Epilogue #4
In that time, we did all sorts of things.
Puppy classes. General training. Working with “problem” dogs for both individuals and local shelters (that part, being at no charge).
And, yes, we did some very careful work with personal protection animals.
We’d started with Stas and Czar’s Rotties.
And we’d done five other dogs since then.
One for an actual celebrity, which had been fun—seeing them walking around our little nowhere town, getting gawked at and papped by the locals.
“Alright, you need to get going if you’re going to meet the transport,” Emma said, taking the puppy’s leash from me.
We all took turns taking the service dogs home so no one trainer got too attached to them. And so they didn’t get too attached to us. It was Emma’s night. Because I had to drive out of Shady Valley to pick up a little present for my husband.
Husband.
God.
That still sounded weird.
And we’d been married over a year.
Admittedly, it wasn’t a step I’d been overly concerned about taking. In my mind, we were happy and committed. Why did we have to bring the law into it? But when he got down on his knee with that ring box in his hand, I have to admit, some part of me melted like freaking butter.
It wasn’t about the contracts.
It was about the symbol.
The proof on my hand that said this man chose me and would keep choosing me. Every single day. For the rest of our lives.
I liked that.
And I liked that he had my staked claim on his hand too. Because it hadn’t escaped me how many women in town drooled over him. And they needed to know he belonged to me.
It wasn’t that I doubted Colter’s loyalty. After what he’d been through, there wasn’t anyone on the planet I trusted to be faithful to me more than him.
I just wanted the women to know to find their own gift-basket-making men. Good luck, I got the only one.
The wedding had been small and private. I hadn’t worn a dress. He hadn’t worn a suit. Our dogs, however, had been dressed to the nines.
“Don’t forget to grab a leash and a stuffy,” Emma called as I turned to run after checking the time.
I did just that, then jumped into my giant SUV.
I still had my bike.
Colter and I liked going for rides.
But for daily practicality, I needed my SUV. I was always carting around our dogs or someone else’s dogs.
Including today.
Sugar, Mack, and Molly were at home with Colter. And he thought I was working all day with the service puppies.
He had no idea I was going to pick up a surprise for him.
Because of the nature of my work, my social media was full of dogs. Dog daycares. Dog spas. Dog trainers. Dog enrichment programs. And, yes, dog rescues.
I’d just been scrolling mindlessly a few nights ago when I saw it. Him.
A rescue organization that brought up dogs from the South had posted a group of dogs that didn’t have a foster or home yet, and were going to be left behind in the overcrowded shelter to an unknown fate if they didn’t have anyone show interest so they could travel.
He was a twelve-week-old, long-eared, wrinkled, tri-colored, purebred Basset Hound. Just like the dog Colter had loved when he was young.
It was fate.
I’d never made a phone call so fast in my life.
And our future little dude was about to pull into a town twenty minutes away from Shady Valley.
I had to be there to pick him up.
I felt all fluttery in the belly at the idea of adding to our little family.
See, we’d decided not to have kids of our own.
Yes, plenty of women who were Type 1 could and did have healthy pregnancies and babies.
The thing was, it was really high risk. Way more than I would have expected.
Especially in the first trimester. Any spikes in my sugar could mean a miscarriage or birth abnormalities.
It was a lot to worry about.
Especially considering it had never been something I felt called to in the first place.
My only worry had been if Colter would feel like he was losing out on something.
When we’d discussed it, though, he’d just pulled me down on his lap, wrapped me up tight, and told me that he was perfectly happy with what we had, that he didn’t feel like we were missing anything (except maybe a few more dogs).
We lucked out in that we existed within the club and the families there. We were surrounded by kids of all ages all the time. We could spend as much, or little, time with them as we wanted. Then go home to our quiet house and sleep through the night.
It was the ultimate win/win for us.
Not every happily ever after needed to end with babies. We were proof of that.
Though, ours did need baby dogs.
“Oh, don’t give me that look,” I told the hound who was in his safety harness in the backseat. “We’re almost home. You are going to be the best surprise ever.”
His big, droopy eyes were the cutest shade of green.
I turned off the main street of Shady Valley and into the small neighborhood where we’d finally bought a house.
We’d ended up creating the business first, since our house options hadn’t been the best. Each one that had the right yard had a house that was way too small and rundown. If the house was right, the yard wasn’t. Neither of us wanted to compromise. So we just waited.
Until one day, a house hit the market.
We made an offer within an hour of the listing going live.
It was perfect.
I mean, it was old. It needed some work. But we kind of liked that about it. The yard was huge. There were front and back porches. The primary bedroom was massive, even if the bathroom needed to be gutted.
The kitchen was… good enough for what we used it for. I mostly only ever used the kitchen to create fancy homemade food for our dogs.
Colter, on the other hand, had been taking cooking lessons from Detroit.
And, while I was in L.A. taking one of my training classes, he took a diabetic cooking class.
Ever since then, he’d been cooking for us.
Well, too. But also healthy. It removed a little of the math I used to have to do since he prepared so carefully.
“You’re going to be so spoiled,” I told the puppy as I pulled him out of the backseat and into my arms.
I rushed up the steps, not wanting Colter to see me before I got close enough to see his reaction.
“Where are you?” I called when I moved inside.
“Den,” he called back.
“Are the dogs out back?” I asked.
“Yeah. A squirrel is taunting them in the neighbor’s tree. What’s—”
His mouth fell open as he spotted the puppy in my arms.
“You didn’t.”
“I did,” I said, beaming at how he rushed to take the dog from me.
“How? When?”
“I saw him on a rescue site a few days ago. His pregnant mom was abandoned on the side of the road. All his siblings and his mom found homes. But this little guy wasn’t so lucky. Until I found him.”
“He’s perfect,” Colter said, pressing his head to the side of the puppy’s. “I love him.”
“Why do I feel like there is a but hanging in the air?”
“Well,” he said, wincing. “Your birthday is coming up.”
“Uh-oh,” I said, sensing where this was going. “What’d you do?”
“Remember when you fell in love with that ridiculous dog we saw in L.A.?”
“The Borzoi,” I repeated, thinking of her long face.
“Well, you’ll never guess what I found on a rescue site…”
“You didn’t.”
“I did. She is only four weeks old. But she will be coming home the week of your birthday.”
“Two puppies at once.”
I knew the risk: “littermate syndrome,” where, if you get two dogs too closely together, they can suddenly snap one day and violently attack each other. That said, I also knew the workarounds for that. And had the time to do all the proper individual training.
“Not just that,” Colter said. “Two hounds.”
He wasn’t wrong. Bassets, obviously, were scent hounds. But Borzoi were sight hounds. And hounds were notoriously stubborn, independent, and hard to train. But they could also be total love bugs.
“This is going to be crazy,” I agreed. “But if anyone can pull it off, it’s us.”
“Got that right,” he agreed, wrapping an arm around me and pulling me into his side. “Thank you.”
“Thank you too,” I said. But I didn’t just mean for the puppy that would be joining us. I meant… for everything. For the life we built. For the happiness we’d known. For all the amazing things to come. Things I knew I never would have had without him. “For everything.”
“You saved my life. I’m pretty sure that makes us even.”
Taking that shot had been the best decision I’d ever made.
But when we told people our love story over the years, we went ahead and left out the whole… murder thing.
XX