Page 38 of Untamed Heart

“You can stay with me.” The words fell out of my mouth without a single, solitary thought from my brain, but there was no way of pulling them back now that they were out in the universe.

My father smiled in my direction. “Honey, as much as I’d love that, have you forgotten you’re currently living out of a hotel room?”

I had.Shit.

Call it temporary insanity, but I found myself saying, “Not anymore. I’m renting Lennon’s old place. You can stay there with me.”

Why the hell did I just say that? I thought to myself, ignoring the way Ezra’sandRoe’s eyes lit up at the invitation. Before I could take it back, however, the nurse I’d totally forgotten was still in the room, watching the whole ridiculous scene go down, spoke up. “That’s great! All settled then. What do you say we get you home?”

“Uh...” My eyes darted around the room, not that I was looking at anything in particular as I tried to work out how the hell I was going to care for my father in a house where every room except the kitchen was completely empty. “Great. I’ll just pull the car around, and, um, make a few phone calls.”

I darted out of the room before anyone could say anything else, pulling my cell from my back pocket.

I hit the number I’d saved on speed-dial and brought the phone to my ear as I power-walked to the elevators.

“Iris?” I asked as soon as the call connected.

“Hey, girly. How’s it going? You sound out of breath.”

“I need a favor,” I blurted, jabbing the button to call the elevator. “Abigone. Incidentally, do you think Lennon would be willing to rent me her house? And also, how fast do you think you can furnish an empty house?”

I could have sworn I heard the smile in her voice as she answered, “Leave it to me. I’ll get everything taken care of.”

NINETEEN

DAKOTA

I heldthe phone to my ear as I stood in the front yard, watching the controlled chaos taking place before my very eyes. My girl Iris hadn’t been lying when she said she had it handled, and now my new driveway was filled to the brim with Iron Wraiths hauling furniture off the back of a moving truck and carrying it into the house I was now sharing with my estranged father for the foreseeable future.

For signing a six-month lease, Lennon gave me all her old furniture she’d put into storage when she moved in with Pope and decided it didn’t fit. Which was most of it. The guys moved everything into the guest room first so that Ezra had a place to rest and were now working diligently to fill the rest of the house.

After taking off for sixteen years, and my icy demeanor when I first showed up at the hospital, I’d expected the cold shoulder, but was surprised when I got nothing but friendly smiles and familiar greetings from the guys I’d known before. They treated me like I hadn’t been gone all this time and hadn’t spent most of my life secretly hating them for taking my father from me.

“So you’ve gone full-on looney toons then,” my sister said through the line after I finished relaying the events of the past couple hours.

“Apparently so,” I deadpanned. “Honestly, I don’t know how the hell this happened. It was as if my brain short-circuited in the middle of that hospital room.”

“Or,” my sister chimed in, her voice softening slightly, “you met a group of women you really like, and they made you realize maybe that town isn’t so bad after all.”

My mouth dropped open as I turned around to face the street, my free hand falling to Hank’s head where he sat by my side without a care in the world. “How can you say that?” I squeaked, shock settling over me at my sister’s words. “You’ve always hated this place as much as I have.”

“Don’t lie to me, Kota. You already do too much of that to yourself.”

I reared back like I’d been slapped. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It wasn’t the town, not really,” she continued. “I knew from an early age that wasn’t the place for me. That doesn’t mean I didn’t see the good in it, or the way you loved it before everything went bad. Dad’s club doesn’t make up the whole of Ashland. Our shitty mother doesn’t make up the whole of Ashland. There’s good everywhere and you’ve always seen that. There isn’t anything wrong with being happy to be back and making a new group of friends, the kind you really deserve.”

I sniffled against the now damn-near constant burn behind my eyes and in my sinuses. “When the hell did you get all mushy?”

Remy’s laughter carried down the line, forcing my own smile to peek through. “Oh shut up. I’m not mushy, I’m wise.”

I sniffled again, my vision of the street ahead of me growing glassy. “I miss you,” I whispered.

“I miss you too,” she returned just as softly. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I think I’m going to make a trip down there.”

My hand froze on Hank’s head, and the dog let out a disgruntled woof when I stopped petting him. “You’d really do that?” I asked, reaching into my pocket and pulling out a treat that I now always kept on me and in the house—just in case—and passing it to him to buy his affections back. What could I say? I was a sucker who had a soft spot for the street’s mascot. Spending time with Hank reminded me how badly I’d wanted a dog of my own growing up. Not that my mother ever let me have one. Then, after I left, I bounced from place to place for a while, and that kind of life wouldn’t have been fair to a dog.

When I finally met Adam and moved in with him, I broached the subject, only for him to tell me he had horrible allergies. Something I found out later was a lie. He just didn’t want to deal with any kind of mess that came with having a pet.