Page 18 of Sharp Lies

How the fuck was this the same man who’d just been joking with my dog about whether or not I would be worried about her? He hadn’t sounded angry then, and he certainly hadn’t sounded like he hated me. But now he was looking at me like he’d never been more disgusted by anyone.

What. The. Hell?

“I suggest, miss, that you learn to control your dog. She put a hole right in my fence.”

He gestured to it like I might have somehow missed that, and I gaped at the hole, and then at him.

“I saw that. I’m so sorry. I’ll pay for it to get fixed. I have a handyman working on the couch, and I can send him over to do it for you.”

“I’ll fix it myself,” he snarled. “Just make sure she doesn’t do it again.”

I would have told him that once Silver decided she wanted something, there was no talking her out of it. I also would have told him that if she’d decided she liked him, she’d absolutely be back to visit him again. I would have said how sorry I was and noted that I was glad she’d come here, where she was evidently at least safe, rather than finding her way into the road or the forest.

But instead, I just nodded, took her collar, and left. I didn’t want to talk to him any more than he evidently wanted to talk to me.

In my head, though, I was already figuring out how I could keep her from coming back here ever again. Because I also didn’t want to have to see that man ever again.

CHAPTER 9

LILY

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I GOT UP THE NEXT MORNING with one thing on my mind: getting my van fixed. It had been screaming every time I started it of late, and after some research, I’d realized that what I’d thought was a scream was actually the alternator belt needing replaced.

According to the instructions I’d pulled up on the Internet last night, the process was at least relatively simple. The article said that you should probably have a professional do it, but I’d fixed that van up myself and had spent years on the road fixing everything that went wrong. I figured I could probably get it done.

And bonus: Staying home and working on the van meant staying home and making sure Silver was too busy helping me to break through the fence Warren had repaired last night after I left. If I could keep her sidetracked for the entire day, I was hoping she’d forget about Warren entirely.

I only wished I could say the same thing for myself.

I’d spent much of last night being frustrated at the fact that I just couldn’t get a read on the guy. He was cold and angry to me but loving and funny toward my dog? Cranky to me when my mom had insisted he was a gentleman and told me that he’d helped her with stuff she couldn’t handle on her own? It didn’t make sense. And I hated things that didn’t make sense.

He was the hot older neighbor I would have been fantasizing about in another life. I wanted the leeway to dream about what he would be like in bed, in that dirty age-gap sort of way, and instead I was stuck rushing through the front yard every time I walked the path because I didn’t want to accidentally see him.

Naked in the bathroom, getting ready for a shower.

I shivered at the memory but pushed it out of my head and aimed my feet toward the garage. I’d already checked to make sure I had the tools I needed, and I’d bought a new alternator belt at the hardware store yesterday. I was ready for this project.

And hopefully it would keep me just as busy as it kept Silver for the day.

***

I THREW THE BROKEN wrench on the ground and stamped my foot, growling.

The people who wrote that stupid article were right. This should have been something you took your car to a mechanic to have done. So why the hell had they said that and then followed it up with ‘but here are the easy steps to doing it yourself’? Why not just say take your car to a mechanic, period?

They were obviously in the process of trolling people. Maybe they got a kick out of thinking about all the people they were misleading with their stupid ‘here are the ten steps’ process.

“Ugh!” I shouted, unable to stop myself. I’d gotten through three of the steps and thought I was doing pretty well until a particularly sticky bolt had tripped me up, and no matter how much I yanked and pulled, I hadn’t been able to do anything about it. When I kept trying, the head of the wrench had split right in half.

It was the only wrench I’d had. And I still had who knew how many bolts left to undo.

I looked up at the sky and pressed my lips together, wanting to scream and knowing that it wouldn’t do me any good. It wasn’t just the bolt or the stupid wrench. It wasn’t even my always-breaking van or the fact that

half the time I didn’t know what I was doing when it came to fixing it.

It was more than that.