Page 72 of Fierce Love
Production has booked an evening shoot for Hollyn and Posey, so I agree to pick up Kin from Cal’s campground, where she’s been helping to look after the puppies in between training and school. I could have had security drive her home—which sometimes happens with Hollyn because she doesn’t have a car—but everyone seems to prefer to have whoever is tailing Kin to be mostly invisible.
When I arrive, the puppies are bounding around the open-plan living room, dining room, and kitchen. There are puppy pee pads scattered around, and Kinsley is frantically running around with a roll of paper towels and cleaning spray.
“This looks like chaos,” I say as a puppy barrels into my legs, backs up, growls, and then barks at me. Almost all of them are black, but a few have white feet or a streak of white on their chests, and a couple have brown slashes on their ears or faces. The mother was definitely a black lab cross, but the father truly feels like anyone’s guess.
“They’ve gotten too big for the baby pool,” Kin says as she cleans up another puddle of pee. “Cal has a pen for them, and they’re supposed to pee in the pool before they get the run of the area.” She lets out a deep sigh. “They suck at it today.”
“Are they ever good at it?” I glance around the area for Cal, but he’s nowhere to be found. We’re entering high season for camping in Bellerive, so he’s probably out doing chores around the campground. Of all my relatives, he’s probably the one closest to earning an honest living off the land. He’s never embraced the trappings of the billions we have some access to.
“I wasn’t very patient tonight, and I let some of them out of the pool before they went pee,” Kin says as I point to anotherpuddle. “Now I’m paying for it.” She sets down the bag of soiled paper towels and starts plucking up puppies to deposit them back in the makeshift pen in the corner of the room.
I scoop up the one at my feet that’s still pretending to be far tougher than it is. He licks my hand as I take him over to the pen. When I glance inside, I see that Cal’s laid plywood down over the tile floor.
“They poop a lot,” Kinsley says, dropping two back into the pen. “The plywood saves his floor.”
“Right,” I say as though I’ve ever had a puppy. Celia Tucker did not approve of pets when we were kids. Too messy. Too much responsibility.
Kinsley puts them all in the pen except one of the black ones with white on its chest that follows her around as she cleans up the messes. When it pees on the puppy pad, it glances over at me as though looking for approval.
“He’s the only smart one,” Kin says, using a high-pitched voice to praise the little male dog, and his whole body goes into a full-on wag as he waddles back over to her. She gives him a good rub before scooping him into her arms. “I love him so much.” When she glances at me, there are tears in her eyes. “People are coming tomorrow to pick puppies from the litter.”
“They’re ready to go home already?” They seem so tiny.
“Not quite, but they’ve had a lot of applications.” Her voice is shaky. “So they’re putting colored collars on them to send them home with their new families soon.” The unshed tears make her voice thick. “Or at least, that’s what Cal said.”
“That’s the one you’d pick?” The tears she’s trying so hard to hold back remind me far too much of her sister. The resemblance does funny things to my chest, as though she’s a window to the past. “Hollyn’s still not interested?”
“We can’t take him back to New York,” she says, giving him another cuddle before setting him into the pen with the rest of them. “If they get as big as their mom, it’s probably not fair.”
“Where is the mom?”
“She follows Cal around now that the puppies are eating real food. I think he’s keeping her.”
I try to memorize the markings of the male she set in the pen. “Do any of the others look like him?”
“The white on his chest almost looks like a heart.” Kin stares into the pen. “None of the others have the heart.”
“How’s adventure race training going?” I ask as Kin gathers her things.
“Good,” she says. “The running is no problem, and I’m getting better at keeping my momentum up big hills on the bike. My climbing is still so-so. Did you know your sister Sawyer is running now?”
“No,” I say, and I remember the thread in the family chat that I haven’t read yet.
“Maren says it’s because of some guy, and she seemed pissed off.” Kin glances at me, but I’m not going to call her on her language. Hollyn only corrects her when she thinks there’s someone around who’ll care.
“Some guy?” I slip my phone out of my pocket and check my notifications. There are at least a dozen voice memos from Ava. If Sawyer is dating someone and I don’t know about it, it makes me question how deeply I’ve let myself get sucked into the production, my life in the house with Hollyn and Kinsley. “I should call her.”
“You should,” Kinsley says, stepping out of the house in front of me.
“What do you know?” I ask.
“His name starts with aD, and I think he has something to do with government?” Kinsley shrugs. “Maren said he’s charming,which shouldn’t be an insult, should it? She didn’t seem to think that was a good thing.”
Maren’s feelings about charming men were definitely complicated. Her first marriage had been to a charming man who’d used his charm in all the wrong ways, but her second marriage is to an equally charming man who loves her to pieces.
“A charming man with aDname,” I say with a little laugh. “Could be anyone.” I exit out of the group chat and fire off a solo message to Sawyer and another to Maren.
“Is charming an insult?” Kinsley asks, peering up at me as we reach the car. Another car sits on the edge of the property, lights off, and I give a wave to whoever is on duty.
