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“Yeah. But pretty accurate,” I said.
I leaned across the console and smelled Rhys’s freshly washed hair and kissed his cheek.
“I wouldn’t have thought to get a dog. I don’t really think to get anything except, like, groceries. Well. Not even groceries, often. But now that you brought it up, it seems good?”
“I just didn’t mean to push you into it.”
“You push me into everything. It’s good. I need it. Otherwise nothing would ever happen. I’d still be sitting on that barstool two years ago as you walked out the door, wondering who that hot, smiley guy who bought me a drink was.”
Rhys tipped his forehead forward to rest against mine.
“Rhys, I like it. I . . . I love it. Knowing that you want me enough to push for things. That you care enough that you want me to go places with you. I . . . you saw that in me the first time we met. Yeah?”
He nodded, eyes soft and bright.
“I didn’t notice it at first. The way you’d ask me to do such randomly specific things. But you made it so all I had to say was yes or no. Which was about the only thing I could handle then. It was just ‘Do I want to be with Rhys or not?’ And the answer was always yes.”
“Fuck, baby,” Rhys murmured, and he tipped my chin up and kissed me, his mouth sweet and warm. “That makes me so happy.”
“It’s still always yes. I still always wanna be with you.” The warmth of my flush had spread to my neck.
Rhys hauled me over the console and hugged me tight. “I always want to be with you, Matty.” His eyes darkened, and his voice got low and intense. “I would drag you with me on tour, if you’d go. I’d go explore with you during the day, then set you up in a seat for the show, then take you back to the hotel after and fuck you until you screamed my name louder than the audience.”
I swallowed hard, and he pressed a kiss to the hot skin of my throat, hand playing there loosely. My heart was pounding. I wanted him to talk like that forever.
“I would do it,” I murmured.
“Really?”
I nodded. Work had given me a life, and I hated to miss it. But Rhys was my life. I didn’t want him to leave without me again.
“Maybe next time you can get some time off work,” he said. He kissed the corner of my mouth, both of us trying to calm down. “I really wanna jerk you off in our truck in the parking lot of this shelter, so I can smell you all day.” My eyelids fluttered at the thought. “But if we end up getting a dog, I don’t think that should be part of the story,” he muttered, and I started cracking up.
“Why, do you think the dog would be embarrassed when it had to tell all the other dogs at the park?”
Rhys snorted, but helped me back over the console.
“Oh shit,” I said, “are you one of those people who thinks dogs understand English? Or, wait—will you not fuck me if the dog is watching? Because we are not getting a dog if you’re gonna be all ‘Fido can’t see me naked.’”
He laughed and shook his head. “Get outta the truck, smartass.”
He locked the truck, then pressed me against it. He tipped my chin up. “Nothing will ever stop me from fucking you.” He kissed me deeply. “I would fuck you with a hundred dogs watching.” He kissed me again.
“That’s—fuck—really weird.”
He leaned in and kissed me on the cheek, breathing in my smell for a minute. We both had to adjust ourselves before we went inside.
“We’ll just look,” I said, suddenly nervous. “Okay?”
“Sure.” Rhys took my hand, and the woman at the front desk pointed us in the right direction.
It was like walking a gauntlet of dogs, every size, breed, and personality. Were they consciously waiting to be adopted? Did they long for homes and yards and people to love them? Did they know that was a thing they could have? Did they know when they weren’t picked?
There was a lump in my throat as we walked past their cages. It seemed so unfair. Weren’t there places they could all live? Big farms where they could run around, or hospital courtyards where people who needed something to cheer them up could spend time with them?
“Oh my God, babe.” Rhys was crouched in a cage holding a wriggly puppy with fur the same golden color as his hair. It was the cutest fucking thing I’d ever seen. The puppy sniffed at Rhys’s chin and tried to lick his shoulder, then sneezed.
“It’s allergic to you.”
He grinned at me, stroking its ears and holding it like a baby. My stomach flipped at the sight of them, but I kept walking.
