Interrupted

Lainey POV I closed the bedroom door, crossed the room, and climbed onto Travis's lap. He was sitting on the edge of the bed with his shirt already off. His hands went to my hips. I put my arms around his neck and made myself stay right there, in that room, with him. Then something outside howled. It wasn't a dog down the street. It was right under the window, long and raw and so loud that I felt it in my teeth. Every hair on my arms stood up. I jerked back. "What was that?" "Nothing. Come here." "Travis, that was not nothing." "It's the woods, Lane. Things howl." He pulled me down against him and put his mouth on my neck. "Come here." I let him. I tipped my head back and closed my eyes, and when he found the spot under my ear, I moaned for him. We used to be good at this. At seventeen and nineteen and twenty-two, we couldn't keep our hands off each other. That hadn't gone anywhere. It had only gotten buried under a hard year. We could get back to it. I had put on black lace and stood in front of a television to prove it. I was not going to think about why I needed to prove it today. His hand slid up under the lace. Something crashed in the backyard. It was metal, and a lot of it. It sounded like both of our trash cans going over at once, followed by a long, rolling clatter of bottles. I was off his lap before the last one stopped. "Are you kidding me?" Travis said to the ceiling. "Something is out there." "It's a raccoon." "That was not a raccoon." He followed me down the stairs, grumbling, doing up his jeans. I got to the kitchen first, but he was the one who reached the back door and pulled the curtain aside. He went completely still. "Holy s**t," he whispered. "Lane. There's a big-ass bear out there." "What?" I pushed in next to him and looked. The cans were on their sides by the shed, with garbage spread across the grass in the moonlight. In the middle of it, something huge and black was climbing to its feet. It shook itself. It took one step toward the house and its front leg buckled. I knew those shoulders. I knew that coat. "That's not a bear," I said. "That's a dog." "That is not a dog." "It is. And he's hurt." I reached past him for the knob. Travis caught my wrist. "No. Lane, are you crazy?" "It's okay. I've already met him." "You've what?" "A couple of weeks ago. He came out of the woods on your first night at work. He's a stray. He's harmless." "You were out there with that thing? By yourself?" He stared at me. "And you didn't tell me?" "You didn't ask." It came out before I could stop it. I watched it land, and I watched him decide not to pick it up. "That animal could take your arm off." "He sits when I tell him to." "I'm not going out there." "Then don't." I had never said anything like that to him. For a second neither of us seemed to know what to do with it. Then the dog whimpered, high and thin, and I pulled my wrist free and opened the door. "Lainey!" I went down the back steps in bare feet, a thong, and about four square inches of lace. The grass was cold and wet. The air raised goosebumps all the way up my legs. It occurred to me that I should have grabbed a jacket, and then that I should have grabbed anything at all. He saw me coming and stopped. "Hey," I said, low and easy, the way I'd talked to him the first time. "Hey, big guy. It's me. What did you do?" He limped toward me. He was holding his front paw up off the ground and making the most pitiful noise I had ever heard out of an animal that size. I dropped to my knees in the grass, and he sat down in front of me and laid that paw in my hands like he was handing me a letter. "Okay. Let me see. Easy." I went over all of it, the way I had watched the techs do it a thousand times. I checked the pads, and between the toes, and each nail. I felt up the leg, over the wrist and the elbow, all the way to his shoulder. I pressed, gently, and watched his face. I didn't find anything. There was no blood and no swelling. There was no heat in the joint. There wasn't so much as a thorn. "I don't see anything, buddy." He whimpered again and pushed his whole head into my chest. "I know. I know it hurts." I put my arms around his neck. His coat was thick and warm, and he was shaking. "You scared me to death, you know that? What were you even doing in the garbage?" "Lane." Travis was on the top step with the door half shut in front of him like a shield. "Get away from it. Come inside." "He's hurt. I'm not leaving him out here." "It's a wild animal!" "He's a dog, Travis. Look at him." The dog turned his head and looked at Travis. I don't know what Travis saw. I only saw him take a step back. "You know what? Screw this." He threw up a hand. "You want to sit in the yard half naked with that thing, go ahead. I'm going to bed." The screen door slapped shut. A second later, the kitchen light went out. I knelt there in the wet grass, in lingerie I had bought for a man who had just walked away from it, with two hundred pounds of dog in my lap. The whimpering had stopped. It had stopped the second the door closed.