“It’s okay. We’ll find her. Where have you looked so far?”
“All the streets around here.” Vann’s standing in the doorway, coffee in each hand. “We knocked on doors where Charlie knew the people who lived there, but no one had seen her.”
“Do you think she might have gone to the park?” I say. It’s a bit farther from here, but we’ve been there more often lately.
“Let’s go look,” Mason says. “We can take my truck.”
“You go ahead,” Vann says, handing me my coffee. My hands shake so badly I can barely hold onto it.
“What are you going to do?” I ask.
“I’m going to post her picture in some community groups on social media. Maybe print off a few posters to hang at the shop and the park. I’ll follow you guys if you don’t find her quickly.”
I swallow. Putting up missing-dog posters seems so dire, but it’s been a few hours and she hasn’t come back yet.
We drive to the park in relative silence.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“For what?”
“For this. I should have locked the door. This isn’t how I wanted to see you again. We should be at my place getting naked. I have this jockstrap I think you’d like.”
He finds my hand with his while he keeps the other on the steering wheel. “We’ll do that later. Trust me. I definitely want to see the jock. But right now, let’s find your dog.”
We walk the park for a long time. I’m underdressed and shivering once the sun goes down, but I won’t turn back, even when Mason says it’s too dark to find her.
And we don’t. She’s out there somewhere, and it’s my fault for not being more careful.
Vann calls to say he’s hung posters around town and a few on the college campus. If she gets to the campus with no one spotting her, I’ll have to start training her for secret agent missions or something, because it would be quite the feat, but the point is she really could be anywhere.
I nearly start to cry when Mason pulls us up in front of my place and she isn’t sitting on the front porch. Somehow, I thought she would be, like she’d decided she’d had enough of her game and was now waiting for someone to let her in and feed her.
But she’s not there. A dog is a long-term commitment, and I couldn’t even keep her safe for a year. Just like I couldn’t be the partner Gavin wanted.
“Hey.” Mason’s hand is on my shoulder as we walk through the front door, and his voice in my ear is firm. “Stop.”
“What?”
“You’re spiraling. Thinking all the terrible things. I can hear it from here.”
“How can I not?”
He takes my hand and pulls me beside him on the couch. We should be having hot, passionate sex, and instead I can’t stop wallowing.
“She’s a well-fed dog with a collar. She’s got a microchip. People will know someone is looking for her.”
“But huskies are expensive, someone might—”
He kisses me, tugging me more firmly against him.
“We’ll find her tomorrow. I promise, okay?”
He can’t make those promises, but he’s asked me over and over to trust him, and I do, in every other aspect, so I do my best to find some trust here too.
I sleep terribly. I keep having dreams where someone finds Athena, but they want thousands of dollars to give her back. Or I give up and get another dog, and then she shows up on the porch, along with six other doggy friends, and I have such a dilemma because I can’t keep eight dogs. But every time I roll over and punch my pillow back down, Mason’s there, drawing me along his body, kissing my shoulder, telling me to go back to sleep. It helps a little. I’d be a total wreck without him, in so many ways.
I must fall asleep sometime, because a while later, I’m woken by the sound of someone knocking at my door. For a minute, I’m confused, because I’m warm and cozy and nestled up against Mason’s solid frame, and how dare anyone disturb me from this perfect, peaceful moment.
