Page 53 of Tied Over

“To stop me from talking and making you feel uncomfortable?”

God, I hoped so. “Maybe just this once? As a favor?”

He was quiet for a moment, which was a surprise.

“I really missed being your partner,” he said but didn’t look at me, and I knew that because I checked to see if he was.

“Me too,” I murmured, not turning to him. “It’s not good without you.”

He grunted, smug and self-satisfied, and I would have hit him if I’d had the energy. When I was fading in and out, Bodhi said that, much like Judy Hopps, he too needed a pen and recording device all in one. He also liked the look of the carrot one she had.

“You’re a child,” I assured him. “You have your phone for that. You can write on it and record conversations.”

“Yeah, but the carrot has pizzazz.”

I glanced at Stella, who looked as concerned as I felt.

The movie went on, and I fell asleep. I woke up to parents coming down and picking up dead-to-the-world children out of chairs. Stella, of course, was not asleep, and when I turned to her, she smiled at me.

“Aren’t you tired?”

She squinted at me. “Why would I be tired?”

“Mark my words, one day you’ll really want to go to bed early and take naps.”

The look I got, like I was nuts, made me smile even though I was trying to glare at her.

“This was so wonderful of you both,” Giles’s wife, Shae, said, moving my attention from Stella as she picked up her middle daughter, Tilly. “It was so nice to not have to worry and know they’re safe.”

“Well, your kid is very sweet,” I told her. “Tilly made sure the blanket covered my feet so I wouldn’t be cold.”

Her tears came fast, because really, it had been a strange day for everyone. She bent down with Tilly in her arms and kissed my forehead. Giles was behind her, carrying his youngest girl, Bedelia, and the oldest, Katherine, who liked to be called Kat.

Giles said, “Jed, I—”

“Go to bed, man. Tomorrow will be a better day.”

After a moment, he nodded and left.

I turned to Bodhi. “For the record, I don’t golf.”

He was sort of half-awake, so he just stared at me a moment. “What?”

“Apparently everyone is going golfing tomorrow, and I don’t do that.”

“So? I don’t do that either.”

“But you always expect me to go with you when you do stupid stuff.”

“Like?”

I glared at him. “Oh, I dunno, the fuh—” There were kids too close that could hear, so I amended, “The time we had to take those two guys to Lexington, Kentucky, and you thought it would be a great idea to go to Mammoth Cave after.”

He huffed out a breath. “Whatever. If that lady hadn’t passed out when we were going through those really tight spaces, it would have been fine.”

Three hundred feet underground, carrying another human being, was not my idea of a good time. “The Knott’s Berry Farm thing in California,” I reminded him.

“That was how we found out you had an inner-ear infection after you did all that barfing,” he said, trying not to laugh. “I stand by that decision.”