Page 53 of Renard's Deliverance

Two attempts proved that that wasn’t going to happen.

So she grabbed hold and started to drag it. Tugging and swearing, she got it out of the front door, then stood there in the darkness since it was still early in the morning, with her hands on her hips as she panted heavily.

“Crap.”

Why wasn’t her brain working? What was she going to do with it now? Garbage day wasn’t until Thursday and she wasn’t even sure if they would take this.

And she didn’t own a vehicle to get it to the dump. She couldn’t leave a roll of carpet on her front porch indefinitely.

Looked like it was going into the shed at the end of the driveway. Grabbing one end, she strained as she pulled the roll of carpet off the porch and around the corner of the house.

Yeah, her brain had definitely left her body. She could have taken it out the back door and saved herself having to drag this so far.

Heaving for breath, she got to the shed and unlocked the padlock with the key she kept under a rock. Then reaching down, she grabbed hold again. Only as she stood, something pinged in her back.

Agony shot through her.

Shit. Shit.

Leaning over, she panted heavily as she tried to breathe through the pain.

What the hell? With a groan that was part-whimper, she managed to stand.

Gradually, the pain started to subside.

“Fuck,” she muttered. “Fuckity fuck. This ain’t no good.”

She wanted to hobble inside, but she still had to get the carpet into the shed. Bending over once more, she moved it inch by agonizing inch into the shed as pain shot through her back.

Once it was in and the door shut, she headed inside and moved to her bed.

Why her?

If she could sleep like a normal person, then she wouldn’t have been moving heavy carpet around in the middle of the night!

And hurting her back.

Sometimes, it felt like she’d been born with bad luck. And that her luck only went from bad to worse.

She really had to learn to ask for help.

* * *

Renard saton the sofa in his apartment.

His lonely, cold apartment.

Fuck. Since when did he think like this? He got up. He went to work. He came home.

And he worked toward his goal.

So why the fuck had this past week felt so long? Why did he feel so . . . so fucking lonely?

That was ridiculous.

About as ridiculous as you driving past her house every night to make sure she was all right.

Yep. He’d been doing that too.

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