He Kept My $11,200 as a Gift, So a Biker's Dog Took My Side novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Bear
A runaway Lab knocks Joni down outside her ex's building, a silent biker helps her up, and her ex says her $11,200 was a gift; she records him, and the next morning the dog is on her doormat.
Something hit me from behind on the sidewalk, and my right knee went into the pavement.
I sat up with my palms stinging and my phone skidding away across the sidewalk.
A chocolate labrador stood over me, panting, with a red leash dragging from his collar.
"Bear!" a man shouted from the end of the block.
The dog flattened to the ground and pushed his whole head under my arm.
"Hey," I said. "Are you the one who just killed me?"
Bear looked up with brown eyes and licked my chin.
The man who ran up was huge, in a black work shirt with the sleeves shoved to his elbows.
His whole left arm was inked, a compass and a ship and some initials I couldn't read, and he had a short dark beard and no smile at all.
He crouched and took the leash.
"You're bleeding," he said.
"It's a knee."
"It's a lot of knee."
He didn't ask if I was all right.
He pulled a clean rag from his back pocket and held it out.
I pressed it to my leg and said, "He came out of nowhere."
"He doesn't do that." He looked at Bear, who was still tucked against my ribs. "He's never done that."
Bear whined.
"I'm Holt," the man said.
"Joni."
"I'm sorry, Joni."
He said it plain and fast, and he meant it.
That was when the door of the building behind us opened, and Brent walked out.
He had his blue dealership tie loosened and his keys in his hand, and the grin was already on his face.
I had been standing on his sidewalk for twenty minutes working up to this.
I had come for my money.
"Joni, babe," Brent said. "What happened to you?"
"A dog."
"You can't be out here. We talked about this."
"We didn't talk. You blocked me."
He glanced at Holt, then at the dog, and lowered his voice to the one he used on customers.
"Babe, I told you I'd handle it."
"You told me that in August."
"And I will. I'll send it Friday."
My thumb found my phone on the pavement beside me.
I hit record without looking at it, and I put it face down on my thigh.
"Send what Friday?" I said.
"The money."
"How much money?"
"Whatever's left," Brent said, and laughed, because Brent could laugh at anything. "Eleven-something. But it was a gift, Joni. You know that."
"I gave you eleven thousand two hundred dollars for our down payment."
"You gave it to me as a gift. Every transfer says so. You can look."
He had asked me to type that word.
Eleven times in fourteen months, he had stood behind me with his chin on my shoulder and said the mortgage people liked it that way.
I'd thought it was romantic that he was so careful.
"You told me that was for the lender," I said.
"And the lender's happy." He spread his hands. "Look, I'll send you a little something on Friday for your trouble. Let's keep it friendly, okay? I don't want a repeat of last time."
Last time was the morning I let myself into his apartment with a key he'd given me and found him in bed with someone else.
She'd had short black hair with a silver streak at the front, and she had sat up in the sheets and asked him, "Who is this?"
Brent had told her, "A neighbor. She has the wrong door."
I had put the key on his kitchen counter and left.
He still had my money, and I still didn't know what to do with my hands.
"Friday," I said.
"Friday." He winked at Holt. "Man, she's a handful."
Holt hadn't said a word.
He stood with the leash wrapped twice around his fist, looking at Brent.
Brent stopped smiling first.
"Anyway," Brent said, and went to his truck, a white pickup lifted so high it needed a step.
He drove off with his window down, whistling.
I stopped the recording and held the phone up where Holt could see the red timer.
"I'll be at his work on Friday," I said. "With this running."
It was the first thing I'd decided in five weeks.
Holt looked at the phone, and then at me, and then he gave me a card from his wallet.
COVINGTON CYCLE, PIKE STREET.
"Bring the knee," he said.
"I'm not bringing the knee."
"Then bring the rag back."
"I will."
"No hurry."
Holt took Bear's collar and walked away down Alder Street, and Bear looked back at me over his shoulder every few steps.
At seven the next morning, I opened my apartment door to leave for work.
Bear was lying on my mat.
His leash was gone, and his red collar tag had a phone number on it.
My phone buzzed in my hand.
It was Brent: "Friday. Bring a lawyer. I have receipts."
I called the number on the tag.
Holt picked up on the first ring.
"Is my dog at your place?" he said. "He's not at mine."
"He's on my mat."
"How does he know where you live?"
I looked at Bear, who thumped his tail twice.
"I was going to ask you that," I said.
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