His mouth fell open as he spotted the puppy in my arms.
“You didn’t.”
“I did,” I said, beaming at how he rushed to take the dog from me.
“How? When?”
“I saw him on a rescue site a few days ago. His pregnant mom was abandoned on the side of the road. All his siblingsand his momfound homes. But this little guy wasn’t so lucky. Until I found him.”
“He’s perfect,” Colter said, pressing his head to the side of the puppy’s. “I love him.”
“Why do I feel like there is a but hanging in the air?”
“Well,” he said, wincing. “Your birthday is coming up.”
“Uh-oh,” I said, sensing where this was going. “What’d you do?”
“Remember when you fell in love with that ridiculous dog we saw in L.A.?”
“The Borzoi,” I repeated, thinking of her long face.
“Well, you’ll never guess whatIfound on a rescue site…”
“You didn’t.”
“I did. She is only four weeks old. But she will be coming home the week of your birthday.”
“Two puppies at once.”
I knew the risk: “littermate syndrome,” where, if you get two dogs too closely together, they can suddenly snap one day and violently attack each other. That said, I also knew the workarounds for that. And had the time to do all the proper individual training.
“Not just that,” Colter said. “Twohounds.”
He wasn’t wrong. Bassets, obviously, were scent hounds. But Borzoi were sight hounds. And hounds were notoriously stubborn, independent, and hard to train. But they could also be total love bugs.
“This is going to be crazy,” I agreed. “But if anyone can pull it off, it’s us.”
“Got that right,” he agreed, wrapping an arm around me and pulling me into his side. “Thank you.”
“Thank you too,” I said. But I didn’t just mean for the puppy that would be joining us. I meant… for everything. For the life we built. For the happiness we’d known. For all the amazing things to come. Things I knew I never would have had without him. “For everything.”
“You saved my life. I’m pretty sure that makes us even.”
Taking that shot had been the best decision I’d ever made.
But when we told people our love story over the years, we went ahead and left out the whole… murder thing.
XX
