Page 35 of Love Heals
How could anyone be relieved to be rid of Drizzit? The nerve! Quickly, I scooped him up in my arms before Felix could change his mind back. This dog was coming with me.
It wasn't until we were getting back into the car that I thought to thank Jared.
"It's no big deal," he said. "I thought you'd like to see the dog again."
I nodded, even as my eyes fixed on Felix's house as we backed out of his drive-way. Holding the dog helped, but there were still knots in my stomach that wouldn't go away. "Did you help him get this house?"
"I didn't help him get this house. I helped him get a job. He did all of the actual work himself. He's one of my biggest success cases."
"You must be proud," I murmured, making myself focus on the dog again. Drizzit had his nose pressed to the window and still, his tail hadn't stopped wagging once.
"I'm happy for him," Jared said, keeping his own eyes on the road.
I nodded, because I kind of got that too. Jared wasn't a prideful man. He wouldn't take credit for other people’s efforts either. He wasn't like Nicolai, who seemed to think that the world revolved around him.
Myworld certainly had.
That was just it, wasn't it? Now that he was gone, my universe lacked a center of gravity, which made me feel unbalanced. Because I'd orbited around Nicolai.
Because I'd had to.
I'd had to believe everything he told me. Including the fact that my life would have been miserable without him.
But Felix hadn't had anyone like Nicolai to lift him up, and he'd turned out just fine. Better than me, in any case.
Closing my eyes, I rested my forehead against the window, much the same way Drizzit was doing in my lap. As if sensing my distress, the dog turned to nudge my arm with his nose instead. "Good dog," I said, hoping that my voice wouldn't crack.
If Nicolai had lied to me about my past, what else might he have lied about?
Anything and everything,a voice in my head said. The same one that had told me about happiness. Maybe it was more trustworthy than the other one.
I opened my eyes again, looked back through the rear window, but Felix's house had already faded from sight. How disappointing. I'd kind of wanted to glare at it. I glared at Jared instead, which wasn't fair, because he wasn't the one who'd tormented me. He was just the one who hadn't saved me in time.
Totally not fair.
But I needed to direct my angersomewhere.
Not at Jared, I told myself.It's not his fault. He's a good man.
Which left me with only myself to be angry at. There, that was the right person to blame. It had been my decisions that landed me on the streets in the first place, and my decisions that put me into Nicolai's path.
If I wanted to blame anyone, I had to blame myself.
And if I wanted my situation to change, I had to be the one to change it.
It was time to stop sticking my head in the sand.
* * *
When Jared parked the car back at the safe house, I opened the door to the passenger side and Drizzit hopped off my lap and ran off into the yard. I called after him. He stopped briefly to look at me, tail still wagging, then chased after something in the yard. I let him, somehow knowing that he would come back to me in a few minutes.
I climbed out of the car at the same time as Jared. He headed toward the front door, but I stopped him before he could get there, grabbing his arm.
"Something wrong?" he asked.
"Let me bite you once more," I said.
Jared studied me quietly for a moment. "You want to see more of my memories?"
