Page 98 of Running Hott


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I try to figure out where we’re going. A hike? Canoeing?

“And Milo’s invited,” he says.

I wear jeans and an old T-shirt and climb into his new rental. He drives me to the outskirts of the town, to a low building in an industrial park, with an incongruous patch of grass planted in front of it.

Rush Creek Animal Shelter.

My heartbeat picks up. “Rhys?”

“No pressure,” he says. “But Natalie mentioned that there was a dog here she thought you were interested in adopting…”

I bite my lip.

“She’s still here. I checked. She’s a little older, so she’s the last one who hasn’t been adopted from the firefighter campaign. Now that Milo’s with you year-round— Are you crying?”

He wipes a tear from each of my cheeks with his thumbs.

We go inside and meet Cressie. She’s every bit as adorable in person as she is in her photos—a little smaller than Milo, ears akimbo, eager and panting as the woman working the shelter front desk lets her into one of the meet-and-greet rooms. She comes straight to me, puts her paws on my knees, and looks into my eyes with her big, soulful brown ones.

I’m smitten.

We bring Cressie outside to meet Milo. He comes cautiously out of the car and trots over to her. She preens a bit. He sniffs around her face, then all around her entire body, then comes back and licks her snout. She licks back, then ducks her head in the universal puppy sign forLet’s play. And they do, on the grass outside the shelter, while Rhys keeps an eye on them and I finish up the adoption paperwork.

“Thank you,” I say when we get back into the car, Milo and Cressie on the back seat in a puppy pile.

“Making the world right, one dog at a time,” he says, grinning.

“Dissolving marriages and uniting dogs with their people since twenty-whatever.”

“I mean, there are worse job descriptions.”

A few nights later, he texts to asks how Cressie is settling in and if I think the dogs will be okay on their own for an evening. Cressie has spent most of the day trotting around after Milo while he introduces her to all his favorite things—the faintly peanut-butter laced Kong he willingly shares with her, the smelliest part of the apartment’s small dog yard where the squirrels like to hang out, the spot in the fence where you can bark at the dog in the next complex’s dog yard till someone makes you stop. When they tire themselves out, they plop down together on the rug and curl into nestling commas around each other.

I snap a photo and text it to him.

The dogs will be fine.

The phone rings a moment later. “Can I take you to dinner?” he asks.

“Is this a date?”

“Do you want it to be?”

“I think so,” I tell him.

“Okay,” he says. “Let’s try it, then.”

We go to Jane’s Bistro, and he gets beef bourguignon and I get ahi tuna over jasmine rice and seaweed salad. Afterward he drives me back to my new place. He walks me to the door.

“You can come in,” I say.

He says, “When you invite me in, I want you to mean it.”

I can tell he reads my hesitation, and I read his disappointment, but it’s okay. I think we both understand now about being patient. And this slow trickle of pleasure is not so terrible. It’s delicious, especially when he leans down and kisses me good night. It’s a first-date kiss—a good one—sure and confident but also respectful, his mouth slanted perfectly, certainly over mine, his lips sealing the kiss off with a greedy nip that makes me gasp before he draws back and strides away.

I watch him go and want to call,Come back!

I want to invite him inside, and inside me, and I want it to mean what we both need it to mean.