Page 89 of Bake the Town Red

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Tyler

I’m late. She’s already gone.

She’s not at the front. No light permeates from the door to her back room like there usually is during October. A light glow indicates bad things are happening in this cupcake shop.

Nothing now. It’s dark. Pitch black.

Is she in my place then?

After ten minutes that she doesn’t answer my texts or my calls, I know what’s going on.

She’s home. Baiting me.

Waiting for me to come to her instead of the other way around.

As I whip around and start for her apartment. Where she sleeps. Or, she might be up. Either way, I’ll worship her body.

Fuck babies into her.

I’m that feral tonight, and nothing will stop me.

Unless she says no.

She won’t say no.

Someone’s behind me. No, not someone. Someones. Padding and nails scraping on pavement. A couple of short barks follow.

Never breaking a stride with my hands stuffed deep in my hoodie pockets, I twist my head to them.

Dogs. Five of them, trailing me.

None of them has a collar on.

The smallest of the bunch has a burn mark on his back. A tiny circle where there’s skin instead of his light brown fur. The one who walks at the head of the pack is a medium-sized white dog. His eyes are red-rimmed, and he seems…happy?

So do the rest of them.

I recognize these strays. Have seen them around Dahlia’s shop for as long as I’ve been stalking her.

The dogs wag their tails, and I realize something. They’re not there to beg me for food. They’re just energetic. Full of life.

Then it hits me, and I wonder how I’ve never noticed it before. They aren’t like the rest of the strays. They have meat on their bones. Their fur looks healthy.

They’re being fed.

Maybe Dahlia gives them treats. She’d do that. This woman who hates injustice. Who takes out the—human—trash.

The girl who threw herself on my grandma when she was dying. When her guts were spilled on the floor. Dahlia did her best to shove her intestines back inside. Even with cops bellowing and two bullets flying, and her brother getting shot, she stayed firm. Did everything she could to patch my grandmother back together.

Another block disappears behind me and I’m at her building. Where my beating heart waits for me.

The dogs have long since left. A man in a wool sweater and baseball cap bumps into me, his shoulder brushing mine. I don’t recognize his face. He won’t remember mine in the morning.

One bang on the fire escape and it drops for me. I curl my fingers around the rails and start moving up. Each step I climb, I shed another layer of my past behind me. Of the anger and guilt and fear. It’s less painful to do it at night. Easier in the dark that embraces me like a warm blanket.

I think of Dahlia trying to help Ian, then my grandma.

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