Page 25 of Beware of Dog

“Cass!” Jamie’s voice was shrill with panic. “What are you doing? You can’t just—oh my God—you can’t—” When Cass turned around, she saw that Jamie had halted in the middle of the sidewalk and bent forward to brace her hands on her knees, head hanging, breath wheezing asthmatically.

“Aw, Jesus,” Cass muttered, adjusted the strap of her bag, and went back to her side. “It’s okay. Everything’s fine.” She rubbed at the center of Jamie’s back, and felt the wracking tremors even through the thickness of her coat. “He’s in there and we’re out here.”

“You can’t just—can’t just yell at him like that!”

“Of course I can. He deserves it. He deserves worse than that, but I’ll settle for yelling while Melissa puts her case together.”

“Case…?” Jamie shook her head, hair swinging toward the cobblestones. “Oh God, oh God, oh God.”

They were blocking the flow of foot traffic, and earned wary, curious, and some angry looks from the students who had to veer around them.

“Sorry, sorry, yes, go around, thank you,” Cass said, waving at a pair of too-curious stragglers and one concerned older woman who looked on the verge of asking if Jamie was alright. “We’re fine, thank you.”

From the sea of students, a man emerged, walking straight toward them, immediately distinguishable from the artists around him. It was the way he held himself, his sure stride, that captured her attention at first; this was a man who knew where he was going and who wasn’t afraid to throw some elbows to get there. Familiar, in that sense, comforting; he walked the way a Dog walked, carving a straight path through the world not caring who noticed or took umbrage.

Come to think of it, he was dressed like a Dog, too. Boots, jeans, broken-down leather jacket. A wallet chain even winked at his hip with each purposeful stride.

Cass blamed preoccupation with Jamie, and the unlikely clashing of her two worlds, for her slow uptake. When she finally looked at the man’s face, recognition hit her with a one-two punch: the soothing balm of relief, and a sharp spike of something hot and excited in the pit of her stomach that she quickly, though unsuccessfully tried to quash.

“Shep.”

He didnotlook happy to see her.

He didn’t slow, but walked straight up to her, hooked a big hand in the crook of her elbow, and attempted to steer her offthe sidewalk. “Aword, Miss Green?” His voice had that growling undertone that meant he was grinding his back teeth.

Cass dug in her feet and tried to get her arm loose. A futile effort, but she didn’t try all that hard, really; Shep didn’t release her, but he at least halted, brows knitted together, mouth pressed into a hard frown.

“The hell are you doing? Come over here, I need to talk to you.”

Jamie chose that moment to lift her head, and her eyes bugged when she saw Shep. “Oh my God.” She clapped her hand over her mouth, and then sucked in a breath, and Cass knew she was preparing to scream.

“Hold on, hold on, it’s okay.” She held up her free hand. “He’s a friend. Shep’s a friend, okay? He’s not”—she shot him a dark look, and he finally let go of her arm—“trying to kidnap me.”

“Is this the friend you took to the hospital?” Shep asked.

“This is my roommate, Jamie,” Cass said, with a meaningful eyebrow lift.

“Who you took to the hospital?With Dixon,” the last he added with his own eyebrow action.

Shit.

Jamie said, in a high, thready voice, “Yourfriend? But he’s, like,old.”

Shep’s face scrunched up with gratifying (cute) disgust. “Thanks.”

“Okay,” Cass said, and laid a hand on each of them, “let’s just…” She nodded toward a pavilion down a short crosswalk that offered benches, vending machines, and unnecessary shade.

Shep bought a Coke, and managed to hand it to Jamie in the unfriendliest way possible. “Drink that before you go into shock,” he ordered, and Jamie stared at him, stricken and trembling.

“He really is a friend,” Cass said. “I swear. He just looks like an asshole.”

Then she rounded on Shep and shoved him. He stood still, unimpressed, brow cocked, just to prove that she couldn’t physically move him, then let her shoo him over to the very edge of the pavilion.

He propped a shoulder against one of the wooden support pillars, and looked so incongruous against the scholastic backdrop she wanted to grin. She frowned, instead, and instead of saying that she was glad to see him, which she was, she always was, she said, “What are you doing here?”

His grin was wry, jaw working sideways as he stared her down. “Come on, kid. You call me from the hospital and I’m not supposed to check up on you?”

Like yesterday afternoon over the phone, she was struck full-force by his phrasing. Of course he worried about her, of course he would check on her. It left her insides clenching, and it took her a beat to regather her ticked-off composure.

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