Page 25 of Will Bark for Pizza (Bluebell Springs #1)

NINETEEN

KIRA

“Have you been out here long?” Aspen asked as she and her dog, Tango, stepped onto the boat dock.

Husker immediately hopped to his feet to greet his lab friend, and my heart squeezed.

If I didn’t live six hundred miles away, they could spend time together.

As it was, he was too used to being the only dog in my life worthy of pets.

If I wasn’t careful, Husker would turn all the way into a grumpy old man dog. He needed a friend.

“Just came out here to think,” I said, greeting Tango with a firm rub along the back of his neck while Husker was distracted by Aspen’s attention and the homemade treat she offered him.

“Everything okay?”

My legs dangled off the dock, and I kicked at the water with my bare toes. The water was cold, and they were numb by now.

“I don’t really want to talk about it.”

Except, I did. I really, really did. I was bursting at the fucking seams, desperate to let out a long scream. But the locals wouldn’t appreciate the outburst on their quiet lake, so I held it in.

“You know I love you, Kira.” Aspen kicked off her flip-flops and took a seat next to me, dangling her feet into the lake.

“I sense a but .”

“That’s because I’m a little worn out with how much you seem to hold things in these days.”

Despite the compassion in her tone, guilt gnawed at me. Of anyone who had a right to be upset about my outburst last summer, Aspen was the kindest about it from day one. I owed her more than silence.

“Beckett’s buying the bookstore.”

“Beckett Campbell ?”

“Yeah.”

Beckett fucking Campbell. The man who came to my rescue this morning and was my undoing, all in the course of a few minutes. How long would I have lain there, crumpled on the cold tile floor, if he hadn’t found me?

“That’s a good thing, right?” she asked.

My spite renewed. His kindness was costing me Mom’s bookstore.

“No, it’s not a fucking good thing,” I snapped.

I gulped a hard swallow, well aware that I needed to dial back my anger. I hated how easily I could still be set off, especially around well-meaning people. This wasn’t me.

Aspen, the ever patient friend I didn’t deserve, simply waited, much as Beckett did the other night around the firepit. It wasn’t fair to like and hate the man so much all in the same moment. It hurt my damn brain.

I took a deep, centering breath. “Sorry.”

“You’re hurting. I get it.”

That didn’t mean she deserved my misplaced anger. Especially when it was still so damn unpredictable.

Travis knew how to push all my buttons at once, and set me off like a fucking bomb.

He worked me up until I exploded, and then got really calm, convincing me time and time again that I was the crazy one.

The one who couldn’t control their temper.

That I was the problem in our relationship, despite him never once taking accountability for a single thing.

Though I never got to that level of anger since I broke things off with him, I still dealt with a short fuse more than I cared to admit.

Maybe someday, it’d get better.

Maybe I’d even be myself again.

But today was not that day. Because the man I was secretly crushing on—the same man who served overseas with my brothers and won over the hearts of my entire family—was destroying the one thing that meant the most to me.

Served me right for letting down the walls I fortified and swore to never let falter.

“He’s buying the building. Not the bookstore.”

She frowned, as if trying to unriddle my words, and then shook her head in defeat. “What does that mean?”

“It means Dad’s liquidating the business.”

“Oh, sweetie. I’m so sorry. I?—”

The hum of an engine turned both our heads. I reached for the handle of Husker’s leash so he wouldn’t run off to greet our newcomer and end up chasing a deer. Husker was more than a little annoyed at the yank when he tried. He looked at me, then at Tango—who was leash-free—and back at me.

Not fair, Mom.

“So, I invited a stray,” Aspen admitted, biting her lower lip the way she did when she did something sneaky and was hoping I wouldn’t be mad at her for doing it.

A white Bronco rounded the bend, appearing from the clearing. Alyssa Bennett waved from her open window.

I tensed.

The three of us had been best friends since kindergarten.

We had our share of fights throughout the years, but last summer, Alyssa reached a breaking point with me after what it took to get me to Aspen’s wedding at all.

We hardly spoke that weekend because she was so pissed.

And that was all before Stupid Intoxicated Kira decided to steal the microphone from the band.

I couldn’t blame Alyssa for being upset with me, but it didn’t make me any more excited to see her today.

Though I planned to reach out to her—eventually—I wasn’t prepared for this conversation right now. Not after the bomb that was dropped on me only hours ago.

“Did she move home?” I asked Aspen as she stood and slipped her feet back into her flip-flops.

“No. She’s in town for the weekend. You heard about Mom’s surprise birthday party?”

“Yeah. Connor mentioned it. But are you sure this is a good idea?” I muttered to Aspen as Alyssa hopped out of her Bronco.

The second her gaze landed on me, her cheerful expression hardened.

I could feel the laser beams from her narrowed gaze penetrating my bones.

The urge to hop in my Jeep and run away was overpowering, but I fought my way through it.

Like it or not, Alyssa was on my apology tour list.

“You didn’t tell me she was going to be here,” Alyssa hissed.

“Yeah, same,” I said, defensiveness rising automatically. Husker didn’t seem to care about the tension. Only that Tango was allowed to trot up to Alyssa without restraint and he was unfairly tethered by a leash. He gave me a look that said as much.

“Okay, okay,” Aspen said, lifting her hands in surrender. “I tricked the two of you. But I had a good reason.”

“You’re going to help me make her body disappear at the bottom of this lake?” Alyssa guessed, a sinister smile spread across her lips as she gave Tango pets.

“Funny, I was just thinking the same thing about you,” I fired back.

We stared one another down for several tense seconds, with narrowed glares and pinched lips.

She had every right to be pissed at me. During the drive to Bluebell Springs for Aspen’s wedding, she let me know exactly what she thought of Travis.

She made it pretty clear that if I stayed with him, our friendship would not survive.

Though deep down I knew she was well meaning, I never responded well to being told what to do.

I was also at my fucking limit. There’d been tension ever since.

“If you two want to throw punches”—Aspen looked at me—“or snakes , leave me and the dogs out of it.”

Light danced in Alyssa’s eyes, and her tightly pursed lips curled at the ends. Suddenly, I was fighting a smile, too.

We both burst into laughter at the same time, meeting in the middle and falling into a hug.

The kind of hug I’d been desperately craving for what seemed like forever.

The kind of hug that reassured me that though I may have hurt some feelings last year, my closest friends and family did not abandon me. I could fix this.

Husker wedged his way between our legs, insistent that he should be the center of attention now that Tango had his turn.

“I heard you ditched The Asswipe,” Alyssa said, letting go and crouching to greet Husker.

“Have you been talking to Luke?” I asked on a laugh.

“I have my sources.”

“Well, this was easier than I thought it would be,” Aspen murmured.

“You thought you were staging an intervention again, didn’t you?” Alyssa asked.

“Well, yeah.”

The three of us laughed as we unloaded paddleboards from vehicles and set to inflating them. Thankfully, my friends shared their battery-powered pumps. My arms were still sore from my last encounter with a hand pump.

“You remember that time you tried to do an intervention because Alyssa and I got into a huge fight over Tony Nickles?”

I shook my head, remembering how big a deal that seemed at fifteen years old. How the world seemed to come crashing down when we found out Tony had made out with both of us .

“I did you both a favor,” Aspen said, pulling off her sweatshirt.

It was an unusually warm day at the lake, not a cloud in the sky. The wind was nearly nonexistent, and the water still. But despite the warm sun, it still had nothing on the Nebraska humidity. I also remembered how chilly the water was and decided I’d rather keep my sweatshirt on this time.

“Have you seen what’s become of dear ol’ Tony?”

“No,” I said.

I had to unfriend all the boys I went to high school with on social media. Travis was convinced they’d reach out and hit on me—none of them ever did—and I did it to prove I only wanted him.

I did a lot of stupid things to prove my loyalty.

“He was balding so badly he started shaving his head. He’s also got a nice beer gut.”

“And to think you two ended up mud wrestling over him,” Aspen said, laughing.

“You could have picked somewhere dry to hold your intervention,” I said to Aspen.

I anchored my paddle to my ankle with the tether, still amazed that Beckett found it. It made it even harder to be mad at him, and right now, I needed to be mad at him. Anything else was far too complicated.

We paddled out to the middle of the lake. I didn’t dare do anything reckless like stand on the board like my friends. Tango simply sat on the edge of the board and watched, making it easy for Aspen to navigate without risk of crashing into the water.

My crazy dog, however, was pacing. Probably my fault for giving him a pup cup early this morning—my pathetic attempt to remain number one when I knew damn well I was far down on the list.

He loved it here.

Would it be so crazy to . . . move home ?