The puppy didn’t seem to mind its lack of a name. It scrambled up Alice’s chest and shoved its entire face against her cheek, tail going like a tiny propeller, and Alice caught it with both hands and held it up to look at it. The puppy stared back at her with black button eyes, tongue hanging out. Alice’s expression went soft in a way that still made Greta’s chest ache.
“Any name ideas yet?”
Alice tucked the dog against her chest and shook her head.
“You’ll think of something. It took me a week to name Atlas.”
Summoned by the sound of his name, her dog appeared, circling the table twice before folding himself under her seat with a theatrical groan. His jaw was healing cleanly—Lila had confirmed it last week—and his new titanium tooth caught the last of the afternoon light when he yawned.
She reached down and found the warm velvet of his ear.
Good boy. Best boy.
“He looks like a Bond villain with that tooth,” Maggie said and ripped a roll in half, offering it to Atlas under the table as she settled onto the bench.
She watched her dog scarf it down. “He absolutely does, and he’s been insufferable about it. Keeps showing it off.”
“He does not show it off.”
“He yawns directly at people, Maggie. He aims it.”
Maggie laughed, the sound bright and easy, and Anson looked over from where he stood with Hatch at the far end of the table. Just looked. The way he always looked at her—steady and quiet and with everything he had.
“Your man is staring at you again.” Naomi appeared with two bottles of soda and set one in front of Greta without being asked.
Maggie glanced over at him, and her expression went all gooey.
“Ugh, I don’t look at Owen like that, do I?”
“You absolutely do.” Greta laughed and took a sip of her drink.
Naomi knocked her shoulder. “You’re one to talk. You get heart eyes when Bear looks at you.”
She searched for him in the crowd, expecting to find him near River. Instead, River had joined in on the water fight, and Bear had wandered away from the group, down the creek’s edge.
Why was he?—
She started to stand, but then saw Logan with him.
Logan had his hands shoved in the front pocket of his hoodie, his shoulders hunched, head bent. Bear was talking. Greta couldn’t hear a word of it from here, but she could read the careful set of his body — not stiff, not controlled the way he got when he was managing himself. Just open. Patient.
She sat back down slowly.
“Heart eyes,” Naomi said.
“Shut up.”
Alice made a small sound beside her that might have been a laugh.
Logan turned and threw his arms around his father, fast and hard. He buried his face in Bear’s shoulder.
Bear’s arms came around him without hesitation, one hand at the back of Logan’s head, the other spanning his shoulders, and they stood like that at the creek’s edge with King circling once and then sitting beside them in the long grass.
Naomi took her soda bottle and nodded toward them. “Go. You know you want to.”
Alice waved her off with one hand, the other still keeping the puppy anchored against her chest.
Greta went.
