Page 32 of The Pushy Pixies Are Going Down
Chapter Nine
Winter
After we cleared out the next house of gnomes, I was ready to go home—well, to Miles’s home—but we needed to drop all the faeries off at the sanctuary. Thank god we could go home after that, though. I needed to rest, eat, cuddle, and… figure out what to say back to my sister.
I still hadn’t texted her back because what the hell did you say to someone you hadn’t spoken to in years because they abandoned you and broke your heart.
I winced at the thought, then decided to concentrate on the here and now. My sister would have to wait.
Sola trilled from the middle console, so I started petting her and asked Miles, “Do you want to do dinner together tonight?”
It was a Friday, and we usually ate dinner together every Friday—plus two or three times during the week, along with Saturdays and Sundays. Okay, so we ate together almost every night. And we spent nearly all our free time together.
I’d even gotten Miles—and Sola—to go on walks in the evenings with Goliath and me. Odin was always angry about that, and I felt really bad, but I wasn’t sure he’d even like it… or that Miles would want him to go for walks with us.
“Sure. Do you want to do pizza and a movie?”
I smiled at him even though his eyes were on the road. “Sounds good.” After a brief pause, I said, “I’ve been thinking…”
“A dangerous statement.”
I snorted and flicked his shoulder. “Shut up, Sidekick.”
“Not your sidekick.”
I was grinning, and I was sure I looked like a lovesick fool. “Anyway, I was wondering if you ever considered getting a harness and leash for Odin so he could come on our walks with us?”
“Ugh. So I’ve thought about it. A lot, actually. Even before we started, uh, you know.”
For some reason, Miles always seemed reluctant to say we were dating or call me his boyfriend. I wasn’t sure what that was about, but I needed to talk to him and figure it out because I absolutely thought of him as my boyfriend, and we needed to be on the same page.
“Dating, yes. You can say the word, sugar butt. You’re not allergic to it.”
He rolled his eyes and flipped me off, making me laugh.
“Well? Why haven’t you gotten Odin a leash then?”
“I’m afraid that if he starts exploring outside, he’ll want to go out there more and will wind up escaping the house. Becausehe’s an indoor-only cat, he doesn’t try to run out the door, you know? What if I take him out there, and he loves it so much that he wants to get out and explore on his own?”
“Hm. That makes sense.” I frowned. “That’s a shame, though. It would be cute to see him walking around next to Goliath.” I could just imagine that one-eyed, orange fluffball trotting alongside my giant dog.
Miles laughed. “It definitely would.”
We made it to The Ringshire Faerie Sanctuary, and since we came so often, the guard at the gate waved us right through.
Miles parked, and one of the managers came out to meet us, asking, “What do we have this time?”
Miles shot her a smile. “We have some gnomes, gremlins, and dwarves.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Dwarves? Been a while since you’ve dropped any of them off.”
While dwarves weren’t unheard of, they weren’t that common around here, either. I’d put them somewhere in the medium range when it came to how common they were, so I wasn’t surprised by her statement.
When I approached them, Fatma smiled at me. “Good to see you, Winter.”
“You too, ma’am.”
She rolled her eyes at the ma’am comment because she knew I was teasing her. She wasn’t that much older than me, after all.
