Page 93 of Puppy Love

It wasn’t Sophie waking up early to start the coffeepot. It wasn’t the sound of his father thumping around in irritable insomnia downstairs. It wasn’t the snuffling, shuffling sounds of Bubbles alerting him to low blood sugar. And despite his puppy’s small size, her bladder was like a camel’s hump—it was rare that she needed to go out before his usual wake-up time around six.

In fact…

“Bubbles?” he called, extending his hand in an arc all around him. When he hit nothing but the twisted sheets, he sat up. “Bubbles, where are you?”

All around him, there was nothing but silence.Emptysilence, the kind that could only exist inside an ancient farmhouse where he was literally the only remaining Parks in residence. His father had finished packing up and moved out yesterday while Harrison had been at the Department of Natural Resources. He’d returned home to find a set of keys sitting on the kitchen counter…and that was it.

No forwarding address. No parting gift. Not even a brief,Thanks for sticking around for twenty-two years, Harrison, but I’m outta here. Enjoy what’s left of your sad, solitary life.

He swung his legs off the side of the bed and flicked on the bedside lamp, but the sudden illumination didn’t make his puppy magically appear. Neither did calling her name a few times—increasingly anxious with each recitation.

“I don’t smell smoke,” he said, mostly to comfort himself. “And I don’t see any flames. So where the devil did you go?”

Given that puppy’s love of the underside of beds, his next move was to check each one: his own functional wood frame, the ruffled skirt of his parent’s once-happy matrimonial bed, the cot-like twin that his father had moved to after his mom left. As much as it would have soothed his soul to find her quivering underneath one of them, he found nothing but the inevitable dust bunnies.

“This isn’t funny,” he called, his worry increasing with each dark corner and cupboard that turned up empty. “And if you’re playing a game, I don’t think I like it very much.”

In fact, he kind of hated it. He’d once thought that waking up in a hospital bed with no memory of how he got there was the worst way to greet the day, but he’d been wrong. Having no control over his health was frustrating and difficult, yes, but at least he knew the cause—knew there was hope at the end of the IV bag.

To arise in an empty house, with Sophie off somewhere enjoying her life without him in it and Bubbles God knows where, was worse. It was as though he had handed them both a half of his heart, and now the whole thing was out there walking around, vulnerable and exposed.

Which was the only explanation he could offer for why his chest felt so hollow as he reached the kitchen to find the back door swung wide open. The faulty latch had struck once again, making the cracked linoleum feel like ice under his bare feet.

“This stupid fucking house!” he said, running to the open doorway and scanning the dimming darkness for any sign of Bubbles. He couldn’t see the puppy in the distance, but there were a few tiny footprints in the mud at the bottom of the steps that didn’t bode well for this adventure’s end. Given the size and scope of the land around the house, she could have gone anywhere. “My stupid fucking father!”

For twenty-two years, that man had frozen himself and his heart here. For twenty-two years, he refused to leave the only piece of his old life he had left. But hehadleft—and without so much as a backward glance at Harrison in the rearview mirror.

Just like his mom. Just like Sophie. And now, it seemed, just like Bubbles.

“No.”

Harrison wasn’t sure where the sudden resolution came from. Saying no had always come easy to him, but never like this. He normally said no to friendship and opportunity, to happiness and love. He said no to anything that threatened to shake him out of his comfortable misery.

This time, however, he was saying no to being left behind.

“I’m not letting you go without a fight,” he said to the empty kitchen. Which was just as well, because he wasn’t surewhohe was talking to. “You don’t get to walk away without saying goodbye. You’re a part of me now.”

Despite the earliness—or lateness—of the hour, he grabbed his keys off the hook and shoved his feet into a pair of work boots by the back door. He had no idea where his puppy had gone or why, but he knew exactly who he could rely on to help find her.

She was determined and strong. She was resolute and insistent.

She was his whole fucking world, and it was about goddamn time he did something about it.

* * *

“She’s gone.”

Sophie awoke to find an unshaven, unkempt, and frantic man standing at the foot of her bed.

“I looked all over the house and the yard, but her footsteps stopped a few feet from the back door and I can’t find any other trace of her.”

She sat up, aware, as she did, that the flimsy camisole she’d worn to bed left little to the imagination. But her nipples peeking through the thin silk fabric seemed less important than the fact that Harrison Parks had somehow broken into her house.

“Harrison? What are you doing here? And how did you get in?”

“I don’t know what the timeline for lost puppies is, but I know that for people, the first twenty-four hours are the most vital.”

“Lost puppies?” she echoed, clarity beginning to wipe away some of her grogginess.