Chapter 30

A whimper.

Sleep fled as he opened his eyes, forced them to adjust quickly. “Ryker?”

But the little tan ball was nowhere to be found.

He reached out, smoothed his hand over the covers, winced as he hit something wet and of substance. “Ew,” he groaned. He flicked on the tiny bedside light, blinked in the stark light. “Ryker?”

Vomit on the bed. Two piles of it.

“Aw, crap. Little one. Where are you?” He flung his feet over the edge, winced again at the stickiness. “Aw, shit.” He grabbed a Kleenex, cleaned his toes as best he could, stuffed his feet into his shoes. That had to do for now.

He kept calling for Ryker, padded quickly to the kitchen.

And there, by the front door, lay a slack dog. But between him and Ryker was more vomit, and a couple of masterful accidents.

In seconds he was bent to the dog. When it didn’t raise its head, just blinked at him, Nathan laid his face on the cold floor, stared into Ryker’s eyes. “Bebe,” he crooned, in the backwoods French his mom had used with him when he was feeling his very worst. “Bebe. What’s wrong?”

Ryker blinked, closed his watery eyes.

Hell. The dog was sick.

He grabbed his phone, typed in the search term ‘sick puppy’ and as he read the list of symptoms his head swam. Typed in fever, looked at Ryker. Yep, he fit the pattern. But it didn’t take a listing from MediPet to know something was wrong.

He needed to get Ryker looked at. And here he was, out in the middle of nowhere. “Shit. Not even a damn car.”

He stumbled into the bedroom, fell on the edge of the bed and sat there, cradled his head in his hands.

He couldn’t bear to look at the dog.

God. The dog.

The pain mounted in his head, the pressure. How could he…why was this happening?

He fought it, as the feeling grew. He wrestled with it, didn’t want to give in

And then he couldn’t bear it any longer. Balling his hand up into a fist, he struck against his skull, hard.

The pain reverberated, yet barely registered on one level. He hit again, in the same spot.

Again. Again. Again.

As the crickets outside the window sang, as the darkness from outside encroached on the cabin, on him and his sick dog.

And then it was easy to keep doing it. When the pain grew, he hit with his other hand. Soon he was a blur of pain. Tears coursed down his face, but he drove on in the silence of the room.

And then, a whimper stopped him cold.

With the voices in his brain still deriding him, he ran to Ryker, knelt before him.

If it was possible, the dog was more still. But he’d cried out—that couldn’t be good.

What the hell was he going to do? He couldn’t take the time to beat himself up right now— he could take care of that later.

She’d know what to do.

He threw a hoodie on, grabbed a flashlight, wrapped Ryker in the softest thing he could find in in the old linen closet—the soft cashmere blanket his mom knit for him when he was a baby. “There, Bebe.” He gathered Ryker into his arms, a limp little bundle.

He strode to the edge of the clearing, to that spot. Not two feet over, not over where the brush looked less dense, but right there, to their wormhole. Amy’s, and his.

And they started out, man and dog, into the ink-black night.