AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I’d tried. I really had. I’d done everything I could to keep from snapping, but it had been a losing battle. Just like that, I lost it.
“That ‘nice girl’ is the laziest, most worthless waste of space I’ve ever had to deal with. If I’d had any say in it, she never would have gotten a job at Junior’s. But like always, you went over my head and hired her without any input from me. And I’ll have you know,” I continued, jabbing a finger at his chest, “she’s not that nice! She talks crap about the other employees behind their backs and lives to stir up shit. No one else likes her, but she’s there because ofyou. If I’m losing their respect for any reason, it’s because my own father keeps undermining me at nearly every turn!”
“Mommy?”
The haze of rage that had been coating my vision vanished in an instant at the reappearance of my daughter.
I shook off everything else, because she was all that mattered. “Hey, sweetie. You get all your stuff?” She nodded, but her expression was awash with wariness. She’d just heard me yell at Pop-Pop and didn’t have the first clue how to handle it. “Good deal. Say bye to everyone and let’s hit the road, yeah?”
I could feel my parents’ eyes on me as Hazel passed out hugs and kisses, but I didn’t have it in me to look back at them. Instead, I shuffled my daughter out the door as fast as possible.
5
FORD
The house was dark and quiet as I stepped through the front door, closing it behind me with a resounding click.
There’d been a time when I would step through my front door and be greeted with nothing but noise. I missed the hell out of those days. The silence was sometimes so heavy, I felt like I was being suffocated by it. There were days I questioned my new life and the solitude it came with, but deep down, I knew it was for the best.
I flipped on the living room lights and kicked off my boots where I stood. It had been a long shift. None of the calls were that serious, not like that asshole with the out of control burn pile the week before, but what they lacked in seriousness, they made up for in quantity. Grapevine had cycles like the moon, and every few weeks, the people of the town tended to go crazy, and we’d end up running our asses off on calls for faulty smoke detector batteries, or suspicious smells, or literal cats up literal trees. It had taken a couple years to get used to, but I eventually embraced it as small-town living.
I snatched the remote off the coffee table and hit the power button, turning the TV on for no other reason than to break the silence as I headed for the kitchen. I’d just pulled a beer from the fridge and twisted off the cap when I heard the sound of claws click-clacking along the hardwood floor.
A moment later, my basset hound, Otis, came around the corner, his floppy ears nearly hanging to the floor and his hangdog expression not looking the least bit impressed by my arrival home.
I looked at him with an arched brow as I took a pull of my beer. “You know, it’s customary for a dog to greet its human at the door when they’ve been away on the job for the past twenty-four hours. What good are you to me if you can’t at least do that?”
Otis plopped his ass on the floor right in front of me, twisted his head, and stared out into the living room. It was a dis, his way of communicating he wasn’t going to acknowledge my presence until I gave him a treat.
I’d gotten him when I first moved to Grapevine for some companionship. The quiet had been getting to me, and I couldn’t take the loneliness. I thought the best option would be to get a dog. Unfortunately, the one I’d picked out was a temperamental little bitch who gave me the silent treatment more often than not.
It didn’t take much for me to piss him off, and when I did, he’d usually storm off into the spare bedroom I’d converted into a home gym and sleep there for the night.
“You’re a pain in the ass, you know that?” I reached for the canister of treats I kept on the kitchen counter. I twisted off the lid and pulled a couple out. “Is this what it takes to get you to talk to me?” I asked as I lifted up one of the bacon shaped treats.
Otis smacked the floor with his front paw in response.
“I should have gotten a fuckin’ cat,” I mumbled to myself as I tossed him the treats. He snarfed them down so fast I doubted he’d even chewed them, and as soon as he was done, I got the man’s-best-friend version of Otis.
He stood up, panting happily as he sauntered closer to my feet, then rolled over onto his back, tail wagging like crazy as he waited for me to scratch his belly.
“Yeah, now you love me,” I grumbled as I continued to give him what he wanted. “You stay out of trouble while I was gone?”
He let out a sound similar to a harumph as he rolled back to his stomach and hopped up on his stubby feet, then pushed through the doggy door I’d cut into the bottom of the kitchen door and headed into the backyard.
“Don’t get too comfortable out there. We’re going for a run later,” I called out, then realized what I was doing. “Fuck me,” I grunted as I grabbed my beer and headed for my bedroom. “I’m having full blown conversations with a fucking dog. A dog that doesn’t really like me!”
I stripped off my Grapevine FD uniform and tossed it in the general direction of the hamper before heading for the bathroom and cranking on the shower. I’d have to take another one after my run later, but I didn’t care. It was something to do. The standard rotation for Grapevine’s fire department was twenty-four hours on, forty-eight off. So I had the next two days to try and fill so I didn’t lose my mind. Which was easier said than done.
I hadn’t exactly cultivated many friendships since moving to town four years ago. I’d had more than my fair share of guys to hang out with back in Maryland, but that was a different time, and I’d been a different man. The life I’d lived back then was long gone. I’d built up these walls to keep everyone out, so I never had to suffer through the kind of pain that came with loss ever again. If I didn’t let people get close, I didn’t run the risk of losing someone I cared about. But it made for long, lonely, boring days, for sure.
I was tight with my crew at the station, but that was out of necessity more than anything else. Fighting fire wasn’t exactly easy when the guy at your back was someone you hated. But outside of work, I didn’t really talk to any of them. I got smiles and waves whenever I had to hit up the grocery store or things like that, but that was only because the people in this town were nice. Hell, I didn’t recognize half the faces of the people who wished me a good morning or good evening when I was out in public.
The only person I’d developed any kind of relationship with over the years was Owen Shields, and that was all because of Otis. I hadn’t been in town long, and I decided it would be a good idea to take my new pup to hike some of the trails I’d heard so much about. Grapevine might have been a small town in the middle of nowhere, but that nowhere just so happened to be in the mountains and had views you couldn’t imagine. There were trails all over the place, and as an active guy who enjoyed the outdoors, it was heaven for me.
Not so much for Otis. The lazy ass had fought me every step of the way like a damn kid digging their heels in when you’re trying to lead them somewhere by the arm. When he wasn’t doing that, he was ignoring my orders and going off the trail, and eventually got his ass bit by a snake.
I’d lost my shit, picking him up and running all the way back down the trail to my truck with him in my arms. He’d had to stay with Owen for observation but had turned out okay. That was, however, his last hike. I threatened him with runs around the neighborhood, but all he did was stare me down, knowing I was full of shit and would eventually cave and let him sleep while I worked out by myself.
