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Even though it was nearing the end of October, it was still warm and dry, without even a sprinkle of rain forecasted. The fire still raged on the horizon. They were going to lose the entire county if it didn’t rain soon.
Nobody else was at the park, which he was thankful for. He unloaded Spirit and ran her through the agility course three times before settling into throwing her ball for her.
By the third time she brought the ball back and dropped it at his feet, he felt eyes on him. He glanced back, hoping it was just his brain injury revving up his paranoia but fearing it was that podcaster coming back to bug him.
It was neither.
Bella stood there, frozen in surprise, with her backpack on her shoulder. She wore a lot of—in his opinion—unflattering make-up, and in the weeks since he last saw her, she’d cut off her blond dreadlocks. Her hair was now a springy cap of dark curls punctuated with shocks of fire-engine red.
She scowled at him. “What are you looking at?”
“Hey, it’s a public park, kid.” Donovan shrugged and scooped up the ball Spirit dropped at his feet. “I’m just playing with my dog.” He nodded toward the high school, just barely visible through a line of trees. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”
“School sucks.” Bella draped herself over the fence and watched in fuming silence as he threw the ball again.
Spirit took off like a rocket after it and had it back at his feet in seconds.
After a few more throws, Bella said, “She’s really… focused.”
“Yeah, she loves this ball.”
Another beat of mulish silence passed, then the girl blurted, “Anna says I’m not focused enough on school.”
“Is it my face?” Donovan wondered out loud and threw the ball again. “Does my face scream, I wanna hear all about your problems?”
Like he didn’t have enough of his own.
She scoffed. “You’re an asshole.”
“I’ve been called worse.” He had every intention of ending Spirit’s play session and getting the hell away from the girl, but then he thought of Darcy. Maybe if she’d had someone to talk to—an adult in her life that really listened—things would’ve ended differently for her.
Aw, fuck.
“So it’s back to ‘Anna’ now?” he asked, keeping his tone disinterested. “Not ‘Mom’?”
“I don’t know,” she muttered and climbed up to sit on the fence. “I bet she wishes I was more like one of her dogs. Easy to train, listens to her every word.”
Spirit dropped the ball at his feet and stared at it intensely as if daring it to move again. He smirked down at her. “You obviously haven’t met my dog. She does what she wants, when she wants, and nobody’s gonna tell her different.”
“Not even you?”
“She listens to me. Eventually. Grudgingly.”
“So you’re saying I should listen to Anna?”
“I’m not saying a damn thing, kid. Just telling you about my dog.”
She was silent for several seconds, and he hoped maybe that was the end of it. He’d tried. Wasn’t his fault she didn’t want to listen to him any more than she did her foster parents.
But then Bella hopped down from the fence and walked toward him. She picked up the ball and gave it a good, hard throw. Spirit flattened herself out and shot across the park, missing the catch by inches.
“I know she’s right,” Bella said finally. “But I’m no good at school. I’m so far behind everyone my age. They think I’m stupid.”
The flash of anger caught him off guard. He threw the ball harder than necessary—not that Spirit minded—then faced the girl. “Who said that? I’ll flatten them.”
Hope flared in her eyes. “Could you?” Then she groaned and shook her head. “No, I don’t need you to rescue me. It’s just… the mean girls. Every school has them.”
“Hate to tell ya, it’s not just schools.”
