Free A Scarred Soul: A Small Town Love Story (Safe Haven Book 2) by Erin Sloane Page A

others in the room. “Give us a minute, will you?”
    Vince felt like the bad kid in the classroom, and he rounded on Adam as soon as they were away from the office. “I’m not a fucking child.”
    “I’m not treating you like one, but you needed a breather and I’m following along to make sure you return to the office rather than climbing in your pickup and driving off. Okay?”
    “I’m fine.”
    “Bullshit. Now, go through your breathing routine and let me know when you’re back.”
    “And if I don’t?” Yep, now he was the child.
    “In case you hadn’t noticed, Lulah is sitting in that room, wishing and praying that this is all going to turn out fine.”
    “Which is precisely why I don’t need the pressure of this.”
    “Come on, Vince. There’s a lot riding on this for you, for Lulah. Ultimately, it’s taking pressure off you. Now, will you do the breathing thing before I call Marlo out here to take a stick to you?”
    Yeah, he could do it. He could do it for Gable, and for Lulah. As he breathed and made himself take note of his surroundings, his anxiety reduced. The dirty tide still sloshed at his inner shore, but he knew he’d make it through the next couple of hours.
    Mike had a ton of questions, and some of them felt pretty intrusive. At one stage Vince suggested they request his file from his counselor at the VA. The room went silent. “Honestly, I’d much prefer it to sitting here dredging all this up.” With insistence from Adam, Mike decided they had enough to go on and if any issues they hadn’t covered cropped up, they’d deal with them at the time.
    They shifted to the large exercise yard behind the quarantine area where they could train in private and Vince showed him the basic obedience exercises he and Calliope had worked on. Mike gave them some tips, and left them a bunch of homework. Vince watched while Mike walked away with Lulah to discuss a full training plan, his mood darkening as the pair disappeared in the direction of HQ. The other guy would win the girl; fair enough, because he had nothing to offer her.
    He called Calliope and decided to head over to Lulah’s barn. The restoration job had arrived, and if he started on the planning, he could forget about all this other stuff. He entered the barn, and inhaled its soft cool air.
    The wood for the carving for Gable’s wagon lay on the workbench, the design traced out and ready for his chisel. He cast a quick and critical eye across the drawings he’d finished the previous evening, but couldn’t gather enough enthusiasm to start on the work. When he sat in the armchair Lulah inhabited the night before, Calliope lowered herself to the floor at his feet.
    That was hell at the Dog Sanctuary. One-on-one with a therapist was bad enough, but he felt as though he was up against four of them today and the entire experience left him jittery. Each of them had different expectations of him. And now the fucking divorce papers. If Taryn could strike him from her life with a pen stroke, why couldn’t someone write away his pain?
    He didn’t know how he could live through the possibility of Gable being kept permanently from him.
    Still in the armchair, hours later, he watched as Lulah arrived on her bike at the cabin, and a short time after left in her car. His breath stuttered. An intense tingle rippled through his chest and arms, as if his skin contracted, wakening peripheral nerves, and relaxed. A palpable response to seeing her, and the fact that he felt something made everything loud, then very low, as if someone had jacked his volume switch.
    Having wanted to feel for so long it now played like a nasty trick, like something quenching and delicious on the other side of the razor-wire fence.
    Tonight was yoga night. Intuitively, Lulah seemed to understand that he wouldn’t be going with her as he often did. Either that, or she was so pissed at him she didn’t want him to wreck her calm.
    Sometimes he hated that yoga. Hated the