King was there too, crouched beside his mum with her head in his lap, but my eyes went to Farrah.
She was utterly still, her lips inked with blue at the edges, crusted vomit at her chin and cheeks.
She wasn’t breathing.
Quickly, I shrugged off my jacket and went to my knees beside her body.
“King buddy, need you to take my phone out of my coat and call 911, okay?” I ordered him gently as I found Farrah’s thready pulse and silently thanked God.
He didn’t respond, but I heard the numbers being punched into the phone and then, “Hi, name’s King. My mum had an overdose, need you to send the ambulance.”
I grimaced as I used my sleeve to clear her mouth of vomit then tipped back her chin, pinched her nose and started to give her mouth-to-mouth.
At some point, I felt Harleigh Rose come to kneel beside me and place a soothing hand on my back, as if it was me that needed calming.
When the ambulance finally came, much quicker than I’d hoped because the neighbors had already called the cops, I stepped back from a comatose Farrah, collected an uncharacteristically subdued King and H.R. under my arm and watched the paramedics start to work on her.
“Where do we go now?” Harleigh Rose asked me quietly, her words harkening back to the song she’d chosen with eerie premonition in my truck.
I looked down into her face, in awe of her beauty given where she’d come from, what she’d experienced in this house of horrors, and I knew that no matter how strange it may seem, I’d do anything to protect her from further harm however immoral it may be.
I squeezed her shoulders as tears began to race down her cheeks and spoke before I’d even fully conceived of the idea, “You’re both coming home with me.”
When I woke up, Danner was gone, but his iPod lay on the pillow beside me, a sticky note affixed to the screen that read
I smiled into the pillow, tracing my finger over his small, all-capital script, remembering the note he’d left me after my dad went to prison, remembering the many, many playlists we’d made each other over the years. I unlocked the iPod and opened the morning playlist, playing the first song there.
“Born to be Wild” blasted through the room.
I tipped my head back and laughed, loving that he could make me do so even after the horrible experience of the night before. Energized by my soundtrack, I slipped out of bed and danced into the bathroom, bobbing my head as I appropriated his toothbrush and washed my face.
By the time I hit the kitchen ZZ Top’s “La Grange” was pumping out the surround system. I shimmied over to the coffee, kissed the Nespresso machine and slotted the mug Danner had left out for me under the spigot.
It read “feel safe at night, sleep with a cop.”
I laughed knowing that he probably got it as a gag gift one Christmas and had never used it until he pulled it out for me that morning.
I was on my third cup of delicious, life-giving coffee reading the Globe & Mail newspaper and sitting at the island when the door opened, the alarm went off and my boys appeared.
Hero went right to me, jumping up to plant his paws on my thigh, but my eyes were fused to Danner.
There was a Canucks baseball cap on his head, shading the strong, sweat-slicked planes of his face and until that moment, I’d never known how sexy a cap could be. My eyes slid like one of the trickles of sweat down between his naked pectorals, keenly defined and dusted lightly in brown hair, to the neat boxes of muscles staked like a ladder down his stomach leading to the hairier expanse of skin above his groin, framed by ridges of muscle that formed a deliriously sexy V. He was wearing grey sweatpants, hung low on his narrow hips to almost indecent levels, his boxers peeking just slightly above that, his feet sockless in black Nike sneakers.
I had a near-instantaneous orgasm at the sight of him.
Unaware of my lustful paralysis, Danner entered the code to stop the alarm, tossed his tee on the coffee table and headed my way with a small, sexy grin. He didn’t stop until he literally hit my side, displacing Hero, his hands coming to either side of my face so he could run his thumbs over my cheeks and look deep into my eyes. Whatever he seemed to read there pleased me, because his smile widened a second before he slanted it over my mouth and kissed me.
I melted the second his mouth hit mine, his mouth cool and wet, his tongue silken against mine as he tilted my head to deepen the kiss and pressed his sweaty chest even tighter against my body. He ate my moan as I gave it to him then hummed his approval before breaking away from me.