Page 31 of Base Block

“I wasn’t trying to get famous. I was trying to get you famous,” I answered. Maybe I was posting too much content about myself, but it was hard to record much with him because he was so busy. “Tomorrow, if you have time, we can get footage of you that I can work with.”

“You sound very professional. We can do that for sure, because it will be a light day for us. I’ll be home for most of the afternoon.” He said that he’d get to sleep in, too, and I decided that I would make sure that the guy next door didn’t start playing his bugle or whatever it was until after ten.

“How do you think the game went?” I asked as we got into his car.

“Not bad,” he said. “I’m not going to rate myself an eight, but I thought I did pretty well. I surprised myself some, because I’d been worried—” He broke off. “What’s on your knees? Why are you taped up like that? Are those scratches?”

With me sitting under the interior lights, they showed. “I fell,” I explained, and he wanted to hear about it. I explained more and concluded, “But the dog was actually friendly.”

“Friendly enough to knock you down. I thought that pets were supposed to be on leashes. There’s that guy who walks around the complex with the bird on his shoulder and it wears a string on its leg.”

“The owner said that the dog was under voice control. He wasn’t mean and I shouldn’t have run, except I don’t like them very much.”

“Yeah, after you got chased around my neighborhood by one of the hounds from hell, that makes sense.”

“It’s really because I got bitten as a kid.”

“A dog bit you? Where?” he asked.

I put my hand on my thigh. “Right here. It left a scar.”

“I didn’t see it. I would have, when you wore that gold dress.”

He had seen almost everything that night. “Damian paid for laser treatments because he thought it was so disgusting. He used to go ‘gak, gak.’” I jerked my head like he’d done as he’d pretended to retch. “The scar wasn’t very pretty but I didn’t mind it too much, except looking at it reminded me of what had happened. He wanted me to get rhinoplasty, too, but I held him off. I don’t mind my nose, either.”

“What the hell is wrong with your nose? It’s so cute. And it works, right? That’s all you need.” The lights had gone out because we’d shut the doors, but this parking lot had a lot of illumination and I could see him staring at my leg.

I hiked up my dress and took his hand. “There’s hardly anything to see now, but it’s still bumpy.” I used his fingers to trace around my skin. “Can you feel it?”

“Yeah.”

So could I. It was like he was caressing me there, but I was making him do it. I put his hand back on the shifter. “It’s fine and my knees are fine, too,” I announced. “And my palms.”

“Let me see,” he ordered, and I flipped them over. “Where does this dog owner live?”

“I don’t know. Would you go over there? You can’t do stuff like that now that you’re a Woodsmen. People are watching you,” I said. “It’s the reason that Damian stopped being a vegan. Millie thought it made him look weak, so now he pretends to eat meat even though it makes him gag like he did about my scar, but for real.”

“Those people are so messed up,” he said. He started the engine and we got on our way, and at this time of the night and so long after the game, the streets were mostly empty.

“Do you remember the first time I rode in this car?” I wondered.

“When we went to find your hotel in Indianapolis? Yeah,” Callum answered. “I was pretty worried about you.”

“You didn’t know me enough to worry about me,” I told him.

“I worried anyway. There you were, bleeding and barefoot in my driveway. Then I left you on the sidewalk downtown but I thought about you the whole day.”

“Because I was so scary looking,” I said, nodding.

“No, I was remembering how you didn’t scream. Even when that dog was chasing you, I didn’t hear anything until you were almost on top of me. And then I was digging around with tweezers for the glass in your foot, and you didn’t make a sound.”

“What would have been the point?” I asked.

“I don’t know, but when something hurts me, I yell. Or curse,” he added. “If I ever have to run from a dog, I’m going to be doing both. I kept thinking how you stayed so quiet and I kept thinking about your little foot.”

“I wear a size nine. That’s not little.”

“It is compared to mine. I had watched you walk away on the sidewalk all alone and I thought, ‘I have to go back.’”