“Leaving Los Alamos? Or the shelter?”
He shrugged, a roll of muscle under the wet jacket. “All of it. The place, the job, the bullshit that comes with caring about anything.”
I sipped my coffee. It was hot and bitter and perfect. “Sometimes. But then what? It’d just be different bullshit somewhere else.”
He nodded, jaw flexing. “My mom used to say there are only two kinds of people in the world. The ones who try to outrun their past, and the ones who marry it.”
“Which are you?” I asked.
He traced the tattoo on his forearm, an old compass, the lines faded and blurred at the edges. “I think I’m still trying to decide.”
I watched him, his hands, the way he looked at the world, and then away from it. “For what it’s worth, I’m glad you stayed. Even if it sucks.”
He looked up, eyes so blue they almost glowed under the kitchen light. “It does suck.”
We both smiled, the joke landing softer than it should have.
The rain had slowed outside, the sound of it turning from warzone to white noise. In the quiet, I could hear the other apartments—someone laughing in the stairwell, the jangle of keys, a muffledTV.
Dean set his mug on the table, then looked around the room. His gaze snagged on the wall of animal photos. “They all yours?” he asked.
“Some of them. Some were just passing through.”
He nodded, then pointed at a yellow lab with a missing ear. “She looks familiar.”
“That’s Tasha. She was the shelter’s official mascot for a year, then bit the mayor’s kid and had to be adopted out of town.”
He smiled, this time for real. “She had a good run.”
I leaned back in the chair, letting the tension slide off my spine. “You wanna shower? Or sleep? Or just sit?”
He didn’t answer at first. Just stared at his hands, the coffee, the space between us. “If I go home, it’s just me and the mess.”
“You can stay as long as you want,” I said, and meant it.
He nodded, once. “Thanks, Em.”
We didn’t talk after that. Just drank the rest of the coffee, and let the night fill the apartment with all the things we couldn’t say.
The dog tags clicked, steady as a heartbeat, until the coffee ran out and the rain finally stopped.
***
The apartment always felt bigger at night, with the city’s noise filtered down to a dull hush by the storm and the cinderblock walls. I left the empty coffee mugs on the table, just so my hands would have something to do. Dean watched me from the couch, the towel around his neck now just a damp noose of terry cloth. He hadn’t said a word in ten minutes, but the tension in his shoulders had gone from breaking-point to just barely holding steady.
I sat down next to him, not close enough to touch. “You want to talk about it?” I said, instantly regretting the phrasing.
He shook his head, almost a shiver. “Not much to say. She’s gone.”
There was nothing I could say to that, so I tried again. “You had people at the funeral. Most don’t.”
He looked at me, eyes tired but direct. “Club takes care of its own. Doesn’t mean it’s family.”
I nodded, biting at a cuticle. “Better than nothing.”
A minute passed, both of us staring at the stack of library books on the table. The one on top had a chewed cover—last week’s failed foster, a hound with separation anxiety.
Dean’s gaze flicked to the wall of animal photos. “You got any family?” he asked. The question wasn’t casual; it was surgical.
