Hell, even I had to have a muzzle on him so he didn’t bite my ass when we were working.
He was aggressive, didn’t give a single fuck if he did anything, and honestly was on the verge of flunking out of even my program.
The sad thing was, the next step was euthanasia. Because if they couldn’t be helped on my end, the US government wouldn’t find the time on theirs.
I was the last resort.
And I didn’t want that life for Al.
I wanted him to be able to live a happy, full rest of his life with green grass under his paws and no bombs going off beside him.
The bad thing was, Al was a Golden Labrador Retriever. You wouldn’t think that Al would be as aggressive as he was.
But he was. And it made me sick to think about the long road ahead of him.
I’d given Al a good four months now of constant one-on-one attention. I’d tried everything that I could think of to help him, and there wasn’t a single thing extra that I could do to ease him over this hurdle.
“I’m going to take this muzzle off of you, Al,” I told the dog. “But I swear to God. If you lunge for me again, I’m going to be pissed.”
The dog surprisingly stayed exactly where he was, allowing me to take the muzzle off.
Which, honestly, was a surprise. The last few times I’d done this, he’d whipped his head around and tried to take my arm off.
After I got him bedded down, I did my usual of getting my shower in, combing my overly long hair—I really needed to cut it, yesterday—and getting a couple of slices of avocado toast before heading out the door.
I then did a U-turn to go back inside and grab my cut.
I was the world’s worst at remembering it.
Once upon a time, when Lynn came to Bruno and me with this idea of starting a motorcycle club to help victims of human trafficking, I’d thought that the cover story of an MC was a stupid idea.
I mean, I loved riding my motorcycle. I loved being alone with the wind in my hair and not being tied down anywhere.
But I hadn’t realized just what it would mean to have a club of brothers always at my back until I’d come to rely on them.
Like right now, I was headed down the road to Zach’s place where he could look at the wound on my hand. The wound that Al had given me the moment that I’d opened his kennel this morning and allowed him outside.
I winced when I looked at my hand, knowing without a shadow of a doubt that it was going to require stitches.
I had numerous scars on my body, but the ones on my hands from working with these dogs were by far the most known when it came to me.
Gritting my teeth, I pulled an old bandana out of my saddlebags and headed to Zach’s.
When I arrived, it was to find a bright pink car pulling up behind me.
I didn’t stop to spare the person a glance, mostly because I could hear the quiet giggles of a little girl that I hadn’t heard in quite some time.
Two months ago, Zakelina had been shot by her father. He’d shot her in the side of the face, and the bullet had gone through one side of her jaw and had come out the other side of her mouth, luckily only requiring one surgery to repair the broken jaw and another involving plastic surgery on the entrance and exit wounds.
Just last week, she’d been released from the hospital to home health nurses that would help her get back on track to being a little girl again.
And hearing that little girl giggle was enough to make my heart fuckin’ race.
I didn’t usually do girls. Or pink. Or anything that had to do with kids under the age of twelve.
But that little girl had a special place in all of our hearts now and hearing her giggle was the highlight of my goddamn day.
Heading inside, I left the door open for the home health nurse that’d pulled in behind me—you couldn’t mistake their bright, hot pink cars—and headed for the giggling.
I found the giggler in the room with a movie on the screen, and Zach on one side of her, with a sleeping Crockett on the other.
My eyes took everything in, and I walked to the little girl and lightly tugged on a stray curl that I could see had escaped her ponytail.
“Hey, Rotten,” I said. “How are you today?”
Zakelina smiled, showing off her pearly whites.
“Hi, Larry,” she said through slightly clenched teeth. “How are you?”
I held up my hand. “I need to borrow your pillow. I have a boo boo.”
Zach grunted and got up just as there was a hesitant ‘hello?’ from the door I’d left open.
Zach growled, stalking toward the door, and I let him, bending down over the couch to poke Crockett awake.
She blinked at me, eyes furrowing in a cuteness overload. “You better go save the poor home health nurse before he gets another one fired.”
Crockett jolted up so fast that she stumbled.
Zakelina giggled this time at Crockett, but Crockett wasn’t laughing as she darted toward the front door where I could hear Zach starting in on the Spanish inquisition.
See, Zach was very much hard-headed, and since everything that had gone down with Zakelina, and his own wife, he’d become a lot more suspicious of everyone.
In the process, he’d run two other home health agencies off due to his over-protectiveness.
With the two of them gone, I took the couch next to Zakelina.
“What are you watching?” I asked curiously.
Zakelina leaned her head against my chest, and I curled my arm around her carefully, still cautious of her fragility
“Moana,” she answered. “I’ve never seen this one. Daddy wouldn’t let us.”
Her words, though clear, still came through clenched teeth.
She’d had her jaw wired shut in the hospital, and just a few days ago, she’d had the wires removed.
The only thing was, she was still getting used to not having it wired shut. That, and apparently it still pained her to use, so she tended to take the easy way out and not open her mouth all that wide if she could help it.
Which was where the home health nurses came in, helping her get to the point where she could use her jaw like she was supposed to.
Though, the ones that had been fired weren’t the nurses themselves, but the certified occupational therapists.
They’d made her cry due to the pain she was in as she was forced to use muscles she hadn’t been needing to use in a while.
And let’s just say, Zach did not like that.
Granted, neither did Crockett nor me for that matter, but something had happened to Zach. An over-protectiveness that blanketed everybody he knew and loved.
Hell, even to some certain extent, his club brothers.
But with Crockett in there helping deal with the new chick, I got to have me some Zakelina time.
At least, until Zakelina had to get to work a few minutes later, that was.
“Lina,” Crockett called. “It’s time to work with Ms. Catori.”
The unusual name—I was the king of unusual names—had me glancing up and staring straight into a pair of brown eyes that were breathtaking.
Zakelina slowly moved out of my arms and off the couch, heading toward where Crockett was holding her hand out for her.
But my eyes were all for the brown-eyed beauty that was wearing hot pink scrubs and dirty black shoes.
“Zakelina, you remember me, don’t you?” Brown eyes asked.
That’s when I realized that she’d broken eye contact when my eyes had started to scan her body.