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She laughed. “Liked? Don’t you mean you still like it?” Her laughter fell away as she asked, “You’re not going to give her back, are you?”
He gave the other side of the chew toy to Atlas so he could take over. “She’s not my dog.”
Heather made a face. “I know your niece-to-be will probably be disappointed, but she only had her a couple of days. It’s incredible the way the two of you have bonded.” She pinned him with a serious look. “Cuddles is your dog, Zach.”
As he washed his hands at the kitchen sink, he reflected on the fact that two weeks ago he’d been a bachelor with nothing bigger to worry about than where he was going to drink his next beer.
“Two weeks. I was going to watch her, keep her fed, take her on a few walks, and then hand her back.” He figured he should have felt grumpier about it, and made himself say, “This wasn’t how it was supposed to work out.”
“Things don’t always work out the way they’re supposed to.”
He knew that firsthand. His father dying so young shouldn’t have been in the cards for his family. But it had happened anyway.
Heather looked really serious. The same way she’d looked in the shower when he’d thought she was regretting loving him.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” she said softly.
His gut twisted. She wasn’t going to leave, was she? She hadn’t decided it was a big mistake after all?
But when she held out a hand for him to take, he gave silent thanks. If she’d been planning to tell him she’d changed her mind about the two of them, she would have kept her distance.
He pulled her closer before threading his hands into her hair and leaning his forehead against hers. “You can tell me anything.”
“I lied to you,” she whispered before lifting her eyes to meet his. “I didn’t get the scars on my arms in an accident. I made them myself. With razor blades.”
Just the thought of anything hurting Heather tore up Zach’s insides. But knowing she’d done it herself? “Why would you hurt yourself like that?”
“After I found out about my father, I was still keeping it together in school, pretending with my mother, but every time he came home from a trip I found myself locked in my room. Almost like I was trying to bleed out the pain. Trying to control something. And to find a way to distract myself from all the anger.”
Zach had to reach for her hands, had to press kisses to the soft skin of her pulse, along the tendons and muscles on her forearms. He’d heard about kids cutting themselves, but he’d never known anyone who did it.
At least, he’d thought he didn’t.
“You don’t have any new scars, do you?”
“No.” She shook her head, almost smiling at him as she said, “I’m sure you would have found them by now if I did. There was a guidance counselor at school who could tell something was wrong. We all had to take one of those vocation tests and she suggested I should try working with animals. So instead of going home to cut myself that day when my father was coming home from a trip, I went to the local animal shelter.”
“That’s why you do so much for them,” he said in a low voice as he now realized what she’d been through. And how brave she’d been to come out on the other side so strong. Braver than he’d ever been. “Those dogs and cats in that shelter helped you the way you’ve always helped them, didn’t they?”
Finally, a tear fell. The first he’d ever seen her cry.
“I never trusted anyone with the truth about my scars before. I never thought I could.” Her mouth wobbled at the corners as she tried to smile. And failed. “Until you.” She shook her head, half laughing as she said, “I still can’t believe it ended up being you.”
“Thank you for telling me. For trusting me.”
“I don’t know why I’m still crying,” she said as her tears fell one after the other. “Especially when telling you has made me feel so much better, so much lighter than I’ve been in a long, long time.”
He wished he could come clean about his own demons, wished he had half the guts Heather did. But after twenty-three years of holding the darkness deep inside, he just didn’t see how sharing his fears would do anything but upset her. He also knew there was nothing he could say to take away her scars, or to change the man her father was.
Fortunately, he had a couple of backup reinforcements that came naturally equipped to comfort the woman he loved.
“Cuddles, Atlas, come!”
Three pounds of fur and bone and teeth flew into his arms. He handed the puppy to Heather while Atlas leaned his big head on her thighs. Zach put his arms around her and the two dogs to let her tears fall on all of them.
And like the family they’d become so quickly, the three of them loved her tears away with the kind of slobbery kisses that only a couple of dogs—and a man who’d been likened to one many, many times—could.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Heather had never been so busy with dogs and work...and Zach. She wasn’t even coming close to getting enough sleep, not with a sinfully gorgeous man in her bed, or her in his. But the rest she did get, when his body was wrapped around hers, or when she was using his rock-hard muscles as a pillow, was better than a full night of sleep without him had ever been.
And every day he surprised her. Not just with laughter. But with more love than she could have ever imagined would be hers.
