The Blessings of the Animals: A Novel - By Katrina Kittle Page 0,8

certain I wouldn’t be hurt?

Chapter Three

BOBBY

IF ONLY YOU’D GIVEN ME A SIGN.

Any little thing I could have taken as a sign.

Bobby kept waiting for it, kept changing the deal in his head: “If she asks me to help hitch the damn trailer, I won’t leave today.” But, no, he watched her from the window stubbornly doing it herself like he didn’t exist. She didn’t think of him.

So he changed the deal again: “If she asks me to help catch this psychotic horse she’s brought home, I won’t leave.” But she never even considered him.

He’d become invisible here.

He thought about making waffles when she left, but he’d learned these rescues sometimes ate an entire day. To be honest—although he realized he couldn’t actually say the word honest with any fucking seriousness ever again—he didn’t have it in him to perform this last gesture if the waffles were going to sit there cold on a plate. No way in hell could he picture himself staying to do the dishes after he told her, any more than he could picture leaving the dishes for her to clean up.

He sat in the spare bedroom he used as an office and waited. Sometimes when she came home he’d have this moment of panic—he didn’t know what else to call it—wondering if she even remembered he was there. He knew it sounded nuts, like he was crazy, but it was this brief fear that he might’ve become invisible for real. More and more lately he had thoughts like that.

Cami called, “I’m home!” but he couldn’t answer. He opened his mouth but it was like he honest to Christ couldn’t remember how to speak. He couldn’t do this! And just as fast a new level of fear layered on the first at the thought of continuing the way he had been.

When she plopped down on the guest bed beside him, he watched her face, this face he knew so well, as she went on about the horse, about Helen, about people screaming at them. He loved her face. He knew the next logical thought was, “Okay, whatever, if you love her, how could you do this?” but he did love her. Even now. He searched her face for signs of the woman he used to cherish. For hints of the woman who’d once cherished him.

She was drenched. Mud-splattered. She had goddamn gravel in her hair. It didn’t seem fair to tell her his news while she looked so beat up, but he felt relieved, a little, at her appearance. He might actually find the courage to leave if she didn’t look so strong, so fearless.

As she talked about the rescue, he kept thinking, Do you not fucking see that I’m dying here? Can’t you tell that something important is about to go down? Can’t you sense it? She used to know his thoughts before he even did, but she kept talking about these horses, and when she told a story about euthanizing a mare, the weirdest image flashed into his head. He felt nuts, but she always struck him as sexy with a syringe. He remembered the first rescue he went on, back when she used to invite him. He loved the way she pulled off an injection cap with her teeth. He’d seen her do it at least a hundred times. She’d have one hand holding the scruff of a neck—cat, dog, whatever—and she’d reach up to her mouth with her other hand and bite off the cap, exposing the needle, clenching the cap in her teeth while she injected the animal. The confidence in the move, the careless certainty—for some reason that picture of Cami defined her for him.

Why the hell did he want to think of her as strong and sexy at that moment? Was he truly going crazy? No, the point was she was strong enough that she’d be okay no matter what he did.

“I just don’t understand people,” she said, as she always did after a removal. It honest to Christ amazed him that she said it so sincerely every single damn time. He wasn’t sure which was stronger: the way her perpetual horror annoyed him or the way it made her remarkable.

“These animals are living, feeling fellow beings,” Cami said. “When you take one into your life you’re making a commitment. How can you just throw them away like garbage?”

Bobby knew this should be his cue to take her face in his hands, to say, “My little crusader, Cami,” but the