Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 131486 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131486 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
“What the hell? Why?”
“Gee, Si, let me find my human-to-Otis dictionary and ask him. I don’t know why, but no one is sleeping tonight until you come home.”
Not exactly the way I envisioned her invitation to come home.
“I’ll be right there.”
He couldn’t want me. Because why? But sure enough, soon as I entered the kitchen through the garage, Otis stopped howling, stood on his hind legs, and licked my face.
“Dammit, Otis,” I spat. “I have told you I am not that dude. Don’t be licking my face.”
He panted at my throat, huge paws pressing so hard into my chest I could barely stand under his substantial weight.
Yasmen leaned one shoulder against the kitchen doorjamb, lines of fatigue sketched around those pretty lips. A silk robe strained across her breasts, the tight belt emphasizing the fullness of her shape. My dick had swelled at the sight, and just as I was thanking God my T-shirt covered my erection, Otis nudged my shirt aside like some dick-detecting narc canine scenting cocaine.
“Otis,” I snapped, pulling the shirt back into place. “Stop.”
“I think at least tonight,” Yasmen said, exhaustion patent in her voice, “maybe he sleeps at your place and we figure it out tomorrow.”
“At my place?” What the hell was I supposed to do with a two-hundred-pound dog by myself? “Maybe we’re misunderstanding what Otis wants. Maybe he—”
At that moment, Otis confirmed what I had always suspected. That he descended from some supernatural breed of wolf dog, because he calmly walked through the mudroom and out the door to wait quietly, patiently, at the passenger side of my truck.
“Is this some new trick you taught him?” I ground out. “Is this a prank the kids are pulling on us?”
“No, Otis wants to be with you. The kids will still see him all the time. It’s not a big deal.”
“Not a big deal, huh?” I retort, snapping back to the present at the butt crack of dawn, blinking blearily as Otis does his business in a patch of grass. “She’s not the one following you around with this,” I say accusingly, shaking the pooper-scooper Deja gave Otis for Christmas with its bedazzled handle. He looks at me in the way that seems to say, Bruh, I’m the one stuck with you.
And I would not put it past Aunt Byrd to have had a little talk with Otis and made him promise to take care of me when she was gone.
“She got us both. Told you to take care of me. Me to take care of you. She was a trickster.”
Byrd was a lot of things. She was the strongest woman I ever met. She was indiscreet, conducting affairs and not giving a damn what anyone thought about it. She had shit taste in men, as proven by the four assholes she married. She was the first to laugh, the first to cry. She was selfless and generous and could cook her way into anyone’s heart.
I don’t think I’ll ever get over losing her. Losing the woman who raised me. When both your parents are dead by the time you turn eight, you’re absolutely certain that nothing is forever. No one is forever. My closest living relative was my whole world for a long time, and growing up I walked around waiting for the last shoe to drop. Waiting to lose her too.
And then one day I did.
“Damn, we’re morbid this morning,” I tell Otis as we enter the house through the front door.
He angles a long-suffering look at me that says we?
“Okay, me.” I walk through to the kitchen. “You hungry?”
He assumes the position at the raised stainless steel dog feeder Kassim found. Once my son understood that Great Danes have some of the shortest life spans, he did what young geniuses do. Researched every single thing that might extend Otis’s life, including a bowl raised off the floor so Otis won’t have to gulp his food and water. According to Kassim, dogs as tall as Otis end up swallowing air with their food when they have to bend down to eat and it gets trapped in their digestive tract. Since bloat is the number one killer of Danes, Kassim is trying to outwit Otis’s digestive system. Including putting him on a raw food diet.
“And guess what we’ve got for breakfast?” I pull out meat wrapped in white paper from the refrigerator, and Otis’s ears perk, his tail beating a happy rhythm into the floor. “Yup. Vashti set aside chicken thighs for you.”
Otis whines and lies down, sniffing the air like an exiled prince.
“Okay, every time I mention Vashti, you act all new.” I give him a knowing look. “You think I don’t see that? Give her a chance.”
I pull a container of pureed vegetables from the refrigerator. He rests his head on his paws and stares at me unwaveringly, as if waiting to be convinced. I toss the pureed veggies into a bowl with the raw meat Vashti sent home, crack an egg over it, and then top it with a little yogurt. At the sight of the bowl loaded with what Kassim assures me is a breakfast of champions, Otis perks up. Pulling his supplements from the cupboard, I add them to the goulash and set it in the standing dish holder. Otis rouses himself to dive in.