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“Boss!” He held his breath and listened.
Silence. No signs of Boss. No bowls. No dog bed. Not even dog hair on the hardwood floor.
John climbed the stairs on legs that grew heavier with each step. The bed in the master bedroom was unmade and empty. Discarded clothes covered the floral print chair where he often sat and laced up his combat boots to keep from waking Britney. He plucked a pair of boxer briefs—not his—from a laundry pile and held them up by the waistband.
“Good things come in small packages, eh Dicky?”
He dropped the briefs back to the floor and headed to the closet. Instead of his civvies, expensive suits, starched dress shirts, and pressed polo shirts hung at half-inch intervals. The size of Dicky’s bank account bested the small size of his package.
Checking the dresser and bathroom and finding no trace John had lived there confirmed that Britney was another woman who viewed him as an inconsequential blip in her life.
They were from different worlds. He’d known it. His friends knew it. Britney, especially, knew it. It’d been fun while it lasted, a whole three months prior to his deployment. Her friends made it clear from the start that they considered him Britney’s rebound guy, and he’d been an idiot to think he could make a relationship last by moving in together. He was an officer, but her family wanted her with a professional—an executive, lawyer, or doctor. Someone who offered a bigger paycheck to support her in the style she’d become accustomed to.
In the garage, he found large cardboard boxes with his name scrawled on them. He hauled the boxes to the back of his truck.
His life, in eight boxes. That was all he had left after he rented out his house, sold his furniture to another guy in Third Group, and moved in with Britney. It wouldn’t be the first time he had to start over. It didn’t hurt much—at least not compared to losing Boss.
He rummaged through the boxes, dug out jeans and a T-shirt, then stripped out of his uniform and changed right there in the driveway. Was it too much to expect her to save Boss’s stuff? Checking the remaining boxes, he didn’t find a single toy. The realization that he’d dodged a hollow point bullet grew as he slammed the gate of his truck closed.
Glancing in the rearview mirror, he gave the house a middle-fingered salute as he peeled out, leaving tread marks as a reminder Britney could live with for a while.
ChapterThree
DRUNK LAST NIGHT – Eli Young Band
“Not that one again, please,”John’s nameless new drinking buddy pleaded.
“I thought you were my friend.” John dropped another quarter in the jukebox. The crowd at Jumpy’s had dwindled to a handful of people.
“Not if you sing that again.”
“Fine. I’ll pick a new song.” He’d played “Friends in Low Places” at least three times. Appropriate, since he’d showed up in combat boots and ruined Britney’s black-tie affair.
He scrolled the blurry song titles and landed on one he meant to play earlier. “That’s it.” He tapped the glass and carefully pressed the number for Luke Bryan’s song “Little Boys Grow Up and Dogs Get Old,” even though he didn’t know the words well enough to sing along.
According to the vet, Boss was around six. About forty in people years. He hadn’t gotten the chance to get old. It wasn’t fair.
While the song played, John sipped his whiskey and showed pictures of Boss to his new friend. “He was part Rottweiler—see his squarish face? Part springer spaniel. That accounts for his spots.”
“Are his eyes different colors, or am I that drunk?” He passed John’s phone back to him.
“One blue and one brown. He might not have been the most handsome dog, but he was loyal. And big. A man’s dog. Not some sissy, yappy dog. We were brothers by different species of mothers.” John tried not to cry in his whiskey.
“To Boss.”
“To Boss! The best dog ever.” John raised his glass. “He deserves a proper burial.”
“Hell yes, he does.”
“I’m gonna tell her that.” He swiped the screen on his phone.
* * *
John wokeand stretched the best he could, crammed as he was in the passenger seat of his truck. He pulled the bill of his ball cap low against the morning sun beating through the windshield, further aggravating the pounding of his brain against his skull.
He opened the door, poured himself out of the vehicle, and stood on shaky legs. When he’d warned his men not to do anything stupid, he hadn’t planned to be the one sleeping it off in his truck outside Jumpy’s. Most of last night was a blur thanks to a few too many bourbons. It’d seemed like a good idea in the moment. And he’d made a friend, not that he remembered the guy’s name.
With his mouth desert-patrol nasty, he opened the door to the back of the cab and found a bottle of water that had been in his truck for months. He chugged that to ease the headache.
