I cock a brow at him. “Oh, but yelling at me in the street is okay?”
“I’ll walk you home,” he says, ignoring my jab.
We set off in the direction of my house, but I’m only moving to put distance between us and any neighbors who might be thinking of calling the police to report a man and a woman arguing in the street.
He stops in front of our house and nods toward my front door. “Go in and lock up.”
I shake my head. “No thanks, Gem and I aren’t finished our walk.”
Drew glares down at me. “It’s not safe.”
I give him an innocent smile. “I have Gem to protect me.”
He regards my Rhodesian Ridgeback with doubt. “That goof?”
“H-hey,” I defend, laughing, because it’s true. Gemini is a goof, but he’s a big goof. At his last check up, he weighed in at eighty-six pounds. “He may be friendly, but he’s big. Anybody who’d want to mess with me would think twice before trying.”
Drew crosses his arms over his chest but says nothing. I take this as agreement, and I make two strides before he steps in front of me.
“Creeps are one thing. Drivers are another,” he says with a scowl. “People like Douche-Bag Drake have been out drinking, and it’s dark. Gemini can’t protect you from that.”
I grin. Opposing him shouldn’t be fun, but it is. I reach down and run a finger over this side of Gemini’s harness. “He’s got reflectors,” I say. Then I shrug. “But if it makes you feel better, I’ll walk against traffic, so I’ll see any cars coming and step into the grass.”
I can’t be sure, but I think I hear a low-pitch growl. Gem perks his ears and looks around. I have to fight so hard not to giggle.
I start walking, and as I expected — as I intended — Drew falls into step beside me.
“And you sayI’mstubborn,” he mutters.
CHAPTER NINE
DREW
I should turn around and walk in the opposite direction. I should. But I don’t.
I tell myself I want to make sure she’s safe, and that’s true. I do.
But, really, I just want to be near her.
Yesterday and today, I put in extra hours at the garage after my shift. Off the clock, of course. I told Cody it’s because I want to familiarize myself with makes I didn’t see in the auto shop at Angola, and he said that was cool.
It keeps me busy. And it keeps me from thinking about the two people I don’t want to think about. My sanity depends on holding too many thoughts of Anthony at bay. Seeing his Supra nearly cleaved my head open. When I’m in the apartment, it’s like I can feel it beneath me. Like a pulse.
Like a fucking tell tale heart.
I haven’t been able to bring myself to ask Grandma Q what the hell it’s doing there. Frankly, I’m afraid to. None of the reasons I can come up with are ones I’d like. Like, maybe she keeps it as a memento of him. And I wonder how many other mementos there are. Upstairs in the unused bedrooms. In the back of her closet. How much square footage is taken up by grief?
Or maybe she’s keeping it for Ma.
Anthony didn’t have any dependents. No one to inherit his stuff. So she would have been left with it all. And maybe she couldn’t bring herself to sell it, but she couldn’t bear to look at it every day either.
Given her semi-annual letters, this seems to be the most likely reason.
“You’ve gone quiet all the sudden,” Evie says beside me. We’ve turned the corner onto Souvenir Gate at the end of the block, and I wonder how far this dog walk will go.
As much as I want to be near her, I have no intention of filling the silence that stretches between us. I’m already giving myself enough rope to hang us both with.
But silence doesn’t seem to be Evie Lalonde’s favorite thing. “Did you work today?”
