Chapter 2 Two Strays and Some Dogs
Two Strays and Some Dogs
Ryan Cooper
(Not attached to fucking anybody, not with fucking anyone, all fucking alone)
The mama dog had claimed my passenger seat like she’d been riding shotgun her whole life. She sat upright, wrapped in my jacket, watching me with eyes that said I’m trusting you, but I’m also judging you.
Fair enough. I was judging me too.
A truck full of puppies on Christmas Eve. I’d take it. Better than the alternative—going home to silence and pretending the quiet didn’t bother me.
The box of puppies was wedged on the floorboard, four tiny bodies huddled together, making sounds that were somewhere between squeaks and hiccups.
Every few seconds, one of them would let out a mewl that hit a frequency designed to bypass all rational thought and go straight to the protective instincts.
“I know,” I told them. “We’re going somewhere warm. Promise.”
The mama dog’s ears swiveled toward me. Still judging.
“I’m talking to puppies,” I muttered. “This is what my life has become.”
The windshield wipers were losing their battle against the snow. I'd turned the heat up as high as it would go, but the temperature outside was dropping fast, and the wind kept finding ways through the seams of the truck. The mama dog shivered despite my jacket.
Hard to believe that thirty minutes ago, I'd been in a room full of people, warm food, easy laughter. The kind of scene that looked like a Christmas card come to life.
The kind of scene where everyone had someone.
Beckett and Audra, still in that newly engaged glow that made everyone around them feel like they were intruding on something private.
Lachlan and Piper, juggling twins and stolen glances.
Then some of the old school Resting Warrior Ranch couples: Lucas and Evelyn; Liam and sweet, quiet Mara; Jude and Lena—if he didn’t divorce her after that story she told.
I was happy for them. Genuinely. Every single one of those guys had earned their happiness the hard way, and their women were the kind of people who made you believe in things like fate and second chances.
But it was hard not to notice I was the odd man out. The bachelor uncle at the family reunion, smiling at everyone else’s kids and going home to a refrigerator full of takeout containers.
The thought of her surfaced before I could stop it.
Mia.
The only person who’d ever made the holidays feel like something worth celebrating instead of just another day to get through.
But I’d destroyed that. Six years ago, I’d walked away. For her sake. Because it had been the only way to keep her safe.
The snow swirled against the windshield, and suddenly I wasn't seeing the road anymore. I was seeing string lights. A tiny apartment. Flour in Mia’s hair.
Our second Christmas together. Third year of dating. Her apartment had been the size of a shoebox—a studio in a building that had “character,” which was realtor-speak for “the heating is unreliable and the neighbors are loud.” But she’d made it magic.
String lights everywhere. Wrapped around the window frames, draped across the ceiling, outside on the fire escape that had probably taken more lives than it had saved, tangled in the tiny tree we’d picked out together from a lot that was more mud than pine needles.
The whole place glowed like something out of a movie, warm and soft and impossibly perfect.
She’d tried to make cookies. Tried being the operative word.
“They’re not burned,” she’d insisted, waving smoke away from the oven while the fire alarm screamed. “They’re... caramelized.”
“Caramelized implies sugar. These are carbon.”
“Watch it, buddy. You’re not allowed to critique my baking when you once microwaved a fork.”
“That was one time. And I was seven.”
“You were twenty-three.”
She’d had flour in her hair. A smudge of dough on her cheek. She was laughing so hard she had to brace herself against the counter, and I’d stood there watching her, thinking I’d never seen anything so beautiful in my entire life.
We’d exchanged gifts after the cookie disaster.
I’d given her a camera strap she’d been eyeing for months—nice leather, adjustable, the kind of thing she’d never buy for herself because she always put her equipment budget toward lenses and bodies instead of accessories.
When she’d opened it, she’d cried. Actually cried.
“You remembered,” she’d whispered.
“Of course I remembered. You mentioned it in August.”
“That was four months ago.”
“And?”
She’d kissed me then, tasting like the wine we’d been drinking and the burned cookies she’d insisted on trying anyway. Then she’d handed me a small wrapped package, watching my face as I opened it.
A leather journal. Simple, well-made, the kind of thing that would age well. Inside the front cover, she’d written: For all the things you can’t say out loud yet. I’ll be here when you’re ready. —M
She’d known. Even then, she’d known I was carrying things I couldn’t put into words. And instead of pushing, instead of demanding I open up before I was ready, she’d just... made space. Given me a place to put it all until I figured out how to share it with her.
I’d never written in that journal. It was still in a box somewhere in my apartment, buried under years of accumulated guilt.
We’d fallen asleep on her couch that night, some old Christmas movie playing on her ancient TV, her head on my chest, my arm around her shoulders. I’d looked down at her face—peaceful, trusting, completely unguarded—and thought: This. This is what I want forever.
Three months later, came the deployment that changed everything.
Six months after that, I was gone.
Did she ever think about me? Probably not. It had been six years. She’d moved on, I had no doubt.
I wouldn’t blame her if she hated me. I kind of hated me too.
One of the puppies let out a particularly plaintive squeak, snapping me back to the present. The mama dog’s head swung toward the box, then back to me. Are you going to do something about that?
“We’re almost—”
I stopped.
We weren’t almost anywhere.
The road had disappeared. Not figuratively—literally.
The world beyond my headlights was a solid wall of white, snow coming sideways, visibility reduced to approximately nothing.
I couldn’t see the shoulder. Couldn’t see the center line.
Couldn’t see anything except white-white-white in every direction.
“Shit.”
I started moving at a crawl, trying to get my bearings. This was officially a whiteout and I was still another five miles from home.
Normally would’ve been no big deal. But now five miles was 4.9 more miles than I was going to be able to make.
The mama dog whined.
“I know. I’m working on it.”
Options. I needed options. I could pull over and wait it out, but the temperature was still dropping, and a truck full of tiny puppies wasn’t going to survive a night in these conditions, even with the engine running.
Travis.
His place was only about a mile from here if I could stay on the road. The guy never left his house, which meant he’d definitely be home. He had heat, supplies, probably enough emergency gear to survive the apocalypse.
And he owed me twenty bucks from a poker game three months ago that he’d definitely thought I’d forgotten about. Fucking recluse computer genius needed to pay up, I didn’t care if he’d saved my ass during missions more times than I could count.
I turned the truck—carefully, so carefully—in what I hoped was the direction of Travis’s compound. The mama dog watched me with an expression that suggested she had serious doubts about my navigation skills.
“Trust me,” I told her.
The doubt intensified.
Ten minutes turned into twenty. The road curved when I didn’t expect it, forcing me to correct hard and sending the box of puppies sliding.
The mama dog barked—the first sound she’d made since we’d loaded up—and I reached down to steady the box while keeping one hand on the wheel and my eyes on the nothing ahead of me.
“Everyone’s fine. We’re fine. This is fine.”
No one in the truck believed me.
But then—finally—the gate materialized out of the white. Travis’s gate, with its subtle cameras and its electronic hum that most people never noticed. I’d never been so happy to see a paranoid security system in my life.
The gate swung open in front of me—my truck had a sensor which allowed me in, a huge honor when it came to Trav that I didn’t take lightly—and pulled up the drive to the house.
It looked almost normal from the outside—ranch-style, native stone, large windows.
Regular, run-of-the-mill, small town Montana house.
The kind of place that didn’t advertise the fact that it was basically a bunker with five times the living space than the outer shell suggested.
I parked, gathered the box of puppies, and coaxed the mama dog out of the passenger seat. She was reluctant to leave the warmth of the truck, but when I lifted the box, she followed. Her babies were in there. She wasn’t letting them out of her sight.
The video intercom by the front door flickered to life before I could press the button.
Travis’s face appeared on the screen. Black T-shirt, as usual. Hair hanging past his eyes. The kind of dark circles that suggested he’d been up for approximately seventy-two hours straight.
“Cooper.”
“Hey, Trav. Merry Christmas.”
A pause. His eyes dropped to the box in my arms.
“Why do you have puppies?”
“Long story. Short version: rescue mission, blizzard, your place was closer than mine.” I shifted my weight, the cold already seeping through my clothes. “Want to let me in, or should I just freeze to death on your porch? Your call.”
Another pause. Like he was actually considering the two options.
Then the door clicked open.
“Don’t track snow on my floors.”
“Merry Christmas to you too, buddy.”