I didn’t evenwantto find him a home. I wanted to keep him, but I knew that Wilder was right. There was no way in hell I could afford a dog. The best I could hope for was a new owner who would let me visit him sometimes.
“Cash?” Mr. Conrad said, reaching out and placing his hand over mine where I was gripping the plastic block tightly enough that the edges were digging into my palm.
“I just—I wish I could keep him,” I said, my voice catching. “But I know I can’t.”
Mr. Conrad hummed again, and I waited for him to explain that dogs were expensive—like I hadn’t already found that out—and that I had to be realistic about this. Except what he said was, “It’s okay to want things.”
“But we can’t keep him,” I mumbled.
“I know,” Mr. Conrad said. “But it’s still okay to want things. It’s okay to be upset too.”
I raised my head and stared at him. “It feels bad.”
“I know it does,” Mr. Conrad said, clipping together three smaller sections to make a big piece of wall. “Do you think it feelsbad because you like the dog, or because you see yourself in the dog?”
I knew what it felt like to be hurt and scared. It wasn’t that long ago that Chase and I were strays too, and we’d needed someone to rescue us.
I fiddled with a block. “Can it be both?”
Mr. Conrad smiled, his expression warm with understanding and sympathy. “It can absolutely be both, son.”
“Feels like,” I began hesitantly, and then had to stop and think carefully about what I was trying to say. It took a moment, but Mr. Conrad didn’t mind. He just sorted through the Lego blocks while I sorted through my thoughts. I drew a breath. “It feels like I’m breaking a promise I made.”
Mr. Conrad hummed. “I can see how it would. For the record, you know the dog would be happy with anyone who treated it with love and kindness.”
I nodded, even though it hurt to hear.
“But that doesn’t change how you feel,” Mr. Conrad said.
“I shouldn’t have promised,” I whispered. “Not even to myself.”
“I don’t agree,” Mr. Conrad said gently. “You’re allowed to have hopes and dreams, Cash, big or small. But a part of having hopes and dreams isn’t just celebrating when they work out, it’s managing your feelings when they don’t. And not letting the knowledge that you might fail stop you from trying in the future.”
I nodded and thought of my dirt bike and the house I lived in. I thought of my job and the guys who weren’t just my friends, they were my brothers. I thought of the audiobooks and podcasts that I played on my phone, and of buying Lucky Charms whenever I wanted them. Things had been bad when Chase and I ran away from home, but our lives were good now. Everything I had in my life, and maybe it didn’t look like a lot from theoutside, was more than I ever thought I’d get, but I’d hoped for it all the same.
When Grandma Jane had told me about the job at Sunny Fields, I’d thought I couldn’t take it because I had no way to get to Brodnax every day. The dirt bike had been nothing short of a miracle—if you could classify Grandma Jane’s husband never cleaning out his shed as a miracle. The bike had been tucked away under a tarp, just waiting for someone to fix it up, a project that Danny’s grandpa had never quite gotten around to. So when Grandma Jane had remembered the bike, Danny had asked one of the guys who used to work at Goose Run Gas, who was now a mechanic, to fix it up, and then Grandma Jane had helped Chase and me get our licenses. It almost felt like the universe had sent that bike just for us.
Sometimes there was a solution to a problem you thought was unfixable because someone else, or a bunch of someones, stepped up to solve it. And most people were good and would help you out if they knew you needed it.
I thought of Mason and how he’d agreed to look after the dog, even though he didn’t have to.
“Maybe I can find a way to afford the dog,” I whispered. “I can try, at least.”
I didn’t make great money at Sunny Fields, and I didn’t have a GED. And even if I did, I couldn’t imagine going for an interview to get a better-paying job.
I thought of the dog’s face, and his big brown eyes, and the way he’d been so scared when I’d grabbed him and rushed him to the vet. But he hadn’t bitten me, and he hadn’t tried to run. He’d trusted me to help him, even though he had no reason to.
So, what if Icouldfind a way to keep him? I could do odd jobs or pick up some yard work. Maybe I could get some hours at the bakery working in the kitchen, where I didn’t have to talkto people. There was always something going on around Goose Run if you justasked.
Which, okay, wasn’t my strong point. But I was getting better with talking. It scared the hell out of me, but so had stealing the dog in the first place, and I’d still done it. If I’d managed that to save him, then surely I could find a way to make this work. And if Mason was letting me work off the debt by helping out at the clinic, then maybe he’d do the same for other stuff the dog needed, like checkups and shots.
I just had toask.
Chase might call me an optimist because I thought it was sometimes worth taking a risk on people, even when they were strangers, but it wasn’t like I’d been wrong so far. So why not hope for one more thing?
I didn’t know exactly how I was going to make this happen, but I did know that to have any chance I was gonna have to talk to Mason—and talk properly, not just the five or six words we’d exchanged so far. But I thought that maybe I could manage it, if it meant I got to have a dog. And get Danny to agree, of course, but I didn’t think that was going to be an issue. Danny had a habit of taking in strays.
And even though I barely knew him, it felt like maybe Mason was someone I could feel safe talking to. Like, he was avet. He had to be a decent guy. And he seemed like he wouldn’t push or make a big deal out of it if I didn’t talk much. Someone who mainly worked with animals was probably fine with holding one-sided conversations, right?
