Over the last few months, my pull to him had grown stronger. Darker and sharper.
I literally lived for the moments that I’d see him around town.
When he showed up at the ER when I was working, I literally couldn’t stand the attention that he got.
I also didn’t like him giving any attention to anyone but me.
Which was stupid, I knew.
But I’d had this claim to him for so long that it was kind of hard to turn it off.
We may have been husband and wife in name only, but he was still mine.
I’d called him mine for seven years.
I was a possessive bitch, what could I say?
“Is he doing better?”
Holly and I were okay to be in the room with him, but having three humans staring at him had Neo’s hackles raised.
“Not exactly,” I said. “Holly and I were talking, and we think he might do better if he isn’t cooped up in this cage anymore.”
“We were thinking we could put a muzzle on him,” Holly suggested, backing up so that she wasn’t also in Neo’s line of sight. “The muzzle is a lot less scary than it sounds. He can still eat or drink in it, but he just can’t bite.”
Gentry’s hands clenched. “And you think that this will help him for real? Why my place and not hers?”
“We’re thinking it might be traumatic for him to go back to the RV where he was taken from,” I admitted. “Holly admitted that you have a fenced-in yard.”
Gentry grunted. “I do.”
“And you could move your RV, too,” Holly added. “I heard you have a hookup for it.”
Gentry looked surprised that she would know and looked at me mulishly.
Gentry grunted. “I do. But I’ve offered it to her already.”
He had.
Once.
In passing.
Right after Neo was stolen from me.
Gentry hadn’t been happy to hear that the security at the campground was so subpar that no one had caught Neo being stolen.
But I’d turned him down.
I wanted my own space.
I wanted to be able to live and breathe like normal for the first time ever.
Being in Gentry’s backyard meant that he would always be there, never able to escape my constant thinking about him. I would see him every morning when he went in to work. Every evening when he came home. Every time he ran home for lunch.
That probably wasn’t the best idea in the world…
However, when I looked at my poor Neo, I realized that I needed to do something.
