Page 78 of The Way We Fell

I pull her close, tightening my grip on her waist and burying my nose in her hair, inhaling deeply. Whatever tropical shampoo she uses smells delicious with that orange perfume—it’s bright but soft, and it’s uniquelyKaty. It’s a comfort just as much as it is a turn-on.

If I’m honest, that nightmare scared me too. It’s the first really bad one I’ve had for a while—the first time I’ve slept alone for a long time. And it’s the first time Katy has been there in the jeep. I woke up terrified, screaming, drenched in sweat, and I had to rush to the bathroom to empty my stomach before I could even take a breath and ground myself in my own home. And the one thing I wanted—the one thing, the one person I needed—was right there when I ran to her.

“I’ll have a look, Princess.” I kiss the top of her head. “He might have to come and live with you, though. You might have to lose a few of your seventeen copies of that one cowboy book.”

“Absolutely not. He can live in the garden. The cowboy stays.”

I wrap my palm around her neck, using my thumb to tilt her chin to meet my face. And then I swallow her laughter as I kiss her again.

“You’re in luck, actually, Mr Bevan,” Ruby says. She’s the lady I spoke to on the phone, the Hero Pups representative who met me at the door and is showing me around the training facility today. Katy would love this place, especially as it is today, full of dogs, but she has a shadowing session today that couldn’t be rescheduled. She made me promise to take as many pictures as I can, and to fill her in on every last detail.

Ruby pushes her glasses up onto her nose again. It looks like a nervous tic that seems to happen when she’s speaking to people she’s not familiar with. She’s done it five times already since we met, but not at all when speaking with her colleague before she greeted me. I only walked through the door three minutes ago.

“Some of our puppies have just finished a training class.” She unlocks a door using a key card and ushers me through. “If you’d like to meet them, that is.”

“Yeah, why not?” I bounce on the balls of my feet, waiting for Ruby to lock the door behind us and lead me down the corridor. We enter a large hall with a set of open bifold doors along one wall. Tables, chairs and podiums are set up both inside and outside, and puppies and their trainers mingle. It becomes clear quite quickly that these puppies aren’t the tiny furballs I pictured when Ruby saidpuppies, but actually just young dogs—almost a year and a half, according to Ruby’s brief introduction.

One dog in particular catches my eye: a pale blonde labrador, standing beside its trainer and looking around the room with liquid brown eyes. It’s the only dog that’s still, not interacting with other dogs or humans. I move in the dog’s direction without realising—some kind of cosmic pull—and Ruby follows me.

“This is Pupperoni.” She introduces me to the dog, and then to Julie, the tall, bird-like woman who is fostering and socialising him.

“May I?” I tip my head towards the dog and they both nod, so I reach down to offer my hand to Pupperoni. He immediately perks up, panting and licking my fingers excitedly before lying peacefully at my feet. Ruby and Julie share a look.

“Honestly—between us—I’ve had doubts about Pup,” Julie says quietly. The stacks of colourful bangles around her wrists jingle as she gestures. She reminds me of a fortune teller from a picture book, with a silk scarf woven through her greying blonde hair. “He’s well-behaved, incredibly smart, but he’s struggled a bit with some of the more advanced training. And he’s never done that before.” She nods towards the dog, comfortably on his belly at my feet and looking up at me with those liquid eyes. I pull at the legs of my jeans and squat to meet him.

“Hey, Pup,” I whisper. Slowly, I reach out a hand to rub between his ears, and he accepts, leaning into my touch with a quiet whine. “Bit of an underdog, huh? I can relate. You got this, little buddy.”

Above my head, Ruby and Julie hold a hushed conversation, but I shift to my knees beside Pup, whose eyes are fixed on me. When I shift again, sitting on the floor with my knees slightly bent, Pup shifts too, resting his head and his too-big front paws on my thigh.

I spend a little longer absent-mindedly rubbing the space between Pup’s ears before Ruby suggests we move outside. Once we’re outside, Julie produces a tennis ball from somewhere, and I toss it lightly. It’s a gentle, underhand throw that doesn’t send the ball too far—there are still several puppies milling around, and not a huge amount of open space. But Pup tracks it like a pro, rushing to it and snatching it out of the air before bringing it back with his tail wagging and a bright, puppy grin on his face.

I’ve never had a dog before. As much as I’ve always wanted the wife-house-dog kind of life, I’ve never really given it much serious thought, but this one is fucking cute. And Katy would fall in love with him in a heartbeat. For a fraction of a second, I’m taken aback by how important that is to me—that Katy and the dog get along. But then another stunning reminder slams into my chest, stealing my breath momentarily. Katy Keller is everything to me. Of course it matters to me. Becauseshematters to me.

Ruby and Julie take turns to explain the extent of Pup’s training so far—how he’s excelled at responding to commands and name recall, and how he’s always attentive and alert, and well-behaved both at home and in public spaces. He’s even taken a handful of small journeys on trains, and on a plane, too. But he hasn’t been able to really bond with anyone, and that’s the root of Julie’s concerns. The next stage will be to begin to recognise triggers and emotions, before he’s matched to a veteran, at which point he and his human will undergo further training together.

He’s a little undersized, still, and likely still has some growing to do, according to Ruby. She says he was the runt of his litter, not expected to survive his first twenty-four hours, but in spite of all she odds stacked against him, Pup thrived.

We play for a little longer, tossing the ball around, and then Pup chases me for a while until we’re both exhausted and Julie is ready to take Pup home. She and Ruby both hand me cards with phone numbers on them.

“Keep in touch, Mr Bevan,” Julie says, patting my hand as I take the card from her.

“Jay, please—call me Jay.”

“Jay. Pup likes you. And he hasn’t liked anyone so far. If we can get through the home stretch of his training… well. I think you might be just what he needs. And he might just be good for you, too. Take care.” Julie swishes away in her long skirt and beaded necklaces, leaving me with Ruby in a hall much emptier than it was when we entered it.

“You’re a lot lighter than when you arrived,” Ruby says quietly, leading me back to the lobby. “Your energy. You’d really benefit from one of our little heroes. You’re the perfect candidate.” Katy thinks so. Julie certainly seemed to think so, and evidently, Ruby agrees too. And even though he’s no longer in the room with us, I can’t get Pup’s face out of my mind, or the way the buzz in my brain seemed to quiet when his paws settled on my leg.

“What do I need to do?”

Half an hour later, I’ve filled out what feels like a hundred application forms. I’ve signed my life over to the home inspectors who Ruby assures me will contact me when they’re ready to match me with a puppy. They’ll come round to make sure my home is dog-friendly. Which it decidedly is not. It might be fine for a chihuahua, or some other tiny breed, but labradors aren’t small, and they’re energetic, too. My tiny studio won’t be enough.

Then again, I’ve hardly spent any time there lately. I’ve spent it all with Katy. Perhaps I’ve outgrown the tiny space I thought was perfect when it was only for me. Maybe now—with Katy in my life, and potentially a dog, too—it’s time to look for something bigger. Somethingmore.

There’s plenty of food for thought as I throw my car in gear and reverse out of the parking bay. My mind runs a hundred miles a minute as I drive back across the city. I’ve made this drive a hundred times. But this time, I’m followingtwopairs of deep brown eyes, leading me home.

Chapter forty-one

Katy

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