Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 74379 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 372(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74379 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 372(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
“Do you want me to call Hennessy?”
Though I’d heard the words, I couldn’t reply. My heart was shattering in a million tiny pieces.
“I’m all alone,” I whispered painfully.
She touched my arm. “I’ll go check on him. Bring you an update, okay?”
I nodded.
But I knew it was a useless effort on her part.
Pepé was gone.
Maybe not yet, but it wouldn’t be long.
He’d lost a lot of blood. Too much blood.
And his poor body.
Had he been a bigger dog, the trap would’ve only taken his leg.
But this trap had been big, and my Pepé had been small.
So, so small.
Too small.
My little guy had always been small.
His size had been why I’d picked him at the shelter that day, all of those years ago.
***
12 ½ years ago
“You think my dad will let me keep him?” I whispered, looking down at the tiny puppy in my arms.
Reed shrugged. “Honestly? If he doesn’t let you keep him, then we’ll just take him to my apartment. I have a pet clause, but it’s one hundred and fifty bucks.”
I nodded, feeling a little giddy.
But later, as my mother stood there, looking at the dog, I realized my mistake.
She found something that I wanted and that meant that she could control me easier.
The fight that I’d had with my mother had been epic, but I got to keep the dog. Although, there were rules. One, I had to pay for the dog food. Two, I couldn’t allow him to bark. Three, if he started to tear the house up, then he’d be gone.
Little did my mother know that Pepé would end up being the absolute perfect dog, and the only thing that stayed with me when I needed someone the most.
Chapter 13
Don’t take advice from me. You’ll just end up fucking drunk.
-Reed’s secret thoughts
Reed
I was mid-exam, my fingers in a woman’s unmentionables as I was checking her cervix for dilation, when a polite knock sounded at the door.
I ignored it, pulled my fingers out, and stripped off my glove.
“You’re at a solid two dilated, but that’s fairly normal at thirty-nine weeks. If you experience any more contractions, I want you to time them. If they get to three minutes apart or less, that’s when it’s time to go to the hospital. Okay?”
I offered her my hand and helped her to sitting, and she looked like she was ready to start freaking out all over again.
The first-time mother nodded her head, but her eyes went to her husband.
“Bags packed?” I asked.
He nodded, looking just as nervous as the mother.
I kept my laugh in check.
If he was freaked out now, I couldn’t wait to see him during delivery.
“Alrighty, then.” I threw my gloves into the trash and walked to the sink, washing my hands thoroughly.
Once I was through, I said my goodbyes, and paused when I saw the woman on the other side of the door.
Caria.
She just wouldn’t catch the hint.
Every single time she made a move, I made sure to put myself well out of her reach, yet she just kept trying.
In all honestly, it was fucking annoying.
It was getting to the point where I wanted to report it to Torres.
“Yes?” I asked curtly.
Caria batted her eyelashes at me. “You have a patient in room four with what she suspects is an ectopic pregnancy.”
I didn’t want to reply to her, but for the sake of being a professional, I did anyway.
“Whose patient is she?”
“Dr. Torres,” she answered.
“Is Dr. Torres busy?”
I could hear him fucking laughing about something in the breakroom, so he wasn’t busy enough for Caria to be bringing his patient to me.
“Umm,” she paused, trying to come up with something she could say to get her out of the mess I had a feeling she knew she’d gotten herself into.
Before I could tell her to go tell Dr. Torres about his patient, the door separating the inner office from the outer office slammed open, and my brother hurried inside.
“Baylor?”
“Lark called me,” he said. “I tried to call you, but you’re not fu-freakin’ answering.” He glanced around the office. “Krisney’s dog was killed.”
My stomach dropped.
“Caria, tell Torres I’m leaving.”
***
When I arrived at the vet, Krisney wasn’t there.
Lark was, though, and she looked extremely sad.
“What happened?” I asked, hurrying up to the counter.
She looked at me sadly. “The dog’s leg was caught in a trap outside Krisney’s property. He bled quite a bit and before we could repair the damage, he was already gone. But Reed, the problem is that kind of a wound shouldn’t have caused that kind of blood loss. So Dr. Castleberry looked around in the chest cavity after he’d passed and found that he had cancer. All over. It was so bad, that the dog literally would’ve only had a few more weeks at most to live.”
I felt like somebody had walked up to me and punched me directly in the chest.