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“No, surely not. People wouldn’t be so cruel, would they?” He lifted the lid of his bin and a puppy with dark brown eyes and a forlorn expression stared up at us. Brett lifted the dog out and the little pup clung to my mate’s chest.
“I can’t keep him here. There’s a no-pet rule.”
He’d gone from finding the little guy to “I’m keeping him but not in my house” in less than ten seconds. But I was a softie when it came to babies. Human, shifter, or animal.
“He can live with me.” I’d have to convince someone at the community center to look after him during the day. That was doable.
We didn’t have any puppy food, so I dashed to the closest pet store before it closed while Brett gave the puppy a bath because he was a stink-a-roo having been in the wheeled bin. Ewww!
When I arrived back, he was freshly washed, and he devoured the soft food I brought.
My mate grinned as we sat on the floor while the puppy ate. “Meet the newest member of our family: Chocolate.”
Chapter 15
Brett
There’s something I want to talk about tonight.
Anders’ words from this morning played in my head over and over again. Nothing about the way he said them had indicated there was a problem. But leave it to me to have my brain formulate a thousand bad things that it could be. I’m fun like that.
I’d been trying to sleep so that I could be awake when he got home and failing miserably. Working opposite shifts wasn’t easy, but most of the time, I slept when he worked, so it meshed. Not today. Today, sleep evaded me like a boss.
Giving up, I went out back, took my hooves, and ran and ran and ran and ran and ran. If I couldn’t get out of my own head, I was gonna make myself so tired that it kicked me out on its own. At least that was the theory.
Two hours later, I finally accomplished the task. I came back inside, crawled under the covers, and fell sound asleep, waking up only when my alarm went off.
We were having dinner at Anders’ house—nothing special or fancy, nothing homemade even. He was grabbing sandwiches from the coffee shop, which didn’t sound like a great place to get sandwiches but was actually by far the best location to do so in the county.
I quickly showered and changed, not wanting to be late, still worried about what it was that he wanted to talk to me about. Could I have handled it like a grown-up and asked him straight out? Absolutely. But did I? No. Every time I thought it might be a good idea, fifty reasons not to reared their ugly heads.
My timing was perfect. I pulled in right behind him, my mate not even fully out of his car when I arrived.
“I’ll help you with that,” I offered.
He hadn’t purchased a sandwich. He had a bag that looked like it was more designed for catering clients than it was for an average person picking up dinner.
“I wasn’t sure what you wanted,” he shrugged, “so I got everything I thought had potential.”
“We’re gonna be eating sandwiches for a week.” Which I didn’t mind.
We went inside, and I unpacked all the food onto the counter while he took care of the sweet pup. As I did, I looked at all the names scribbled across them. None of them made sense. Instead of calling a turkey sandwich a turkey sandwich or a BLT a BLT, they had fancy names for them based on different local landmarks. Like, yeah, the river’s cool and all, but a sandwich named after it? What did that even mean?
“Let’s play guess the sandwich.” He held it up. “Winner gets first choice of dessert.” The way he looked me up and down told me he meant the fun kind, too.
“Game on. This one is tuna—because rivers have flowing water and water is where fish live.”
“I guess chicken, a play on chicken of the sea.”
We were both wrong. It was roast beef, and neither of us could find any logic in that whatsoever.
We had a blast, with me ending up with a grilled mushroom work of magic and my mate with an Italian.
“Maybe take the rest to work?” He stacked the last one in the fridge.
“Yeah. That sounds good.” I closed my eyes. “You said you wanted to talk about something.”
When I opened them again, his eyes were opened wide in recognition.
