to steer the wheel.
Dead. I’m fucking dead.
Ten minutes pass before King pulls up at a familiar old house and my heart instantly races, and not in the good way. I glance across at him, confusion quickly taking over. What does he think he’s doing bringing me here? “What are we doing?” I ask him, my tone sharp as I wonder if I was right for putting my trust in him. “Why’d you bring me here?”
A smirk kicks up the corner of his mouth. “You said you were lonely, and now we’re going to fix that.”
My eyes bug out of my head and I gape at him. “By hanging out with Irene?” I ask, swinging my gaze back toward the shitty foster home that I’d stayed in when I first came here. “Are you insane? I couldn’t think of anything worse. What the hell are we going to talk about? The brutally messy way I slit her deadbeat husband’s throat?”
King just sighs, and as he does, the sound of Irene’s yappy dog fills the silence.
I watch him as it finally clicks. “We’re not here to talk to Irene, are we?”
He shakes his head. “Irene’s been gone for nearly two weeks and that dog has been left here to starve. It hasn’t been washed, fed, walked, nothing. And from where I’m standing, it looks like that dog needs a friend, maybe just as badly as you do.”
I look back at the house. “You want to steal Irene’s dog?”
King doesn’t respond, but I don’t need him to. I already know exactly what he’s going to say.
My gaze shifts back to King’s just as a wide smile stretches over my face. “Let’s do this,” I tell him, and not a second later, we bail out of the Mustang doors and race toward the yard, putting ‘operation save the yappy little dog’ into place.
CHAPTER 25
“What’s its name?” Grayson grunts, leaning against the brick wall of the house as he stands between Cruz and Carver, all three of them only now just realizing what the hell King and I had gotten upto last night.
“I … uhh,” I cut myself off, glancing at King across the yard as he fills up a water bowl for the dog. “I actually have no idea. Irene and Kurt never spoke about the dog and I wasn’t going out of my way to talk to them about it, so I guess from now on it doesn’t have a name, unless one of you wants to track Irene down to find out?”
Cruz shakes his head, looking horrified by the idea of having to actively search that woman out. “A new name it is,” he announces, walking forward and looking over the dog who plays at my feet, begging to be scratched. “What is it?”
I shrug my shoulders. “How the hell am I supposed to know? A Pomeranian maybe?”
“It’s a Yorkshire Terrier,” Carver says in a brazen, dismissive tone, forcing my stare to his. I’m thrown back to the party where his eyes stared into mine as our hands slowly sailed up Sara’s skirt, though that only reminds me of why I was so pissed and ready to play with him in the first place. I really don’t need another day where all I can do is think about just how alive Carver can make me feel. “And that’s not what Cruz meant. He was asking if it’s a boy or a girl.”
“Oh, umm …” the dog takes off, sprinting around the backyard and I’ve honestly never seen it so happy. It has food, water, a clean yard to play and run, even a pool to sprint laps around. “I actually have no idea. I always assumed it was a girl, but I can’t say that I’ve ever tackled it to the ground, flipped it over, and checked to see what bits and pieces it has.”
Carver rolls his eyes, less than impressed with my comments as Cruz comes to stand by my side, watching the dog as it races around the yard. “It looks like a girl to me.”
“How does a dog either look like a girl or a boy?” King mutters. “It’s not like it has a pink bow in its hair or comes fully equipped with a spiked collar.”
“Then be my guest,” Cruz tells him. “You’re more than welcome to get on your hands and knees to find out.”
“You know what?” King says, a cocky grin stretching over his face and he meets my stare. “I think you’re right. She’s definitely