Page 45 of Boss Me Around

After a beat, I remember falling asleep in Christian’s arms and sweep my hand out to the other side of the bed only to find it empty and the sheets cool to the touch.

He’s clearly been out of bed for a while…

Maybe I snore? Maybe he had a hard time sleeping with someone else in the bed and decided to head out to the couch?

Or maybe he got freaked out by how needy and clingy I’m being and decided he had to dip?

I’m about to get upset about that when I remember why I’m needy and clingy in the first place and my throat gets tight.

Kyle. He’s gone.

Maybe forever.

I might never cuddle with him on the couch or watch him zoom down the slide in the backyard or take him for a Sunday walk in the park wearing his favorite sparkly pink bow tie ever again. He might end up on someone’s dinner plate this Thanksgiving and it will be all my fault.

I got too careless, too trusting. I should have remembered that he’s a very smart animal, but he’s still an animal and a slave to his instincts. If he heard a sexy lady turkey gobbling in the field behind the house, he would have been biologically compelled to try to go to her. He has no awareness of how dangerous the wild can be for a bird who’s used to being treated like a pet.

Even when I first adopted him, Kyle was having a hard time making it on his own. The vet said his cognitive abilities could have been negatively affected by all the toxic grain, or he simply might have grown so accustomed to an easy meal that he’d forgotten how to forage. Either way, the end result was the same.

Kyle was failing to thrive. He’d dropped a lot of weight and had been on the losing end of at least one fight with a bigger, meaner turkey. He had ugly wounds on his neck and chest that I had to treat with salve for the entire first week I fostered him in the dorm.

The reason for the fighting, I later learned, was likely another male bird who was pissed about Kyle competing with him for mates, which didn’t surprise me for a second. Kyle is one horny customer. He practically pushed down the fence last spring, warbling his best mating song as he tried to get to the lady turkeys on the other side. If he encounters other turkeys while he’s out and about, he will try to score a girlfriend, and could end up getting killed for his trouble.

Basically, there’s nothing out there in the big bad world for him but death. I have to find him. I just have to. There’s not a moment to waste. There has to be something I can do to keep searching now, even if it is dark. Maybe I can troll Minnesota hunting websites and see where the locals are having luck with their turkey hunting this year.

I swing my legs over the side of the bed and down to the floor, yipping in surprise as my foot brushes something soft and warm. Heart racing, I glance down to see two glowing eyes peering up at me in the dark.

“Bella?” I ask in a sleep-rough voice, earning myself a soft chirp from the creature at my feet.

My lips curving despite my Kyle-induced sadness and stress, I reach over and flip on the light, revealing a blinking little skunk. “Hey there, cutie. How did you get in here? I know I closed and locked the door.”

She snuffles something that could be an admission of super-secret skunk witchcraft powers—or allergies—and jumps up to brace her front paws on my shin.

“You want to come find Christian with me?” I collect her from the floor, adding in a whisper as I start toward the still closed and locked door—she really is a little Houdini. “He has to be here somewhere. He wouldn’t leave you behind.”

But a brief walkabout reveals he’s done just that. There’s no Christian in the guest room, the kitchen, or living room, and a quick glance outside reveals his truck has vanished from the driveway.

Heart sinking into my stomach, I assure Bella, “He’ll be back. He adores you, even if he isn’t so sure about me,” but I’m not sure I believe it.

I mean, I know he cares about me as a friend, but he made it clear from the beginning that he wasn’t interested in anything but a little wham, bam, see-you-later-and-we’ll-never-talk-about-the-whamming-again, thank you, ma’am. Leaning on him while I freak out about my pet running away and dragging him to my bed for an off-limits sleepover was never supposed to be in the cards.

I can’t blame him for running off, if that’s what’s happened, but it still hurts.

And reminds me of another McGuire who nearly screwed up his entire life by running away. Barrett bailed on my sister mere minutes after their first steamy encounter, hurting Wren so deeply that she ran away to Thailand for three months to lick her wounds. But somehow, they made it past the fallout from their mutual running and are now happily married.

Thinking of Wren, and how much I wish I could talk to my sister about what’s going on with Christian, I settle in at my desk in the living room and open my computer, Bella in my lap. I’m not planning to spill my guts about my potential On the Run McGuire or anything—Christian and I promised to keep this a secret from our families, and I’m not one to break a promise—but I figure an email to touch base can’t hurt.

Wren and I write each other emails all the time. We started the tradition when I went away to college, but we’ve kept it up since I came home. There’s just something about a letter that’s so different than texting or talking on the phone. Sometimes we send actual snail mail letters, too, with old photos or little sketches inside. It’s just a thoughtful, personalized way to show how much we care about each other.

Opening my email tab in my browser, I hit “compose” and prepare to start writing only for my laptop to blow up with text notifications.

“What the heck?” I mutter, idly stroking Bella’s back as I lean in to see what all the fuss is about.

It looks like I’ve received a slew of text messages from Nora about fifteen minutes ago, not long before midnight. Worry making the hair at the back of my neck stand on end, I open my messages app. Nora isn’t the type to send more than one or two texts at a time or to text after seven or eight p.m. Seven texts from her this late at night can only mean bad news.

NORA: I have no idea how to tell you this, Starling, but I think you deserve to know what’s happening as soon as possible. So you can get help from the police or whoever you’re supposed to contact in a situation like this. So I’m just going to spill the beans, okay?

Brace yourself? Please? For real?

---