Chapter 6 Off Leash
SIX
OFF LEASH
DECLAN
I'd been running for forty minutes when I stopped at the coffee shop on the corner of Ashland and Division.
The place was small and cramped, surviving on regulars who knew exactly what they wanted and didn't need a menu to order it.
I pulled out my earbuds and let the bass line from some old Foo Fighters track fade into background noise while I waited in line.
The kid behind the counter knew my order without asking. Black coffee, large, nothing added. He had it ready by the time I reached the register.
“Rough morning?” he asked.
“Just a long one.”
“Yeah, well. Coffee helps.”
I paid and took the cup outside, letting the cold air hit my face while I drank the first sip. It was too hot and burned going down but I didn't care. I needed the heat and the bitterness and the routine of doing this same thing every Saturday morning like it meant nothing.
The run was supposed to clear my head. That was the whole point. Get up early, put on the same shoes I'd been wearing for three years, follow the same route through the same streets, and let my body take over while my brain shut the fuck up for an hour.
My brain wasn't cooperating.
I'd spent the previous evening trying to convince myself that yesterday at the pool didn't mean anything.
But I'd been lying awake at three in the morning staring at the ceiling and thinking about the way Troy had looked in the water, and that wasn't off-balance.
That was a problem I didn't know how to solve.
I finished half the coffee, tossed the rest in a trash can, and put my earbuds back in. I pushed harder than I needed to on the return stretch, letting my legs burn and my lungs work until the only thing I could focus on was the rhythm of my feet against pavement.
The route took me through a residential neighborhood just starting to wake up.
A few people were out walking dogs or grabbing newspapers from their front steps.
Cars sat cold in driveways with frost still on the windshields.
The sky was gray and heavy with the promise of snow that probably wouldn't come for another few hours.
I cut through Lincoln Park on the return stretch because it shaved off a few blocks and gave me a break from traffic. The paths were mostly clear, just a few dedicated runners and early morning dog walkers scattered through the open space.
That's when I saw him.
Troy was about fifty yards ahead, crouched near one of the benches with a dog climbing all over him.
A Labrador, young and badly behaved, shoving a tennis ball into Troy's hands while its tail whipped back and forth hard enough to throw off its own balance.
Troy was laughing, which was still enough of a rare enough thing that it stopped me cold.
A man stood nearby holding the leash. Around Troy's age, maybe a little older, dressed in running gear that looked expensive and barely used.
Attractive in a way that looked easy and effortless and completely unearned.
He was smiling too, saying words I couldn't catch from fifty yards away but clearly enjoying whatever was being said back to him.
The dog dropped the ball at Troy's feet. Troy threw it across the grass and the retriever took off like a shot. Troy stood up and wiped his hands on his jeans, still smiling, and said something to the stranger that made him laugh.
I stopped running.
I told myself I was just catching my breath. That I'd been pushing hard and needed a minute. But that was bullshit and I knew it.
I was watching Troy smile at a stranger in a public park and feeling anger rise hot and irrational in my chest like I had any right to it.
The dog came back with the ball and Troy threw it again.
The stranger said something and Troy responded, his body language open and relaxed in a way it never was around me.
No tension pulling at his shoulders. No defensive edge to the set of his jaw.
Just a man having a perfectly ordinary conversation with another man about a dog.
And I wanted to be the one standing there. Wanted that version of him turned on me instead of some random guy who happened to have a retriever and a free Saturday morning.
This wasn't residual discomfort from yesterday.
This was jealousy, immediate and territorial and completely without justification.
I had no claim on Troy. No right to care who he talked to or smiled at or threw tennis balls for.
He wasn't mine in any way that made what I was feeling anything other than a problem.
But logic didn't make the feeling go away. It just sat there in my chest, ugly and insistent, making it hard to breathe.
The dog came back and this time Troy caught it mid-jump, laughing as it tried to lick his face. The stranger moved closer to grab the leash and said something that made Troy grin, and I watched the whole exchange like I was watching it through glass from the wrong side.
Troy looked happy.
That landed harder than the jealousy. The knowledge that I was the person he kept his guard up around. That a stranger with a badly trained dog got the easy version while I got the one who turned everything into a fight and flinched away from anything that got too close.
Troy threw the ball one more time. Then he turned his head and saw me standing on the path like an idiot, pretending to stretch but obviously just standing there watching him.
The smile didn't disappear entirely. It just changed, the warmth in it cooling a few degrees as the walls came back up. The careful distance he kept around me resettled into place like armor he'd had long enough to wear without thinking.
That made everything worse.
He said something to the stranger and started walking over. The stranger glanced my way and gave a friendly wave that I returned out of reflex more than goodwill.
“Didn't know this route came with an audience,” Troy said when he reached me. His tone was dry. Not hostile yet, but pointed enough to sting.
“Wasn't looking for one. Just saw you from the path.”
“And decided standing there staring was the move.”
“I stopped to catch my breath.”
“Right.” He looked me over like he was assessing a suspect. “For the record, he owns a labrador. She's the one who's dangerous, not him.”
The stranger had caught up to the dog and was heading our way. Troy glanced back and the easy warmth returned just enough that I felt the absence of it when he turned back to me.
“Declan, this is Mark. Mark, this is Declan.” He paused a beat. “Mark's got a dog with better social skills than most people I know.”
“She's a sucker for anyone who'll throw the ball more than once,” Mark said with an uncomplicated smile. He offered his hand and I shook it because not doing so would've been rude in a way that was hard to explain. “You a runner too?”
“Most mornings.”
“Nice. I usually stick to the gym but Bailey needs the exercise more than I do.” He scratched the dog behind the ears. “You two know each other from the neighborhood?”
“He's my stepfather,” Troy said, without any particular inflection.
Something shifted in Mark's expression, a small recalibration, and I watched him decide not to ask a follow-up question.
He just smiled again and checked his watch.
“I should get going. Bailey's got a grooming appointment and she's going to make me pay for skipping it.” He looked at Troy. “See you around.”
“Maybe,” Troy said.
Mark headed off with the dog trotting beside him, and then it was just me and Troy in the middle of the park.
“You want to tell me what that was?” Troy asked.
“What what was?”
“That.” He gestured vaguely in my direction. “You looked like you were doing math about the man. He was walking a retriever on a Saturday morning. That's not a threat assessment situation.”
“I didn't look like anything.”
“You looked like he'd stolen your wallet.” Troy tilted his head slightly, watching me with the flat attention that meant he was already three steps ahead of where I wanted him to be. “Is this the safety concern thing again? Because we covered that yesterday.”
“I'm just saying you should be aware of your surroundings.”
“I am aware of my surroundings. I was standing in a public park in broad daylight throwing a ball for a labrador. If that's a security risk, I don't know what to tell you.”
“You don't know who he is.”
“I do now. His name's Mark, his dog's name is Bailey, she's getting a grooming appointment in an hour, and he usually goes to the gym.” Troy crossed his arms. “That's more than I know about most people I've worked with for years, so by your logic, I should be more worried about my actual colleagues.”
“That's not the same.”
“Then explain the difference, because your concern for my safety when I'm talking to someone in Lincoln Park doesn't track.” He studied me in a way that made my skin feel too tight. “What's your actual problem here, Declan?”
“There isn't one.”
“There's clearly one.”
“Just be careful,” I said, knowing how thin it sounded.
“You keep saying that.” He let the silence sit for a beat. “You don't get to stand here and be weird every time I have a normal five minutes with someone. That's not how this works.”
“I'm not being weird.”
“You're being something.” He looked at me steadily, and I could see him deciding how hard to push. “You've been off since yesterday. Since the pool. And now this.” He let that land and then, just slightly, backed off the edge of it. “Did I actually do something, or is this about you?”
“It's nothing. Drop it.”
“Every time you say drop it, you mean the opposite.”
“This time I mean it.”
He looked at me for another long moment, then exhaled through his nose. “Fine.”
We started walking without discussing it. I could feel him glancing over every few steps, still running calculations I couldn't see.
We passed a coffee cart on the corner and I stopped without thinking. “You want coffee?”
“I want an explanation, but I'll take the coffee.”
I ordered two and paid before he could argue about it. We stood there waiting in silence, both of us aware of the space between us and not closing it.
When the cups were ready I handed Troy his and we started walking again. The silence shifted slightly, less sharp but still carrying weight.
“You could've just walked over,” Troy said after we'd gone another block. “Instead of standing on the path like you were running surveillance.”
He was right. I should have just said hello like a normal person instead of hovering there while jealousy did something ugly to my chest.
“Morning,” I said.
It came out flat and a full five minutes late. Troy stared at me for a second.
“That's what you've got.”
“It's what I've got.”
“That's genuinely terrible.” But his mouth was doing the thing it did when he was trying not to find something funny. “Little late now.”
“Better late than never.”
“That's what people say when they've fucked up and want credit for eventually acknowledging it.”
“Sounds about right.”
He did smile at that, brief and real, and I felt the same irrational satisfaction I'd felt when I'd made him laugh in the pool. Which was its own kind of problem.
We walked the rest of the way home without talking much, just the occasional comment about the weather or the neighborhood or nothing in particular.
When we got back to the house, Troy headed inside first and I stayed on the porch for a minute with my coffee cooling in my hand, trying to sort through what had just happened.
I'd been jealous. That was the plain truth of it. Not because Troy belonged to me or because I had any right to what I was feeling. Just because I'd wanted something from him that I had no business wanting, and watching someone else get it without even trying had made something in me go sideways.
I'd wanted his smile. His ease. The version of himself he handed out to strangers without a second thought but kept locked away from me behind six years of distance and everything we hadn't said to each other.
That was the thing I couldn't fix with discipline or distance. It wasn't about controlling what I noticed. It was about the fact that I'd already noticed, and now I couldn't un-know the shape of it.
I finished the coffee and went inside.