Page 71 of Shake the Habit

“I feel it, too,” he said. “For a while, I’ve thought that…there’s something wrong. I don’t know what it is, not exactly, but I do feel it. This is my house, though, and I’m not going to run away.”

“I want to run way, exactly that. Please?” I asked, and he didn’t argue. Sir rode with him in the truck, and every time I looked back at them in my mirrors, the dog was draped against his side.

We were both quiet that night, but we went through our normal routine. It was very nice, I thought, to have a routine. Caleb and I walked Sir and had dinner, then we got ready for bed and read together. We’d just finishedPersuasion, so I had picked a different book.

“Hamlet?” Caleb asked.

“It’s about ghosts, isn’t it?”

“Uh, partially.” But he didn’t open it as I settled next to him on his bed. After reading, another part of the routine was that we slept separately, so I would go back to my own room. “Are you sure that you don’t mind the two of us like this?” he asked.

“Like this?” I gestured at the bed.

“I mean how we’re living together. We’re roommates,” he modified.

“I like living with you.” I leaned forward and kissed him.

“I don’t want to put pressure on you,” he told me. “I don’t want you to feel like you owe me.”

“I do,” I stated. “I owe you for letting me stay in this amazing house and for helping me take care of the problem with Sir…what did you do?” I asked, because his knuckles had risen again.

He put his hand on my shoulder instead. “The attorney worked it out. She represented our interests and Sir’s.” The dog’s tail thumped the comforter. “It’s resolved.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that the paperwork about his bloodline and everything else is in her possession and that guy won’t make any more claims of ownership.”

“How much did you have to pay him?” I asked.

“What should the limit have been? I couldn’t let you worry and I wouldn’t let him try to take Sir. I’ll do what I can to protectboth of you, always. This wasn’t anything in comparison to what you’ve given to me.”

“What have we given to you?”

“I don’t know how to phrase it.” He thought and then said, “I think the best word is joy. Maybe contentment. All of that.”

Now the dog picked up his head and threw himself over onto Caleb, and I did the same. We were both so crazy about him. “The best day of my life was last Christmas when I blew out my tire,” I said. “I found Sir and you found me.”

“Do you mean that?”

“Of course I do!” I exclaimed. “And you looked up my address because you were worried about me. What if you hadn’t done that? We might never have seen each other, ever again.”

“Uh, I wasn’t that worried.”

“You came to find me because you thought that Sir was a mean stray. You aren’t,” I assured our dog.

“I wanted to see you again,” Caleb said. “Yes, I wanted to make sure that things were all right with the stray you took home, but I also wanted to see you. I thought you were so beautiful and you had…I guess it’s that you had so much spark. I sparked right back to you, and I spent the whole night planning how I could convince you that I wasn’t a murderer or worse.”

“I would never have thought that!”

“You did think it, which was smart. But I didn’t want anything except to see you again and talk to you. I wanted to get to know you more.”

“And that was lucky for me.”

“It was the best decision I ever made,” he told me. “Then I hired Marc.”

“Because of me?” I asked incredulously.

“I also needed to work on the house.” Then he shrugged. “Yes, because of you. Because of you, I’m not the same person anymore. I get a sensation kind of like I’m floating, like my feet aren’t even touching the ground. I only have to think about you and I feel that way.”

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