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Fingers wrap around my arm, tug me out of the car.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he snaps.
“You,” I say, jerking out of his hold, “are going about your business, which will hopefully continue to include not running over helpless people with your SUV.I”—I thump a hand to my chest—“am going to get on with my life.” A beat. “Withoutyou in it.”
“You’re going to walk,” he says disbelievingly.
“That’s none of your business.”
A flick of his eyes down again. “You’re going to walk through the ice and snow inthoseshoes?” A beat that’s filled with contempt. “And do it loaded down with your shit?”
I glance at my feet. “It’s not like I’m a magical shoe wizard and can snap my fingers so a pair of snow boots appears.” I mean, I have them somewhere in my bags. It’s just…they’re mixed in with things I don’t want to see and—
“Let’s hope you can snap your fingers and make common sense appear.”
My mouth drops open. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“You’re risking frostbite,” he says instead of answering that. “Do you even know where you’re going?”
“Of course, I do. I just need to go up that road and—” I spin, the flakes of snow in my eyes obscuring my vision. Obscuring almost everything. “It’s right—” I keep turning.
“Forest Bend is”—the man grips my shoulders, turns me the opposite direction—“over there.”
“Right,” I whisper, my outrage fading.
My anger morphing into embarrassment.
He lifts his brows expectantly.
Oh, look at that. My anger makes a reappearance.
I try to step back, to pull out of his hold, but his fingers just tighten.
“Look—”
“Woof!”
Four
Lake
There aretiny pinpricks of pain in my ankle.
Like a swarm of little bees are stinging me—except all at once, like eight or ten of them have surrounded my ankle to mount a coordinated attack.
“What the fuck?” I mutter, breaking away from the woman’s surprisingly captivating emerald eyes—the color of the slender, green needles of the pine trees surrounding this road, when they aren’t being hidden beneath the snow that is falling faster by the second anyway.
I glance down and see…
“What the fuck isthat?”I ask, lifting my ankle, the creature—and apparently the source of those pinpricks of pain radiating up my leg.
The woman gasps and yanks the tiny demon off my ankle, sending razor blades of sensation along my skin—even through my jeans and socks—then cradles the creature against her chest. “Steve isnotathat.Steve is a pug and he’s the most adorable of all adorable pug puppies in the whole world.”
I lift a brow at the smooshed-up face of what is apparently a dog. “He’s a puppy?”
She narrows her eyes, hugs him tighter. “Okay, so maybe he isn’t apuppy, but Steve is still the most adorable dog on the planet.”
“Your dog’s name is Steve?”
