“Maybe we can stop and get real brownies on the road somewhere,” I offered.
Owen gave me a small smile, which was even more heartbreaking. Even after only knowing him for a little while, I could already tell he was a guy who laughed often and boisterously. Seeing an insincere smile on his face made me want to wince. “Thanks. But it won’t be the same.”
“Well, no, because we won’t be high as kites as we hurtle down the highway,” Ransom said.
I reached over and smacked him on the thigh, trying to hide the assault from Owen. When Ransom gave me a what did I do? look, I glared at him. Be nice, I mouthed.
Ransom rolled his eyes in reply, which briefly made me think he potentially wasn’t the only one in the truck capable of murder. It was a shitty thing to think, but it was what it was. Everyone thought inappropriate things from time to time, right? It didn’t make me a bad person. Though it didn’t necessarily make me a very good one either.
My thoughts devolved from there, ending up at Ransom and me becoming the twenty-first-century version of Bonnie and Clyde before Owen’s voice brought me back to reality.
“Can we stop at the next rest stop? I need to pee.”
I looked at the clock. We’d been on the road for a little over an hour, and Owen had been quiet since the brownie incident, only humming as we drove but not speaking any actual words. Ransom and I hadn’t spoken much either. It was…awkward between us. As if having a stranger with us made us too tense to make even casual conversation out of fear of giving away too much.
Paranoia and a guilty conscience were a duo from hell.
R A N S O M
It really spoke to Owen’s personality that while I hadn’t meant to inflict lasting harm on Brad, I was fantasizing about strangling Owen. I knew my patience was even thinner than normal due to all the stress I was feeling, but goddamn this dude was irritating.
After the bullshit with the pot brownie, he proceeded to hum metal music under his breath for the next forty-five minutes. And I knew it was metal music because the sounds burst out of him at harsh, erratic intervals.
Taylor hadn’t seemed bothered by it, but for me, it was like nails on a chalkboard. I’d even tried turning the radio up, but it was like once I’d heard him, my ears kept straining to see if they could keep hearing him.
When he’d said he had to go to the bathroom, I contemplated leaving him at the rest stop. What grown adult couldn’t last longer than an hour without needing the bathroom? It didn’t bode well for the rest of our trip.
“Where the hell is this guy?” I muttered.
Sitting beside me on a table made of concrete, Taylor had her head tilted toward the sun, her hands resting on the surface behind her so she could recline back a bit. “Hmm?”
“Owen. He’s been in the bathroom for almost fifteen minutes.”
“Maybe he has diarrhea.”
I stared at her even though she couldn’t see me. “Really?”
Without moving from her position, she tilted her head a bit so she could see me. “What? It’s the logical explanation.”
“It’s also gross.”
She sat up straighter and turned toward me a bit. “Why are you so tense?”
“Tense? I’m not tense. I’m just annoyed we’re taking this thoughtless bum all the way to Virginia.” I pushed myself off the table and stood, shoving my hands in my pockets as I started to pace.
I felt her gaze on me, but I didn’t look over. I was being a total dick, and I knew it. But I wasn’t sure how to stop. There was just too much going on in my head, and it was making me feel like I was losing it.
“Ransom,” Taylor said.
I gave her a brief glance to show I’d heard her, but I didn’t stop moving.
“Ransom,” she said again, her voice sterner this time.
Stopping, I looked at her full-on.
“Come here,” she said.
It made me feel like a dog or small child for her to voice a command at me like that, but I shuffled my feet closer to her before I’d even thought it through. Truth was, I wanted to be closer to her. Even though we’d spent a ton of time together recently, there was still a distance between us I wasn’t sure how to bridge.
Owen only made that feeling worse—an actual person thrust into our bubble at a time when we had so much to figure out. I resented him for it even though it wasn’t his fault. Ultimately, we’d approached him with the offer of transport. It wasn’t fair of me to treat him like a nuisance, even though he so was.
When I was right in front of her, she reached up and cupped my jaw, pulling me closer and placing a soft kiss on my lips that I wanted to sink into. She began to pull back, but I surged forward, capturing her mouth again, teasing the seam of her lips with my tongue.
I felt her smile against my lips, and then she pulled back again and rested her forehead against mine. “Baby, what’s wrong?”
I closed my eyes and released a deep sigh. “Everything,” I whispered.
She smiled softly. “Be more specific.”
Settling my hands on her hips, I enjoyed the feel of her for a second before responding. “I’m going home exactly what they all expected me to be.”
She jerked her head back. “What do you mean?”
“My mom’s family always expected me to turn out to be a fuckup. And now here I am, a murderer coming home to hide out from the police.”
She gripped my chin tightly in her hand. “You. Are. Not. A. Murderer.”
“The legal system might likely beg to differ.”
Tears filled her eyes as she said, “I’m so sorry, Ransom. I didn’t even think about how hard it would be to face your family under ordinary circumstances, let alone with all that’s been going on. I’m such an insensitive asshole.”
“Hey, hey, none of that. Only one of us can break down at a time. Wait your turn.”
Her smile was wobbly, but it was there. “Sorry. Commence with your pity party.”
“Thank you. Anyway, I always envisioned I’d show up to a family gathering at some point as a super-successful guy. Instead, I’m a stripper who’s still in school, and oh, yeah, I may have killed a guy. I’m just…having a hard time reconciling how I always pictured it with how it’s really going to be.”
“First of all, you are successful. You support yourself while taking graduate classes so you can take over the world of physical therapy. You’re kind and protective and funny and handsome and sweet, and—”
I put my hand over her mouth. “If you keep going, my head won’t fit in the truck.”
She huffed out a laugh before continuing, “I’m just saying, you’re still the guy you always pictured you’d be. And as for the other thing, let’s not come to any conclusions the police haven’t come to yet. We don’t know what happened in that alley after we left it. Let’s not attribute labels until we’re at least sure we have the right ones.”
I knew she was saying that for my benefit. She’d also been struggling with our role in Brad’s death, but I appreciated that she was trying to make me feel better. Whether I deserved it or not, I needed someone to be completely in my corner right now. And it was amazing to have that someone be her.
“I’m also showing up with the hottest woman in the world. So there’s that.”
She smiled. “That is a huge bright spot.”
“Yup,” I said as I leaned in to kiss her again.
I’m not sure how long we soaked in each other’s presence before we were pulled apart by a strange shuffling noise. Whirling around, I saw Owen trying to sneak to my truck wearing a hoodie he hadn’t had on when he went to the bathroom. He was also slightly bent backward and had magically gained a belly to rival Santa Claus. His hands were braced under his stomach to support the weight of it.
“Owen,” I said, making the guy jerk to a stop.
His blue irises skirted in my direction, but he didn’t move his head or body to face me.
“What you got there?” I asked him.
“Oh, n
othing. Just got this rad new hoodie in the rest stop,” he said as if I gave a shit about what he was wearing. He took another step toward my truck but had to stop again when his entire stomach seemed to wiggle before letting out a yelp. “Shit,” he squealed as he moved his hands to catch whatever animal he was clearly hiding under his hoodie. Once he had himself and his shrouded accomplice situated, he braced his midsection with one hand before reaching for the door handle with the other.
“Dude, you’re not getting into my truck with some wild animal,” I said as I took long strides to stand in front of him, effectively pushing him back from my truck.
Owen gasped. “I would never do that! I just…ate a lot of snacks from the vending machine.”
Taylor came to stand beside me. “Owen, seriously. What’s under your hoodie?”
“Cheetos and Funyuns,” he replied, his voice full of bravado he obviously didn’t feel. He looked like a pouty child.
“Owen,” I warned. “I’m not sure why you think we’re fucking idiots, but it’s getting insulting. Show us what’s under your hoodie before I leave your ass here.”
He huffed but unzipped his sweatshirt partway. A wiry head popped out and rested on the section of his hoodie that remained zipped. The face was a reddish brown with white running from between his eyes and down his snout. His pink tongue licked his lips as his brown eyes looked at me intently.
“Did you steal someone’s dog?” I asked because what the fuck? Where had this moron found a dog at a rest stop in the middle of a stretch of highway?
“No! I would never do that.” He sounded truly affronted, which made me inclined to believe him even though I really had no way of knowing he wouldn’t do that.
The guy could be a serial killer for all I knew. The irony of thinking that about him after what I’d done did not escape me.
“I found him,” he continued. “He came right up to me when I was leaving the men’s room. No collar or anything. I wandered around asking people if he was theirs, but no one claimed him. I can’t just leave him here. What if he gets run over by a big rig? Or a creepy kid finds him and sets his tail on fire? That shit happens, you know. I listened to a podcast about one sadistic little asshole who used to pour gasoline on animals and then—”
“I think we get the picture,” I interrupted. Oddly, I was slightly relieved by Owen’s own hatred of serial killer tendencies. Maybe he wouldn’t slit our throats before we got him to Virginia.
“You can’t just take him,” Taylor said. “Maybe someone will come back for him.”
Owen shook his head. “He’s pretty dirty and skinny. Like he’s been here a while.”
Taylor looked at me, but all I had to offer was a shrug. I didn’t have enough experience with strays—neither canine nor Owen variety—to know what to do.
“Let’s go into the rest stop and see who we should call about the dog,” I said. “I’m sure there’s some kind of animal control or something that can come get him.”
At that suggestion, Owen took a giant step backward and clutched the dog. “No way. They’ll kill him.”
“I’m sure they won’t—” Taylor started.
“They might. And I can’t risk it. Gimli deserves better.”
“Gimli?” I asked.
Owen looked at me like I was stupid. “Yeah. After the dwarf from The Lord of the Rings.” Owen reached up and scratched the dog’s chin. “Looks just like him. All grumpy and scraggly.”
Unable to formulate a response, I closed my eyes and shook my head in an attempt to make this nightmare go away. When I opened them, not only was the nightmare still here, but it was becoming more fully realized.
Owen unzipped his hoodie the rest of the way, allowing us to get a better look at the dog. It was probably about thirty pounds and looked to be a mutt in all senses of the word. Dirt was caked into his coarse fur that stuck out from his body like he’d been electrocuted. He was skinny, just as Owen had said, his ribs visible, but not to the point of looking like he was sick. A few weeks of good meals would probably get him back to normal. Whatever normal was for this dog.
Taylor looked up at me, her eyes pleading as she reached out with a tentative hand to stroke the dog’s head. The little fucker leaned into her like he relished her attention.
“No, no, no, we gotta stay strong,” I begged her.
“He is pretty cute,” she said as she moved closer so she could reach more of his body to pet.
“He’s probably covered in fleas.”
That caused her to retract her hand pretty damn fast.
“I’ve been carrying him around for a while, and I haven’t seen anything on him.”
“You a vet now?” I asked.
Owen sniffed. “No.”
“I can’t risk all our stuff getting infested with whatever mites are probably all over him.”
“I’ll wash all your stuff and vacuum your truck out when we get to my parents’ place. Besides, I’ve been holding him, so if he has bugs on him, I do too by now.”
Owen was really underestimating my desire to leave them both here. “Well, that’s comforting,” I muttered, earning me an elbow in the side from Taylor.
“Please,” Owen pleaded, his eyes looking suspiciously like the dog’s he was clutching to his chest.
I looked heavenward. “Why? Why did you make me this way?”
Was the ability to say no completely absent from my DNA? My mom had sure said it often enough. Though I guess not when it mattered. When she should’ve said, No, I will not take more drugs. No, I will not leave my kids unattended so I can hit the local bar. Her noes had been reserved for things like No, I will not buy you new sneakers. Just put duct tape over the holes. No, I will not come to your school concert. Those things are lame.
Guess it could’ve been a family trait after all.
I sighed heavily. “Make sure you put a blanket or something on the seat so he doesn’t get his hair all over it.”
Owen bounced on his toes. “Oh my God, you guys are the best. Say thank you, Gimli.”
Fuck my entire life.
Chapter Six
T A Y L O R
Ransom kept checking his rearview as if the dog and Owen were plotting something duplicitous behind us. Though…I guess trying to sneak a dog into his truck was duplicitous in its own right.
“Take the next left,” Owen said in between coos to his new dog. “Yes, we’re going to have so much fun when we get home. Have you ever had a bath? By the smell of you, I doubt it. Yes, I do.”
He sounded like he was trying to coax a baby to eat mashed vegetables. It would’ve been better if we’d been able to tune him out, but we’d lost cell service a little ways back and were relying on Owen to navigate us the rest of the way. The road to Owen’s hometown looked like the path Dorothy took through the Haunted Forest in the Wizard of Oz.
“What’s that noise?” Owen asked as he fed Gimli snacks and water from the stockpile he bought at the rest stop.
Ransom glanced back at him. “What noise?”
Owen waited a second before saying, “That one.”
“I don’t hear a noise,” Ransom replied.
I actually thought I had heard something—a knocking sound—but the tense set of Ransom’s shoulders kept me from voicing my observation.
“There it is again. It’s getting louder. Sounds like the engine.” Owen relayed all this with the calm of someone completely unable to read a room. Or truck cab, in this case.
Ransom started looking around as if he would somehow be able to see the engine if he achieved the proper angle.
“You should probably pull over,” Owen advised serenely.
“There’s nothing wrong with my truck,” Ransom said, his tone doing little to disguise his concern.
“When was the last time you had your oil changed?”
“Owen,” Ransom warned. “I take care of my truck.”
“Huh. Must just be old, then.”
“There’s nothing—”
Ransom’s sentence was interrupted by a clunking noise followed by the truck sputtering and then stalling.
“Shit,” Ransom said as he glided the truck to the side of the road and turned the ignition off.
Owen sat forward so his head was between us. “Engine went.”
Watching Ransom’s head slowly pan toward Owen made me feel like I was living in slow motion.
Thankfully, Ransom didn’t say anything to Owen but instead looked to me. “Do you have service?”
I quickly checked my phone. “Nope.”
Ransom’s loud sigh told me he didn’t either.
Owen didn’t bother to check. “There’s never any service on this stretch of road.”
“How far until it comes in again?” I asked.
Owen twisted his mouth. “Hard to say. It’s spotty in this whole area.”
“Let’s get out and see if it’s better outside,” Ransom said.
We all climbed out of his truck. Ransom and I walked around holding up our phones as if the marginally higher altitude would help. Owen fussed over Gimli, and when I looked over, I saw why. He’d taken one of his T-shirts and put it around the dog so it served as some sort of haphazard harness. He’d then attached a belt to a hole he’d put in the back of the shirt so it functioned as a leash.
“That’s…clever, Owen.”
He beamed at me.
“How far is it to the nearest town?” Ransom asked, somehow ignoring the MacGyver shit Owen had fashioned around his dog.
“About six miles.”
“Six miles,” I whined, unable to help the plaintive sound of my voice. Trekking six miles with a high-strung boyfriend, an eccentric stranger, and a roadside mutt wasn’t exactly how I wanted to spend the rest of my afternoon.
“Maybe someone will come along soon and help us,” Ransom said softly, clearly trying to make me feel better.
“I doubt it,” Owen the dream killer said. “I took you a back way that’s a more direct route to my house. But it doesn’t see a lot of traffic.”
Let's Not & Say We Did (The Love Game Book 5) Page 5
