informed me I needed to move out immediately. Asshole. For reasons I still didn’t understand, the first person I’d called was Dad. His barely masked anger when I’d tearfully vented to him on the phone had made me feel a bit better. And he’d offered to let me come stay with him if I needed a place to go.
I hadn’t gone that day. I’d spent the last week at my mom’s, just a few miles from the apartment I’d shared with Cullen.
I’d been an anxious wreck. It had been hard to make myself leave the house for fear I’d run into Cullen. Spokane was a city—albeit a small one—so the chances of randomly seeing him out and about were low. And Cullen only lived there part time. He kept a studio apartment in New York City—ostensibly to be closer to his publishing industry contacts, but now I knew he’d used it for other, more cheaty reasons.
In any case, the city I’d grown up in had suddenly felt like a pressure cooker of terror. So I’d taken Dad up on his offer.
“Do you need me to take care of anything for you?” His eyes narrowed and his voice hinted at some protective-father danger.
“No, Dad. I just want to start over.”
He nodded in understanding. “Okay. You take your time getting settled. I need to go pop in to the station for a couple of hours. I was out at the incident command post for the wildfire all day and now I’ve got some work to do for my regular job. Do you need anything before I go?”
It was probably my fault that Dad had to go back to work. My car accident had interrupted his day. “No, I’m fine. I’ll just bring in my clothes and stuff. Then probably watch some mindless TV.”
“Sounds like a good plan. I’ll get dinner on my way home, how about that?”
“That’d be great. Thanks, Dad.”
He stood and placed a light kiss on the top of my head before leaving.
Closing my eyes, I let out a long breath. It was beautifully quiet, the absence of noise doing wonders to soothe my raw nerves.
Although I was off to a rocky start, maybe coming to Tilikum had been the right move. Maybe small-town living would help me get my mojo back.
Maybe I’d actually be able to write again.
That would certainly help my floundering career, although I no longer had an agent. And I wasn’t exactly swimming in my own industry contacts. I didn’t like that part of the job. I just wanted to write books, not network with people.
Of course, the writing books part wasn’t exactly happening either. For months I’d been struggling with the worst case of writer’s block I’d ever had.
I checked my phone and saw a text from my best friend Ginny. She’d been checking up on me regularly since my life had imploded last week.
Ginny: Hey, sweetie. Did you make it to your dad’s?
Me: I’m here. But this should probably be a phone call conversation.
Ginny: Oh god. What happened now? Don’t text back, I’m calling.
A second later, my phone rang.
“What happened?” Ginny asked as soon as I said hello. “You never want to talk on the phone.”
“I know, but I don’t want to type it all out.”
“Did Cullen come crawling back already?”
“No. Definitely not. I’m sure he’s happily making room for Pepper Sinclair’s designer wardrobe and makeup collection.” I paused to take a fortifying breath. “I ran over someone.”
“What?” she shrieked.
Wincing, I moved the phone away from my ear. “Okay, maybe that’s not exactly accurate, since I don’t think my tires touched him. But I definitely hit a pedestrian.”
“Oh my god. Is he okay?”
“I guess he’s fine. My dad said he has a broken leg, but he’ll go home from the hospital tonight. I hope they checked for internal bleeding. Do you know how much force it takes to rupture a spleen? I still think maybe I should go down there.”
“I don’t know how much force it takes to rupture a spleen, but I’m sure you do. Let’s maybe not go down that grisly tangent; we can assume your fire chief father knows what he’s talking about and that the hospital staff are taking care of him. How did you hit a pedestrian?”
“I turned a corner and he walked right out in front of me.”
“Well, that sounds like his fault.”
“Ginny.”
“I’m just saying. We learn to look both ways when we’re like four. Wait, he isn’t a little kid, is he?”
“No, thank God. His name’s Gavin