Page 9 of Take Me Home

“Can I help?” I whisper-yelled as I jogged out to meet up with her.

She was already turning away from me. “No, I’ll be—” she stopped protesting, realizing I was already right next to her. She took a jagged breath, then said, “Yes. I’ll take it, thanks.”

Darcy went to grab the flashlight from me, but she only met my hand. I wish I could say I was making it up, but I swear electricity sparked between us. She withdrew her hand.

“Can I walk you to the house?” I asked.

“I, um,” Darcy said, clearly hesitating. Why was she so jumpy with me?

“It’s really getting dark, and what if there’s some animal or something?” As if on cue, a howl sounded in the distance. She shivered. I wanted to capture that shiver and make it mine.

“But then, you’ll have to walk back alone,” she said slowly.

“Up to you. Just trying to be practical,” I said. She studied me for a long moment in the fading light.

“Yeah. Okay. I’d appreciate that,” she conceded. “But I’d better carry the flashlight. I know where all the creepy crawlies hide.” She gave boogie-man fingers on that last note. Fireflies lifted themselves from the grass, making their nightly pilgrimage to the treetops to worship at the altar of procreation. It reminded me of a scene from The Little Mermaid, which my sisters made me watch 491 times as a child. Instead of dwelling on kissing this girl who I barely knew, I focused on softening her up with friendly conversation.

“So how long have you been out here?” My words were accompanied by the crunch of the gravel under our feet.

“Just a week or so. How do you know—” she began, as a four-legged white figure flashed across the flashlight’s beam. Darcy jumped and hooked her hand around my bicep. Going into protector mode, I pulled her into my side, wrapping my arm around her as we peered out into the darkness. I could feel her pulse mingling with my own. Wafts of that sweet shampoo she used drifted over me. Her breaths were short and shallow, her body tight as a coiled spring. I won’t lie that I was medium scared we were about to get eaten, but I didn’t mind having her close and clinging to me for safety.

The flurry of feelings was interrupted by panting. Not hers. A dog’s. I laughed and let her go as a woolly white dog approached us asking for pets, his feet covered in burrs and mud and reeking of creek water. Nothing like the fluffy crusty white dogs I grew up with. Darcy crouched and wrestled the stinky ball of white.

“Barkley, you turkey,” she scolded. “You scared us!” Barkley rolled on his back, shamelessly begging for affection. I joined her in petting him, scratching his chest until his legs kicked.

“Well, you scared Miss Darcy,” I teased in my best dog-talk voice. “I knew you was a big ol’ puppy dawg.”

“You did not!” she objected. “You were just as scared as I was.”

“No way. I’m a man. I don’t get scared,” I scoffed.

“Leave it to Uncle Bill to have dogs so close to feral that they almost look like coyotes,” Darcy sighed, rising and dusting her hands on her bare legs. Legs I desperately wanted to touch, too.

She walked on, me and Barkley following. We crossed the creek in relative silence and were only a few yards from the farmhouse. The lights from inside shone out onto the grass.

“This is me. Barkley, will you escort Mister Jakey back home?” Darcy asked in her own baby-dog voice.

“Mister Jakey, huh?” I mused.

“I’m sorry, how else is Barkley to address you? You called me ‘Miss Darcy.’”

“Youarethe mistress of the farm, are you not?” I chided her.

“Ha. Ha.”

Just then, Barkley snarled and barked like a maniac, hackles raised. The other dogs that had been flopped on the porch for their evening snooze joined in the chorus. From the direction they were looking, two sets of eyes glowed in the dim light, approaching steadily.

Darcy grabbed for me. “GO! GO GO GO!” she whisper-screamed, getting a hold of my hand and pulling me toward the house. She was surprisingly extremely fast, yanking me along behind her. She threw open the mudroom door and shoved me inside, slamming the door and locking it for good measure.

We both breathed hard, looking out the window in the door. I was actually scared, and I needed to feel that she was safe. I had her body pinned against the door from behind, one hand between her shoulder blades and the other on the door frame. As we watched, the two forms came into view: coyotes.

“The dogs,” Darcy cried quietly. I had to help somehow. Her sweet, desperate voice was heartbreaking. What the fuck was I supposed to do? Shoot a coyote? With what? I felt paralyzed, not wanting to lose one of the dogs either.

Darcy whipped around, forgetting that I was behind her. As she did, my hand that was holding her to the door hovered over her chest. Copping a feel was definitely not the mood at the moment and not how I wanted to get her to like me. I pulled my hands up into a surrender position and backed up.

Her chocolate eyes darted around the mudroom, landing on a rifle on the top shelf. Shit, that would be my chance. I really didn’t feel like shooting anything. It didn’t matter, because Darcy was already moving for it.

“Stand back,” she commanded.

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