Kentucky Home by Sarah Title

ridiculous thing she’d ever heard in her life, surely. But there was something about it that was so absurd, negotiating gratitude, keeping a tally of whose turn it was to do a good deed. She laughed—just a little one, but stopped when she saw Michael was serious.
    â€œFine, if you’re going to be moody about it, I’ll just go.” He gathered his notebooks, shaking off her protests and her restraining hand. “You’re welcome for the pizza,” he shot back at her as he slammed the door.
    Mal sat in the midst of papers and textbooks, staring dumbly at the door. They were just supposed to eat pizza, study, then make out. How had she screwed this up so badly? How had it ended with her studying the Civil War alone?
    It didn’t, really; Michael had taken her notebook.
    Mal shook herself out of her reverie. She had put up with an absurd amount of emotional manipulation from Michael, and she wasn’t going to do it again. Still, she couldn’t keep herself from thinking about Michael and what he must be doing back in Maryland. He was in that big new house all alone—she wondered if he’d kept the decorator she had hired, if he was going to stick with the “touch of fabulous” she had been talked into for the master bathroom. She hoped, although she knew it was foolish, that he had forgotten about her, or at least moved on. Bunny Ashton-Pierce seemed poised to help him move on.
    She tried not to spend too much time thinking about the improbably named Bunny, she of the fake boobs (Mal’s were bigger, if not perkier) and the bottle blond hair done right (Mal was no competition there). Bunny of the spray tans and the charity auctions. The last time she had seen Bunny Ashton-Pierce was at a Botox party where she only shut up about how the laugh lines were her husband’s fault—he was always such a cutup—to get an injection in the corner of her mouth. Mal didn’t quite remember Dr. Ashton-Pierce being a cutup. More of a handsy perv with an apparent fondness for natural breasts, but she’d sat silently in the corner, hoping no one would notice her since she was not too fond of needles and, frankly, had earned every damn laugh line on her face. Not that there were many. More of a fine suggestion of a laugh line to come.
    She didn’t have as many wrinkles around her eyes as, say, Keith did. But it was different for a man. Keith looked rugged with wrinkles, just like he would probably look distinguished with gray hair. Jerk.
    Anyway, Keith was a bully, just like Michael. Oh, maybe he wasn’t as outright manipulative as Michael was, and he didn’t seem to have Michael’s temper, but the way he patronized her, tested her with crappy (literally!) chores, kept Peanut away without telling her. The last thing she needed to do was put up with another bully.
    Mal stopped just short of the fence she was about to run into. She was pissed off, mostly at Keith for treating her like she was an idiot. No, mostly at herself for allowing herself to be treated like an idiot. Anyway, maybe she was overreacting to Keith—the last time he’d seen her with the dog, she had practically thrown up in his lap.
    No. She shook her head, determined. The minute she started rationalizing his behavior, that was the minute she lost control of her life again. She wasn’t going to let another man have that power over her, not since she had finally taken these few tentative steps away from Michael. Besides, what was Keith to her? Nothing. He was her fake future brother-in-law, just some dumb hick farmer with big hands and a nice butt.
    Dammit.
    She stopped suddenly at the sound of Peanut’s high-pitched bark. Mal had practically walked right into him, but he was on the other side of the fence.
    She froze.
    Then she looked at Peanut, his wet nose poking between the wide boards. He got down low, digging with his one front paw, leaning over to his side, trying to