Running Wild(Wild #3)(100)

Her smile is genuine. “I need to make a few more tweaks to header sizes and then I can transfer it over. Which leads to my next thing …” She holds up a finger and then darts out the front door to her Jeep. Thirty seconds later, she’s rushing in with a large roll tucked under her arm.

To anyone who doesn’t know Calla, there’s still no visible evidence to hint at the human growing inside her. But I can see how her athletic body is already changing—a thickening midsection, her swelling breasts. “I saw this at the store and thought of you. It’s actually what gave me the idea for the site design.” She stretches the wallpaper out to show me the black-and-white illustrated birch trees. “This would make a great accent wall, don’t you think?”

I groan.

“It’s just wallpaper!” She bites her bottom lip. “And maybe some new chairs?”

I laugh, even as I pinch the bridge of my nose. I’m dealing with someone who could live off the interest she’s earning on her inheritance from Wren. The real world has slipped through her grasp. “I lost my biggest kennel, and yeah, we’ve been getting some new business, but it won’t make up for it.” Especially once race season kicks off. I hesitate. “And I think I might have lost another important kennel.”

Calla frowns. “Why?”

“Because I broke my rule about dating clients.” Not that Tyler and I were even dating. We were a complicated string of encounters that somehow culminated in a reckless night that had me heading to the pharmacy for emergency contraception.

A pill that I stared at for hours that night but didn’t take.

And in the following days and weeks, I convinced myself that this all happened for a reason.

It’s all moot now. My period arrived yesterday morning, like clockwork. And along with the surge of relief came far more disappointment than I’d expected.

I could have done it on my own. I would have. It would have been the one good thing that came out of that mistake.

She nods with understanding. “That Tyler guy.”

I swallow against the prickle in my throat. “He said he doesn’t know how to love two women. Whatever that means.”

Cory emailed the bill for Nala’s checkup and Tyler promptly paid it, but I haven’t heard from him since. The puppies will need deworming soon. If he’s found a new veterinarian, he hasn’t informed me yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he simply stops calling us.

If I could afford to drop Tyler as a client and simplify both our lives, I would. But I’ve crunched the numbers, and losing that income isn’t an option if I can help it. So I go about my days while pretending nothing ever happened between us.

Calla’s brow furrows as she searches for the right answer to a problem she doesn’t fully understand. She gets all her Marie-related gossip secondhand through Jonah, but I haven’t given him the more explicit details, or how far down this gorge I’ve tumbled. Despite everything, I don’t want him hating Tyler.

I don’t hate Tyler. I won’t make excuses for how he hurt me, but my heart does ache for him, for how he still struggles. Maybe that’s foolish. But I let things move too fast and go too far with him, blinded in my attempt to catch what I was beginning to think was a fable.

For just one day, everything that I wanted seemed to be aligning.

For just one day, I truly believed I could have it all.

And yet, there’s also that voice in my head, a jaded voice that whispers what I don’t want to hear—that a woman will come along, and Tyler will make room for her in his heart, that it’s me—I’m just not meant for Tyler. Just as I wasn’t meant for Jonah.

All these years, all these mistakes I keep making, and I haven’t learned a damn thing.

“It’s okay. I’m a big girl. I’ll survive.” I offer Calla a smile that is wide and fake. Surely, she doesn’t buy it. We’ve done the whole forced pleasantries song and dance before, so we know when the other is being genuine. At least this time, our phoniness isn’t directed at each other.

“Well …” She taps her painted fingernails on my counter. “It will cost almost nothing to freshen up this place.”

“Calla,” I groan.

She continues, rushing her words. “Agnes loves to paint, and I’ll get everything from the thrift shop. In fact, I’ve already found the perfect frames for all your degrees. I’m going to spray-paint them gold to match the yellow on the website. Come on, let me do this. Please. Your clients will appreciate the change, and I think you need a change. And I need to keep myself busy. You know how summers are. Jonah’s out flying every day. And when he’s not, he’s driving me insane about the baby. This will be fun for me. I need it. You’d be doing me a favor.”

Her pleas are wearing me down if for no other reason than to serve as a suitable distraction. “It would have to be super cheap. I’m talking a few hundred bucks max.”

“It will be. I swear. This?” She gestures at the wallpaper. “This was free.”

I snort. “It was not free—”

“It was! They gave it to me.”

“They did not just give—”

“Fine. I stole it.”

She says it so deadpan, I almost believe her. My cackle of laughter echoes through the clinic.