Page 64 of Made for Mayhem

Relief loosened something tight in my chest, even as guilt crept in behind it. “I’m on my way.”

I grabbed my keys and waved to Steve as he came back in from lunch. He took one look at my phone, then the pig on the counter, and gave me a slow thumbs-up.

Rowdy’s ears perked the second I moved, and he was halfway to the door before I hung up.

I looked down at the sleeping pig, then back at Steve. “Well, I can’t leave you here.”

She cracked one dark, sleepy eye open, then closed it.

With a sigh, I scooped her up.

Minutes later, I had a pig tucked against my chest, a dog in the passenger seat, and the distinct feeling my life had spiraled into a very weird place.

The piglet made squeaky grunts whenever the truck jostled, then burrowed deeper into my shirt. Rowdy leaned as far away as possible, pressed flat against the passenger door.

“Yeah, yeah,” I told him. “I wasn’t expecting to give you a little sister today either.”

He sighed. The pig snorted. I shook my head and hit the gas. Every scenario I’d rehearsed in therapy lined up in my head, neat and useless.

Junie wasn’t upset.

She was just tired.

Tired was normal. Expected, even.

She’d been holding up so well after everything. The grief counselor I’d been seeing for months drilled the same thing into me every time we talked: Meet her where she is. Safety first. Routine second. Love always.

“She’s been through hell,” I told the pig, because somebody had to listen. “Kid gets a free pass for at least a decade, don’t you think?”

She snuffled against my ribs. I took it as an agreement.

The Linwood Rink still looked like hell from the outside—dirty brick siding, a flickering sign—the kind of place you drove past unless you knew better. Inside, though, it was home. Cold air, old concrete, and the sound of blades cutting ice.

I pulled into the first available parking spot and climbed out, pig still in my arms, Rowdy right on my heels.

Tate’s red eyebrows nearly disappeared into her hairline the second she spotted us. I’d known her my whole life—before the rink was hers, before it was partly mine too—and she knew better than anyone when to stop asking questions.

“You know,” she said, “I’m lenient with Rowdy because he’s awesome, but that’s⁠—”

“A service pig,” I deadpanned, shifting the pig in my arms. “In training.”

The piglet squealed on cue, sticking her happy little face out toward Tate.

A smile cracked her serious façade.

I didn’t wait long enough to be denied, barreling through the lobby and up the stairs to her office. Blueprints littered the tables—early plans for the expansion Beckett had been pushing since he, his brother Mason, and I invested. Everything was still up in the air, but the Conway brothers did nothing halfway.

Junie lay curled in the old recliner, rain boots kicked off, hair mussed from sleep.

Her eyes flicked open when I knelt beside her.

“Hey, bug.”

That tired little smile just about wrecked me. “You’re here.”

“Of course I am,” I said. “I told you I was just a phone call away.”

Her gaze dropped to the bundle in my arms, and her whole face lit up. “Is that a pig?”