Page 29 of Protected By Razor

“Razor.” Her hand comes up to my jaw. “Don’t.”

I close my mouth.

“Don’t waste any more,” she says. “That’s all. Don’t waste any more.”

I look at her for a long second.

Then I lean down and I kiss her — careful, soft, because of her lip — and when I pull back she’s smiling up at me like I’msomething she’s still not quite sure she gets to have and I’m still not sure I deserve that.

“Okay,” I say.

“Okay.”

She tucks her face into my throat. I feel her breathing slow.

I stay awake a long time. Watching the dark. Holding her.

Ten years of telling myself she was better off without me.

I was wrong about all of it.

EPILOGUE

DARCIE - SIX MONTHS LATER

Six months later

The drive home from the clinic takes eleven minutes if I hit the lights right, and tonight I hit every one of them right, which feels like a metaphor for something.

I graduated in May. Got offered the permanent position the same week. This is my first full week fully qualified. New name tag. New business cards with letters after my name. I keep pulling one out of my bag at red lights and turning it over in my hand like I’m checking it’s still there.

Dr. Darcie Reed, DVM.

It doesn’t feel real yet. It might never feel real.

Razor moved in two months ago. Not formally — he just stopped leaving, and one day his boots lived by my door and his toiletries lived in my bathroom and I accepted that my tiny apartment was our tiny apartment. Being an old lady is less dramatic than I thought. The other old ladies have embraced me into their world and I’ve never felt out of place.

I’m theirs now. One of them. I still don’t quite know how to carry it. But I’m learning.

I let myself into the apartment quietly because Bruno will lose his mind if he hears the keys.

He doesn’t.

I stop in the doorway.

Razor is on the couch. Flat out on his back, one arm over his eyes, sock feet up on the armrest.

Bruno is on his chest.

Seventy pounds of ridiculous pit bull stretched the full length of him, head tucked under Razor’s jaw, one paw slung proprietorially across his shoulder. Both of them are snoring. Slightly out of sync. The dog’s tail is twitching gently in whatever dream he’s having.

I stand there for a second and I just look.

Four months ago the Sons made a call to a rescue outside Phoenix about the dog fighting ring and a bunch of dogs were found and rescued - Bruno was one of them. He was the dog that came into the clinic that day and I’d never been able to shake him out of my mind. Eventually I adopted Bruno and he came back to Tucson in the back of Lock’s truck with about six pounds of weight to put back on and a permanent scar along one flank. The day Razor carried him into this apartment and set him down carefully on the rug was the day I understood what he meant when he said always.

Bruno’s ear twitches. His head comes up.

He sees me.