by Tara Sivec
The room is quiet for a few minutes, aside from the clicking of otter nails on the floor and their little chirps and squeaks as they play around the room.
“I’m really happy for you. It’s about time you grew up,” Dax finally speaks with a laugh, cutting it off quickly. “But seriously. Always take an otter with you. You can fit one in your pocket, right?”
DJ starts reaching for one of my pockets while eyeing up Harry still cradled in his other arm. I shove him away when Ryan walks into the room from my office, pulling the dutch door closed behind him.
“I’m finished with my interview with Harley. She said to tell you she’s done with everyone, and if you want to meet her up at the farmhouse, she’ll be there for another ten minutes before she leaves,” Ryan announces, bending down to give Motter Theresa and Otter De La Hoya some quick attention while they chirp and squeak at his feet.
“Yo, dude! We need your help with something,” DJ says to Ryan, motioning him over with the hand that isn’t wrapped around Harry and holding him to his chest.
When Ryan is standing in front of us, DJ points to me. “Look at this man. Now look away. Now look back again. Do you want to sleep with him?”
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” I mutter as Ryan looks at DJ in confusion.
“Ummm, no?”
“Exactly! Now, wait for it,” DJ orders, handing Harry over to me.
I grab the wriggly otter out of his arms before DJ drops him, and Harry immediately tries to climb up my shoulders and onto my head. Quickly pulling a few treats out of my pocket, he relaxes in my arms and lets me feed them to him.
“You might be experiencing some tingling down there, maybe a little confusion. It’s perfectly natural,” DJ tells Ryan, stepping up next to him to put an arm around his shoulders while they both stare at me feeding Harry. “But you definitely want to sleep with him now, am I right?”
“Ohhh, I get it!” Ryan suddenly smiles and then winks at me. “You’re trying to help me with that little problem I told you about earlier. Man, it’s so hard to believe you were such a jerk only yesterday. But you really are a nice guy, Mr. Trevino. So kind, and helpful, and willing to go above and beyond… it’s just amazing. So, yes! Yes, I do want to sleep with you! Screw you, Nana!”
“Now that’s what I’m talking about!” DJ cheers, giving Ryan a high five.
“Christ,” I mumble, bending over to put Harry down so he can run off and play with the others.
“I mean, I have a girlfriend, and I’m not into guys or anything,” Ryan reassures me. “But you are a very good-looking man, in an off-the-grid, sexy lumberjack way. The otters definitely take it up a notch.”
“Oooh. Off-the-grid, that’s a good one.” DJ nods.
“Right? Like he might murder the whole town with an axe, or he might just come in and sleep with all the women there. Who’s to know?” Ryan adds.
“Totally.”
“Okay, I think we’re done here. I need to get up to the farmhouse before Harley leaves. DJ, you know the way out. I’ll call you later,” I tell him, giving him a salute before heading toward my office.
“For fuck’s sake, take a goddamn adorable otter with you! Have you learned nothing here today?” he shouts after me.
CHAPTER 11
Take Off Your Pants
Harley
Dax: Does this hat make Jennifer Otterston look RIBBITulous?
I laugh at the text that pops up on the screen of my phone that’s perched in its holder on the air vents, the light from the message illuminating the inside of my dark car. Putting the zoom lens camera up on the dashboard, I take a break from the boring surveillance I’ve been doing for the last three hours. Clicking on the screen and opening Dax’s text, I laugh again when I see he attached a picture of himself holding Jennifer Otterston, who is wearing a green crocheted hat that looks like a frog with big googly eyes on top. Jennifer looks adorable, and Dax looks so good with his face nuzzled into the side of Jennifer’s furry little neck that I want to lick my phone screen.
Pulling my phone out of its holder, I quickly shoot off a text to him while glancing over the steering wheel and out the front window every few seconds at the house way down at the end of the street I’ve been watching all night.
Me: Quit bugging me. I toad you to leave me alone.
Dax: Hey, you said I could… Ahhh, I see what you did there. Look at you, being all punny and fun! You miss me, don’t you?
I sigh, looking up from my phone and back out at the dark, quiet street I’ve been parked on since the sun went down. I do miss him, the big idiot. I spent exactly three days with the guy and then got called away on an emergency with another case when I was at The Backyard before I could give him a summary of my employee interviews or say goodbye to him. That was a week ago.
Seven days.
One hundred and sixty-eight hours.
I have lost my damn mind that I’ve actually counted how many hours it’s been since the last time I saw Dax Trevino. Fine, so I didn’t actually count them. I’ve repeatedly googled how long it’s been, because math is stupid and basically a form of human torture.
Ever since I had to race away from the sanctuary last week, because a missing police K9 I’ve been trying to find for a month had been spotted in the next county over, Dax and I have had crazy-busy schedules. Whenever I’ve stopped by The Backyard to have meetings with employees about Chris and Lincoln, he’s been gone, picking up supplies or taking an animal to the vet. Whenever he’s stopped by my dad’s home office to drop off security camera footage or any other random items I’ve needed and asked for during this investigation, I’ve been out meeting with clients and doing surveillance.
I’m still not sure yet if I’m considering it lucky or unlucky that we’ve continued to communicate via text for the last week. So many texts. So many interruptions when I’m trying to work that I want to be annoyed, but I can’t. Dax makes me laugh, and he breaks up the monotony on nights like tonight. How the hell can I be mad when almost every text he sends me is accompanied by a new otter picture? I can’t. It seems otters are my kryptonite.
Dax: When I was ten, I had a pet frog named Earl. I took him everywhere with me, even to the bathroom. Good old Earl would just sit on the bathroom sink, watching me take a dump without any judgment, like a good friend does. Sadly, one day when I flushed, Earl decided to mark base jumping off his bucket list. To this day, I swear I heard a little “Weeeeeee!” as he dove into the swirling bowl of death, sucked down into the bowels of the city, never to be heard or croaked from again. R.I.P., Earl.
By the time I finish reading his text, I’m laughing so hard I’m wheezing, and I have to click the side button on my phone to turn off my screen, tossing my phone up on the dashboard with my camera before he sends me another text that actually kills me.
Nope, it’s not the otters. It’s just Dax. I clearly can’t get enough of him.
Not only has he kept me up to date on all his otters and their daily activities while I’ve kept him up to date on the Chris and Lincoln search, but with each text he sends me, he also sends me a fact about himself. It’s always random, and it’s never in chronological order, but I’ve learned so much about him in the last week I feel like I’ve known him all my life.
I know his mom left when he was five, because she got tired of Dax’s dad cheating on her and having to find out about it at the country club every week.
I know the first bone he broke was his arm when he was in high school, when one of his friends dared him to jump off the roof and into the pool during a raging party he threw. He landed in the grass, popping a giant unicorn float and fracturing his radius instead.
I know that if you even say the words “chocolate raspberry” to him, he will dry heave and possibly throw up in his mouth a little, because of some traumatic memory from his childhood where his fucking chef made some overly rich dessert that she forced him to finish every last bite of. Which he then immediately vomited all over an expensive, white linen tablec
loth that came from Egypt or some shit.
I know he’s persistent and continues to ask me out on a date every day, even though I continue to tell him no. I know he makes me laugh, and I know the Tupperware containers with blue lids I’ve been finding on my front porch every day are from him, filled with enough homemade food and desserts to feed me and my dad and Davidson. And I know with each new thing I learn about Dax, he’s making it harder and harder to forget about him.
I also don’t exactly know what’s happened with my dad and brother, but there hasn’t been one accident or fire they’ve demanded I put out in the last week, and something tells me it has everything to do with the man I keep refusing to date.
This is not good. This is sooo not good.
Ovaries: This is the best day ever! The best! Shit. We need to shave. And are we seriously wearing period panties when it is nowhere near that time of the month? You are hideous.
My phone dings with another text, and the glow of my screen lights up the car again, but I ignore it. I got a tip earlier that the police K9 I still haven’t been able to find might be showing up at the house I’ve been surveilling. I have work to do and no time for a monumental crisis that involves developing feelings for a guy I thought I would hate until I died.
When the headlights of a car come around the corner way down at the end of the street, I lean forward in my seat, resting my hands on the steering wheel while I watch the car slow down as it gets closer to my target house. My phone dings again, and I ignore it again, one of my hands letting go of the steering wheel to slowly move toward my door handle. The car continues to move at a leisurely rate of speed as it comes up to the blue, two-story colonial, and my heart starts beating faster in my chest. This is my favorite part of the job. When a tip is good, I get to kick somebody’s ass and return an animal to its rightful owner. Especially when the ass I will be kicking is a drug dealer who stole a cop’s dog during a police chase that went bad last month.
I’m holding my breath, and my hand wraps around my door handle with nothing but absolute silence and pitch darkness inside my car, aside from the dashboard lights. Right when the vehicle I’m watching almost stops completely in front of the house at the end of the street, the inside of my car suddenly lights up, and my passenger door flies open.
My hand darts out to grab the small stun gun in my center console, my thumb immediately holding down the stun button as I point it toward my open passenger door. The little black weapon crackles to life in my hands as sparks of electricity shoot out of the metal probes at the end.
“First, you try to hit me with a bat, and now you want to stun me,” Dax complains, bending down so I can see his face as he stands next to the open car door. “We really need to discuss how you greet me, or this relationship is never going to work.”
“What the hell are you doing? I’m trying to catch a drug dealer!” I whisper-yell, ignoring his relationship comment.
Tossing the stun gun back into my cup holder, I look away from Dax and back to the house at the end of the street, where the car didn’t even stop and is now on its way toward us.
I try not to make it obvious that I’m staring, but when it finally gets to us, I see it’s a woman in her seventies trying to find an address. I sigh in frustration and look back at where Dax is still standing out on the curb, bent down with his head in my car. A few strands of hair have fallen down into his eyes, and I can’t stop staring at the neatly trimmed hair around his lips, wondering if it would scratch or tickle me when we kiss.
When? When? What about if?
Ovaries: LOL, okay. Sure.
“Are you getting in or what?” I ask in less of a bitchy tone, trying to be a little nicer now that I know he didn’t just interrupt something I’ve been waiting for all night.
And because I’m so far down the street from the drug dealer’s house my car alarm would have to go off before anyone in there noticed I was here. And because of that delicious lasagna he left on my porch last night. And because I’ve missed him. Dammit!
“Say thank you,” he orders.
“Say thank you for—Oh my God, you brought an otter!” I squeal when Dax suddenly makes an otter appear from behind his back, leaning into the car and handing it to me.
“Or did I bring you a frog?” he jokes as he climbs into my front seat, pulling the door closed behind him while he sets a red, insulated bag on the floor in between his feet.
Jennifer Otterston, still wearing her green, crocheted frog hat from the photo Dax sent, squeaks and sniffs my denim-covered legs when I set her down on my lap. She makes five circles around my thighs before curling up and lying down, just like a puppy. I run my hand down her back, when a small plastic container is shoved in my line of vision.
“Creamy lemon pepper chicken pasta. Eat,” Dax orders as I take the container from him that’s still warm, and he hands me a napkin and a plastic fork from the bag between his legs.
“You brought me an otter and dinner?” I ask, shoving a huge bite of pasta in my mouth and letting out the loudest, most satisfied groan in my life. “Fuck, this is delicious. Take off your pants.”
I really didn’t mean to mutter that last part, and I pretend it didn’t happen as I continue to shovel more and more creamy pasta and chicken in my mouth.
“What was that?” Dax smiles.
“Nothing,” I speak around a mouthful of food.
“I think you just told me to take my pants off,” he chuckles, the glow of my dashboard lights making it very easy to see the dimple in his cheek.
“Nope. I said ‘wipe off the ants.’ On the bag. I don’t know where you’ve been with this food, man,” I mock-complain, which just makes him laugh again. “Shut up. Don’t make me regret not wanting to punch you in the face.”
“Yo, chucklefucks, I was taking a piss. What did I miss?”
A piece of delicious pasta gets stuck in my throat at the sound of Davidson’s voice, when he flings open the back door and jumps in, slamming it closed behind him.
When I finally stop coughing and choking on the last piece of food I was trying to savor, Dax takes the empty plastic container out of my hand while I glare at him.
“You have betrayed me,” I whisper while my brother starts kicking the back of my seat as he tries to get comfortable.
Dax leans across the center console until he’s an inch away from my face. I can smell his soap and a faint woodsy cologne that is more delicious than the food I just inhaled.
“You’re adorable,” he tells me quietly, staring into my eyes in the dark car.
“Not since I was five,” I quip, a flashback of another time we had this exact same exchange at work popping into my head.
Butterflies flap around in my stomach even harder than they did a little bit ago when I thought I would get the chance to kick a drug dealer’s ass.
What the hell is even happening? There’s nothing I love more than a little drug dealer ass-kicking. This is bullshit!
His eyes move down to my mouth. Mine do the same to him, and I remember all the times I fantasized about kissing him back when we worked together and he was an asshole. Back then, it was like an annoying little itch in the middle of my back I couldn’t reach. It would go away eventually if I ignored it. Now? Now, it’s like someone doused me in gasoline, lit a match, and I’m a raging inferno with no fire department in a fifty-mile radius.
“Would it make you feel better if I say watching you eat my food and cuddle my otter is the hottest fucking thing I’ve seen in a long time?” Dax whispers, my stomach dropping out like I just went down the hill of a roller coaster.
“If you don’t wanna fuck him, I will,” Davidson announces, leaning forward to rest his arms on the backs of our seats to look back and forth between us.
Dax presses the palm of his hand against my brother’s face without taking his eyes off me, shoving him back as hard as he can and away from us.
“I had really hoped the otter and the food would negate this shit-show,” Dax tells m
e, waving his hand toward the backseat, where Davidson is currently lounging with his hands behind his head.
“Why is he even here? Why are you even here? Not that I’m not grateful for the food and the otter cuddles,” I reiterate, running my hand down a sleeping Jennifer’s back again, who is still curled up in my lap, making adorable little squeaking noises in her sleep.
“I stopped by your dad’s to drop off food. He told me where you were staked out, and Davidson begged for a ride, since he’s going to some Lisa person’s house a few miles from here,” Dax explains.
“It’s Leslie,” Davidson pipes up from the backseat.
“Nope. Pretty sure you said Lisa.”
“Kate? Does Kate sound right?”
I glance back to see Davidson scrolling through texts on his phone, mumbling different female names to himself as he goes.
“It was definitely Lisa.” Dax sighs, making me laugh at his misery that he now understands what my life is like.
“Huh. Maybe you’re right,” Davidson muses.
“What in the hell is with you Blake kids and the people you date?” Dax laughs.
“I’m not good at relationships,” I remind him.
“I have a deep-seeded fear of intimacy due to Peter Pan Syndrome, where I have the mind of a child but the body of an adult, manifesting itself in an unwillingness to get work or stay working, which is not currently considered a psychopathy,” Davidson says at the same time.
Dax and I slowly turn in our seats to look back at him.
“I heard it on Drunk History last week. Sounded about right.” He shrugs. “I thought you were doing something important for work, not hanging out down from Big-Kickin’-It’s house.”
I quickly blink away the confusion that my brother could string together so many big words at one time, when he points out the window to the end of the street.
