Page 102 of Coiled Tight

Of course he did. And of course, those were the last words Cam was interested in uttering. It was easy to tell by the tone of his voice how grown-up he wanted to be at any given time. There was the fact that he’d gone all out with his outfit, too, but it was sealed when he pulled back to offer me the binky he had clipped to the onesie.

“Okay, baby boy.” I popped the binky into his mouth and didn’t at all get distracted when he suckled on it and puffed up his cheeks. “Let’s have some snuggle time, huh?”

Snuggle time now involved fighting through hyperactive pups, making a game out of biting my ankles, but it was just what I needed to quell the doubts hammering through my head.

epilogue

Cam

“So, how have you been doing, Cam?”

I sighed. It was always the same initial question. I got it, but like, it wouldn’t hurt anyone if they spiced it up from time to time.

No, bad Cam.

It had taken me months to find a therapist who took the sanctuary’s insurance, was okay with only doing online appointments, and wasn’t generally shitty.

“It’s been good. I really think I could graduate already.”

Was I aware I’d been telling her the same for the past two months, and she always found a way to drive it home how not ready I was for graduating? Yeah. Did that stop me? Nope.

Besides, I’d actually had a good week.

Or not. After seven months of needing to ask my now in-laws for an hour out per week because Daddy had made it a rule that I couldn’t use my free day for therapy since that was the day for Little time and other self-care items that wouldn’t potentially leave me feeling bad, I could read Dr Blairejust fine.

She didn’t like me calling her Dr Blaire. She said Blaire was just fine, but she had a PhD, and I wanted her to be proud of it.

I was a good patient.

Anyway. She was leaning back against her chair and had that sideways smile that said she was about to say something smart to negate what I’d been about to say. I liked her, but it wasn’t fair.

“So you told your mother-in-law that you didn’t want pastel de choclo for your birthday?” she asked.

Definitelynot fair.

“That’s…!” I huffed. “Daddy told me the hands are baking me a cake we’ll have after his parents leave.”

“Right.” Dr Blaire wrote something in her notebook. When we first started, she typed things on her laptop, but hearing the keyboards clicking was the most anxiety-inducing thing. For some reason, good ol’ handwriting didn’t cause that reaction. “I remember us discussing it was not about the pastel per se, have you changed your mind there?”

Ugh. Of course I hadn’t changed my mind.

“I can’t have my in-laws hating me,” I protested.

And, yeah, I knew her well enough that I knew she was going to point out that saying someone you didn’t like one pie would make them hate you was not veryadaptive.

Fuck that.

Maybe I could do with some more therapy.

Double ugh.

“There you are!”

Triple ugh.

You know, when Saúl’s dad told me they had three thousand acres for the entire refuge slash sanctuary, I’d thought sneaking around would be easy as pie.

Well, that didn’t account for one Dwight Last Name Unknown. It had to be some sort of magical power. No matter where I was, what I was trying to do, whether or not he was on shift… Dwight would always find me. Thankfully, paranoia was not something I struggled with, or I would’ve convinced myself that he’d chipped me like one of the animals we were saving. I’d even told him that—which had been a big achievement, mind you.