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“If I’m lucky, maybe he’ll get tired of me,” she said quietly. “He’ll find someone else and just leave me, and I can be done.” She paused for a long moment. “If I leave, I’ll never be able to come back here. He’ll kill me. I’ll spend the rest of my life hiding, and I’ll never see Wakan again.”

There was the tiniest, almost imperceptible glance at Brian when she said this.

My heart broke for her.

No matter what she did, Jake would win. Neil was still winning too, in a hundred different ways.

Sometimes it feels like the bad guys always do.

Chapter 30

Daniel

We pulled up to the Grant House in my truck, still wet from our trip down the river. Hunter was loose.

“Did you leave him out?” Alexis asked, braiding her wet red hair over her shoulder.

I looked at her a moment longer than I needed to, thinking how beautiful she was. I couldn’t stop thinking it every time I looked at her. She made me feel like I must have done something right in a past life to get the privilege of being with her.

Even if it was only for now.

“No,” I said, peering back out through the windshield at my rogue dog. “Great. Now he opens doors.”

She laughed and got out, and Hunter ran around to meet her like he always did. We’d gotten him to stop jumping, so that was good, but he still preferred Alexis to me, hands down.

I turned off the engine and stepped out of the driver’s side. Then the smell hit me.

“Uhhhhh…Daniel?” Alexis said, wrinkling her nose. “I think he got skunked.”

He definitely got skunked.

I could practically see green stench waves wafting up from his head. He sat, smiling back and forth between us, looking proud of himself.

“Jesus, Hunter.” I breathed into my elbow.

“We need hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, and dishwashing soap,” she said, shaking her head at him.

“How do you know?” I gagged.

“We get skunked patients in the ER.”

“You wash skunked patients?”

She shook her head. “No, my nurses do it.” She pulled back his eyelids. “It can cause ocular swelling if they get it in the face. He seems okay. I can wash him. I’ve already got it on my hands.”

I had to smile a little. A few months ago, this woman hadn’t known how to sweep. She didn’t scrub toilets or clean the kitchen. Now she was washing skunk off my dog? It made me feel oddly proud of her for some reason.

“I’ll help,” I said.

She grabbed him by the collar. “Are you sure? No point in both of us getting gross.”

“I’m sure.”

I didn’t want to lose time with her. Not even to this.

The sand in the hourglass was running out.

They were voting on her new job tomorrow. If she got it, which she seemed to think she would, that was it.