times.
“I’ll set it up tonight,” Stoney said, and Sundance nodded.
“Do you think they’ll fuck with us?” Wrath asked.
“If they do, it’ll be the last thing they do,” Sundance said, banging the gavel. “Meeting adjourned.”
We filed out, picked up our phones, and made our way to the great room to drink. I was surprised to find Wyatt, Sabrina, and Raquel in the kitchen, opening boxes of fresh, hot pizzas.
“Where’s Letti?” I asked. She’d been with them down at Sundance and Wyatt’s place while church was meeting, but had planned to meet me when we were done.
“She’s here somewhere,” Raquel said.
I found myself relaxing, not realizing I’d been on such high alert.
Wyatt smiled. “Rough meeting?”
“I plead the fifth,” I replied.
She chuckled. “Fair enough.”
“There you are,” Letti said, wrapping her arms around me.
“Here I am,” I said, giving her a gentle squeeze.
“Can I steal you for a minute?” She frowned up at me. “Or are you still meeting?”
“I’m good,” I said. “Your room?”
She nodded and we made our way upstairs, closing ourselves inside.
“How bad?” she asked.
“Locked down bad,” I said.
She dropped her head to my chest. “We don’t have time for this shit.”
“It’s fine, baby. We’ll adjust.”
“I wanted to talk to you about looking for a place together.”
I sighed. “Yeah, I was gonna talk to you about the same.”
She smiled up at me. “Really?”
“Yeah, baby. I know you hate my place,” I said. “I hate my place.”
“That’s not to take away from the fact you’ve done everything—”
“Babe, I get it. Thank you for acknowledging the difficult job of getting a recruit to clean my apartment.”
“Well, I cleaned it initially,” she reminded me. “Then I kind of put up a stink because you wouldn’t keep up with it, so you then got one of the grunts to do it on a regular basis, so you wouldn’t have to.”
I chuckled. “Right. Thank you for doin’ that.”
“You’re welcome.” She grinned. “I want chickens.”
“Come again?”
“Chickens,” she repeated. “I want snow chickens and regular chickens, chickens who lay eggs. Can you imagine having fresh eggs every day?”
“Let’s let all this shit calm down a bit,” I suggested, cupping her face.
“Are you against chickens?”
“No. I’m not at all against chickens.”
She smiled again. “Okay, I’m happy to let things calm down a bit then.”
I nodded. “In the meantime, we can open a bottle of your favorite wine Friday night and start compiling a wish list.”
“Do we have to wait until Friday to open the wine?”
“Of course not. I’ll make sure we’re stocked.” I kissed her nose. “Until further notice, I drop and pick you up from work, got it?”
“I know the drill, honey,” she said.
“Let’s go get some food.”
She kissed me one more time, then followed me back downstairs.
Violet
TWO WEEKS LATER, my buzzing phone atop my nightstand pulled me out of much-needed slumber. Aero was on a run for the club, so I was alone. Well, sort of. Scrappy was sacked out in the living room, my watchdog for the night.
Bleary eyed and half-asleep, I struggled to make out who was calling. Finally, my eyes adjusted enough to see that it was the zoo and that it was 1:05 A.M.
Why the hell is someone from work calling me at this hour?
I thought briefly about ignoring the call and going back to sleep, but then thought the call might be about Ellie or the calf, so I picked up.
“Hello?” I answered in a groggy voice.
“Oh, good you’re up,” a panicked voice on the other end said.
“Who is this? Is everything okay with Ellie?”
“Oh, sorry. This is Phoebe. I’m one of the new interns. Ellie and baby are fine, but Mara never showed up to relieve me from my shift. She’s over an hour late and isn’t answering her phone.”
“What about Gilbert?” I asked.
“He’s in Honduras with Ray picking up a male Capybara from a sanctuary. I’m so sorry. Your number was next on the list. Normally I’d stay, but I have an early class tomorrow morning.”
“No, that’s alright,” I said sitting up. “Sit tight. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
I hung up the phone, got out of bed, and looked in the closet for a clean uniform.
“Shit.”
It was then I remembered the laundry sack, which contained every one of my uniforms, sitting in the back seat of my car. I’d meant to drop it off at the dry cleaners after work but was so exhausted I’d completely forgotten. So, not only did I not have any clean uniforms, I couldn’t even shake out a dirty one and throw it