cab, knowing that I am going to piss everybody off doing this, but I’ll have Ethel by the time they work out what I’ve done, and that is the most important thing. I keep leaving her behind in order to go and do stupid things. She deserves for me to do at least one stupid thing in order for me to be with her.
That rationalization feels solid enough to keep me afloat for the drive to the house. I try not to think about what the boys will say, or how I’m probably going to have to beg them not to tell Aiden. I don’t know why I fear him so much. He’s never been overly harsh with me. Leo is probably the one to most watch out for. I just know that Aiden is going to…
“We’re here. You want me to wait?”
“Yes, please,” I say. “This shouldn’t take long. Leave the engine running, maybe.”
“Why, you about to rob the place?”
“Do I look like a robber?”
He starts to answer. I get out of the cab, but leave the rear door open. He leaves the engine running. I guess I am about to rob the place, though whoever is looking after my baby dog should know I exist and just give her to me.
I go up to the front of the house, through the gates, which are open, and knock on the door. I instantly hear Ethel’s mad yapping. I smile broadly, my eyes full of tears. She’s right through that door, and I’m about to be reunited with her.
“Shut up, you little bag of bones!” a rough voice calls out.
I see red as a curtain of rage descends over my eyes. How dare they speak to my baby that way? Someone paid to care for her, speaking to her with cold cruelty?
The door is already opening when I kick it in. Someone inside curses as the door hits them somewhere on their body. I hope it’s their face. Ethel comes out at me like a furious elderly missile. I scoop her up in my arms and I run back to the cab as fast as I can.
“Go!”
The guy is good enough to actually take off when I ask him to, but he slows down after a block or so. The negotiation I feared is about to happen.
Ethel burrows into my arms, flattening herself like a pancake inside my embrace. I don’t know how she always seems to understand what is going on, when she hardly understands the concept of being housebroken, but she gets me.
Tears of joy and relief run down my face. I knew I wanted to get her, but I had no idea how much emotion I was really holding back. My life has forced me to be controlled almost all the time. I can’t afford to be emotional usually. I have to fit in, be safe, and be logical.