He Kept My $11,200 as a Gift, So a Biker's Dog Took My Side novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: Bear Won't Walk for Anyone Else
Holt drives Joni to urgent care for her knee, they agree to a six a.m. dog-walk deal with rules, and Brent texts that he saw her in a Covington Cycle truck.
Holt's black pickup pulled up in front of my building six minutes after I hung up.
He took the stairs two at a time and found Bear on my mat, flat on his belly with his chin on the floor.
"Come on," Holt said.
Bear didn't move.
"Bear. Truck."
Bear rolled onto his side and closed his eyes.
Holt looked at me over eighty pounds of dog.
"I'm not doing anything," I said.
"I know." He sounded tired. "He's doing it all himself."
It took both of us to get Bear down the stairs.
He went limp on purpose, and it made the job slower.
At the bottom, Holt stopped and looked at my leg.
I had my work pants on.
The knee had swollen until the seam stood out.
"Sit," he said.
"I have a shift at nine."
"Sit on the step."
I sat on the step.
He crouched in front of me and rolled the pant leg up past my knee without asking.
His hands were warm and rough and careful.
His thumb found the back of my knee, pressed once, and I hissed.
"That's not a scrape," he said.
"It's fine."
"It's not fine. My sister's a nurse. She'd say it needs a picture."
"A picture?"
"An X-ray."
He didn't look up.
His hand was still on my calf, flat and warm, and I noticed it more than I wanted to.
I moved my leg.
He let go right away.
"I don't have time," I said.
"You have time. You're not walking on that."
He put me in his truck with Bear's whole head on my lap and drove me to the urgent care on Pike Street.
In the waiting room I held out my insurance card, and he pushed it back to me.
"Keep it," he said. "Go in."
The X-ray took twenty minutes.
The doctor said I had a bone bruise and a sprained joint, handed me a black brace, and told me to stay off it for a week.
"Can't," I said. "Work."
"Then sit down at work."
When I limped back to the front desk with the card out, the woman there looked at her screen and said, "You're all set."
"All set how?"
"All set."
I figured it was the insurance.
Holt was in the waiting room with Bear's leash looped around his wrist.
Bear sat on Holt's boot and stared at the door I'd come through.
"Brace?" Holt said.
"Brace."
"Good."
In the truck, I held up the rag he'd given me the day before, folded now, washed.
"I came to give you this."
"I know. I was going to say."
"You did say. Yesterday."
He almost smiled.
It wasn't a real smile, just a shift in his beard, and it was the first one I'd seen.
His phone lit up on the dash.
DACEY, it said, and a photo of a girl in scrubs, too small to see.
"My sister," he said. "Travel nurse. She's in Tennessee until Thanksgiving. She calls whenever I do something dumb."
"What's the dumb thing?"
"Adopting a dog who walks into strangers."
I laughed, and then I stopped, because I hadn't laughed in five weeks, and it sounded rusty.
Holt put the truck in gear.
"Bear won't walk for anyone but me," he said, looking at the road. "And he's been a wreck since yesterday. He wants you."
"That's insane."
"I know."
"Is this a line?"
"If it were a line, I'd be better at it."
I looked at the dog.
Bear thumped his tail on my shin.
"Fine," I said. "I have rules."
"Go."
"We walk him. That's all. Six a.m., before work."
"Okay."
"You don't touch me, and nobody talks about their exes."
"Okay." He glanced over. "That's a short list."
"It's a good list."
"I didn't say it wasn't."
He pulled up outside Dunmore Drug and set the brake and sat there with his big hands on the wheel, not looking at me.
"Six," he said. "I'll bring coffee."
"I don't need coffee."
"It's for him."
"Dogs can't have coffee."
"He'll hold it."
I climbed out with Bear's whole face pressed against the window, and I was inside the pharmacy door before I realized I was smiling.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, the cracked screen lighting up.
Brent.
"Saw you in a Covington Cycle truck. Cute. Be careful who you ride with, babe."
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