Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
avery
House With No Mirrors – Sasha Alex Sloan
“Hey, Mama, how are you doing today?” I say in the sweetest baby voice I can muster as I walk up to Silver’s kennel.
Her puppies are sleeping in the most adorable pile.
They just turned three weeks old and are the cutest set of puppies to come through here—not that I’m biased because they’re hers or anything.
She gets up and comes to the door, her whole body moving with her tail when she hears my voice. The brightest smile takes over my face when I see her. I check her log and note she already ate and had a walk today.
We had two new intakes that had to be isolated for potential parvo—the poor things were brought in yesterday after being found on the side of the road, and the vet assumes they’re littermates.
I had to take them to the emergency clinic because our on-call doctor couldn’t get here today.
The puppies are staying overnight and hopefully can be picked up in a few days to be introduced to some of the younger puppies once they’re cleared.
“You got a walk today. Look at you. You’re gaining so much weight, big girl,” I praise her, giving her pets as she dances around me.
“Do I get that kind of greeting as well?” a male voice asks behind me.
I turn to see Grayson standing there, watching me with a soft smile on his face. He looks to Silver, and his eyes warm even further. Silver runs to the kennel door, eager to greet a new friend, her tail whipping against the chain fence.
“If you’re as cute as her, sure,” I tease, trying to clean up some of the bedding she destroyed as Grayson lets himself into the kennel. He volunteers here a couple times a month when his schedule isn’t too packed and he has more free time. He’s familiar here, and most of the workers know him.
“Well then, damn. There’s no way I’m as cute as this one,” he replies, sitting down and letting Silver attack him with kisses.
The sight warms my heart at how easily she takes to him.
Silver loves humans, but she’s more wary of men, giving them a more tentative approach.
Yet she so easily climbs into Grayson’s lap.
“What’s up, Gray?” I ask as I sit down across from him, next to the puppies and plop a couple in my lap, trying to get all the extra serotonin I can before tonight.
“I just wanted to come by and check on you. I know the party is tonight, and I wanted to see where your head was,” he remarks, petting Silver and looking up at me to gauge my reaction. “And I also was thinking about maybe adopting a dog,” he adds, as if it’s an afterthought.
“Really?!” I wasn’t sure if you still were since you never brought it up again,” I exclaim, wanting to jump for joy but not willing to move the puppy pile that has gathered in my lap.
“Yeah, it’s been a little too quiet over at my place. I think it could use some chaos.” Bashfulness enters his voice as he continues to love on Silver.
“Did you want to take a look around? We can do meet-and-greets, and you can pick someone up today if you want. I don’t need to do a home visit, obviously, and I know the kind of man you are.”
“Actually, I think I want to take her.” He looks down at Silver, my presence completely irrelevant as she moons over him. She alternates between being in his lap and attacking his face with kisses.
“She needs to stay here until the puppies are at least eight weeks old, so she has about five weeks left. Is that okay?” I ask as I lay the puppies back down and start to get up. The pile of paperwork on my desk is not getting any smaller the longer I sit here.
“Yeah, that’s fine, as long as you wouldn’t mind watching her when I have to leave for away games. I know this isn’t an ideal time to get a dog, but I don’t know… Feels right.”
“Of course I will. She’ll have sleepovers with Auntie Avery and Auntie Morgan, won’t she?” I coo at her, giving her one last bit of love before locking the kennel and straightening up beside Grayson.
“Great. Then yeah, take me to the paperwork,” he replies happily. “Now, don’t think I didn’t catch that you ignored my question about how you’re doing.”
He shoulder-bumps me as we walk side by side. The nudge trips me up a little, and I laugh.
“Ugh, you’re annoyingly perceptive,” I remark. “I’m okay. Nervous, mostly.”
“You know you don’t have to go. Kane would understand if it was too much for you,” he answers softly. He grips my elbow and nudges me to face him, then lets go, and I let my arm hang limply by my side.
The hallway empties as we get closer to my desk. The kennels behind us are mostly silent as the two of us linger in it.
“I can’t just not show up for him, Gray. I know he needs me.”
I wring my hands together, the anxiety creeping up on me. The feelings rise all too fast at the sincerity in Grayson’s gentle tone.
“Of course he needs you, Ave. He’s been desperately in love with you since I’ve known you both.
I don’t think I’ve seen two people more right for each other than you two.
I know you can get past what happened.” His words are dangerously close to things I haven’t let myself start to think about lately.
“I’m sure we could, but I’m not even sure he wants to,” I rasp, my voice almost a whisper in the quiet. I’m too scared to talk any louder, as if the universe might hear me and try to keep me from what I want most.
“What do you mean?” Grayson asks, sheer confusion lining his features as he crosses his arms over his chest and peers at me.
“It’s just that you didn’t see him in the last few weeks.
He wasn’t him, and he wouldn’t talk to me.
I was invisible to him. He pulled away, and no matter how hard I tried to pull him back, he somehow got further from me until I felt like the rope tied itself around my neck and I couldn’t breathe.
” I sniffle, my vision turning hazy with the unshed tears brimming in my eyes.
“I don’t know why he did that, but I know it isn’t because he doesn’t love you anymore. You know Kane doesn’t talk to anyone, but I think you should force him to talk you. Stop taking no for an answer and demand it,” he challenges as he crosses his arms over his chest.
“I can’t.” Exhaustion clings to me as I wipe my eyes to clear the haze.
“What if he doesn’t want me to? What if he decided, just like them, that I’m not worth his time?
I can’t bear to lose him. Even if I already have in some way, if he says those words, it’s final, and I have no idea how I would ever recover from that,” I finish with a sob.
Grayson closes the distance and pulls me into a hug. I wrap my arms around him and let myself lose it. The tears come faster than my breath can until I’m sobbing into his shirt.
After a few moments, I finally calm myself down enough to pull away slightly and wince at the wet marks on his shirt.
“Sorry,” I apologize as I wipe the evidence of my crying fit from my face.
“Don’t apologize, Ave. That’s what I’m here for. That’s what we’re all here for. We’re your friends, and you need to let us be there for you,” he remarks, clearing one more tear that escaped my eye.
“I’ll work on it,” I agree with a small smile.
“Good,” he says. “And look. I know I haven’t been friends with you guys as long as the others, but I would never doubt for a second that you’re everything Kane could ever want.”
“What makes you say that?” I muse, folding my arms across my chest and taking a few breaths to clear all the emotion from my voice.
“Because he looks at you as if the world begins and ends with you. From the day I met him, he hasn’t looked at anyone or anything the way he does with you.
” He remarks softly, keeping eye contact with me and letting what he says sink in.
“You guys will be okay. I know it. I’m more certain about you than I am about the sun rising tomorrow. You and Kane are inevitable.”
The poetry comes out of him as if he’s telling a tale of two stars on their path to each other.
“Thank you,” I say as a small kernel of hope catches in my chest, a seed planted in the root of my heart, waiting to be watered by actions. “Come on, let’s go finish up that paperwork and get you a dog.” I smile and hold out my arm for him.
He ropes his arm through mine, and we walk off to my desk together, lighter about everything for the first time in weeks.
Everything that could go wrong has up to this point today.
We’ve had an abnormally high number of intakes for this time of year, and our shelter cages are starting to overflow.
On top of that, the number of volunteers getting everything done has diminished.
So, I’ve been here late every night this week, which usually would be what exhausts me.
Instead, a certain golden, brown-eyed man has been a near-constant ghost haunting my every thought.
I feel as if I’ve barely slept in the four days since the bar. The look of him—black shirt stretched taut over his biceps and the subtle flex of his arm every time he dried a damn cup—had me unable to focus on little else.
Until the bomb dropped about his parents’ party and I saw the look on his face—the look of a little boy still wanting his parents. I knew then that I couldn’t let him go by himself. Even if Grayson hadn’t been the one to say it, I would have offered myself.
On top of stressing and trying to prepare myself for every outcome that may happen today, I raided Morgan’s closet for something to wear.
We did a whole fashion show last night since I knew I would have no time to stop home and get ready, settling on a long black dress, leaving my shoulders bare in an off-the-shoulder moment with my curves wrapped in velvet.
Once I put it on, Morgan refused to allow me to try anything else because Kane will “eat his heart out when he sees you in that dress.” And I had to admit, she was right.
It made me feel confident in my skin, which is usually only achieved by a giant T-shirt.