Valium & Vodka: Chapter One
Reid Travis rolled half-asleep into the parking lot of his apartment complex in a dated Chevrolet pickup truck just before five AM. Roads, cars, and buildings warped around him in his drunken haze. In the morning, he would admonish himself for...
In The Doghouse: Chapter One
Every day was a new start for Reid Travis. The sunny, mild, California mornings greeted him with easterly sunrises and fair weather to which he could complete his morning routine, which now no longer consisted of alcohol consumption before noontime...
Valium & Vodka: Chapter Two
Reid's decision to hire the Shiba Inu as Doghouse's newest team member had been a hasty one. He found the process of interviewing potential candidates as repellent as most of the candidates themselves. He wasn't a people person. In fact, the...
In The Doghouse: Final Chapter
_One month later..._ _"Not a day goes by that I don't think about it."_ _ _ _ Reid sat on the couch in Dr. Soto's office as relaxed as he could be, his arms outstretched over the back of the overstuffed leather sofa. He wet his lips. Sighed....
In The Doghouse: Chapter Seventeen
Reid had taken making every day a new day to a whole new level. He turned and stretched in bed as the morning sunlight crept diffused by sheer curtains into a strange bedroom, with a strange ceiling, and a rather odd-feeling bed, as in, it was not...
In The Doghouse: Chapter Twelve
When Veronica Gianotti walked in through the front doors of Doghouse Performance Engineering, she made the plain, commercial glass and steel doors look like the entrance to the Golden Globe Awards. An engine even sputtered to its death in the back -...
In The Doghouse: Chapter Eighteen
Reid learned the difference between a grocery store and the emergency room that day. You didn't worry about finding a good parking spot when there was an emergency. Reid swung that Mustang into an awkward stop on the edge of the drive where...
Valium & Vodka: Chapter Eight
Aiden just laughed when he heard of the previous night's short-lived encounter - a laugh that was simultaneously a pressure release valve for Reid. He'd met the lab for lunch that day, versus being picked up at the shop. Once was normal for...
In The Doghouse: Chapter Six
It had been four months since Blaine had nearly fainted from the reading on the drug store pregnancy test. She'd gone through no less than three more before an appointment with her OB/GYN confirmed that she was in fact pregnant. She was beginning to...
Valium & Vodka: Final Chapter
In the morning, it was water instead of beer. A handful of peanuts had become a handful of pills. Immunosuppressants. Anxiolytics. Anticonvulsants, benzodiazepines, painkillers, and blood thinners, just to name a few. They sat on his tongue like...
In The Doghouse: Chapter Eight
Reid stared at a blank wall in his house and figured that it would be a perfect spot for a fireplace, assuming that a fireplace would ever be needed for the seventy-degree Christmases known almost exclusively to Californians. While a fireplace was out...
In The Doghouse: Chapter Nine
Another four months had come and gone. Paul had receded into the depths of seclusion once more. After a tearful visit to the shop, he'd hugged his protégé and disappeared again, headed for the forests of Southern Wyoming. Erin had apologetically...