Puppy Love

by Lucy Gilmore

  Like the obedient, well-trained puppy that she was, Bubbles took her release in stride and settled herself comfortably at Harrison’s feet. Sophie’s chest tightened at the sight of it. He’d accepted that animal into his life so easily—fell in love with her after a few hours. In a short time, their lives had become so intertwined it was hard to imagine the two of them existing separately from one another.

  Naturally, human relationships were a little more complicated than that, but that didn’t stop her from feeling jealous.

  “Yeah, he probably did know,” Sophie agreed. “You can hardly blame him for not telling you though. Your dad would have never forgiven him. Will you tell me about her?”

  He blinked, caught unaware at her rapid change of subject.

  “She looks like you. Well, I guess it’s more accurate to say that you look like her, but you know what I mean. Her smile can light up a whole room—I bet that’s what your dad sees in her. How long after your diagnosis did she leave?”

  “Twenty-four hours. Possibly less.” He shook his head and stared at her as if unsure how she managed to get such an easy answer out of him. “Look, Sophie—this isn’t some cute love story that’s finally found its happy ending. You realize that, right?”

  Sophie ignored him. “From a few things your dad mentioned the other day, it sounds like they’re going to move in together—but not at your house. He said something, something about it having too many memories. I didn’t know what he meant at the time, but that makes sense. She probably wants to go somewhere they can start fresh.”

  An expression of agony passed over Harrison’s face, but the sound he made wasn’t one of anguish. It was a laugh—empty and bitter, yes, but a laugh all the same.

  “Of course she does. I’m sure it’s killing her to see it like that. Her precious darling.”

  Now it was Sophie’s turn to blink in confusion. Harrison saw it and laughed harder.

  “Do you realize he hasn’t let me put a single nail in that place until the day you and Bubbles waltzed in? Not one nail, not one coat of paint, definitely not a tablecloth. In a few short weeks, you managed to wreak nothing short of a miracle.”

  If Harrison’s parents had reconciled over his coma, she had the suspicion it was Minerva, and not her, who had managed the miraculous, but she didn’t say so. It was hardly a helpful observation under the circumstances.

  “For twenty-two years, he forced us to live in the ashes of everything she left behind,” Harrison said. The laughter stopped as suddenly as it had started. “I wanted to change it. I wanted to fix it. Believe me—I tried.”

  “But…” Sophie said, prompting him.

  “He liked watching it go to ruin.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s her house, Sophie. Not his. Not mine. It’s been in her family for generations, the place where all our happy Parks dreams were going to come true. Until, of course, I ruined it. One near-death experience, and Minerva realized that some dreams aren’t worth the cost.” He glanced away, his gaze fixed on the horizon. “It wasn’t just her husband and son she left behind that day. She left everything she’d ever known—her home, her career, her friends. That’s how little she wanted to do with me. That’s how much she couldn’t wait to get away.”

  Clarity was starting to take over her confusion—and, with it, some of that same bitterness that characterized everything Harrison said and did.

  “Then why on earth do you and your dad still live there?”

  This time, his laughter held a note of sincerity. “Sheer stubborn will, at least on his part. That man resented me every single day of his life, and he’d have gladly packed up and left if the opportunity had afforded itself. But a Parks doesn’t abandon his duty. The house was left in his care, and so was I. He would never have considered leaving his post, however much he might have wanted to.”

  “And you?” she couldn’t help asking. “Why didn’t you leave?”

  His eyes glittered. “I’m a Parks too, or hadn’t you noticed?”

  Oh, she’d noticed, all right. She knew it down to her bones. Unlike him, however, she didn’t see it as a character flaw. Sure, Wallace’s stubborn refusal to change so much as a board in that farmhouse was nothing short of perverse, and she couldn’t imagine what it must have been like to be an eight-year-old Harrison, scared and hurt and abandoned by his mother, but Wallace had done an admirable job with what he’d been given.

  Just look at the evidence—it was standing in front of her, glowering and grim and glorious. It was a six-foot bear of a man who’d fought incredibly hard for everything he had. Sure, the walls around his heart were so thick they were impenetrable by all but a tiny scrap of a puppy who’d managed to wriggle her way in, but he hadn’t been wrong to put those walls up.

  That heart had been worth protecting.

  “Your dad did look happy,” she said, extending a hand toward Harrison.

  He didn’t take it. Although Bubbles had found her foothold, Sophie’s path was not as easy.

  “I know it’s hard to see it from where you’re standing, but things change. People change. Maybe she’s different. Maybe she came back to make amends.”

  “That’s not how it works,” Harrison said. He crossed his arms, making it impossible for her to break through. “She shattered that man, Sophie. Smashed him to pieces. And now she’s just playing around with the shards.”

  “You don’t know that. Maybe she—”

  He shook his head. “She doesn’t want the house. You said it yourself. Too many bad memories. And she doesn’t want me either. If I hadn’t walked through the door and found her there, how many days would have gone by before I found out? How many weeks?”

  She opened her mouth to answer, but Harrison interrupted by pushing himself from the barn door until he loomed over her.

  When he spoke, however, his voice was gentle. His gaze was even more so.

  “I know what you want from me,” he said. “I know what you want to hear. You want me to say that somewhere, deep inside, I still care about her. That I believe in forgiveness and second chances. That if my dad is capable of reversing twenty-two years of heartbreak and is willing to open his heart to the possibility of love, then I should be too.”

  Sophie nodded. For once, she was the one who couldn’t find the words. That was exactly what she wanted. The Harrison Parks who’d showed her that attic space—who’d fallen to his knees in front of her and refused to get up until he’d tasted the deepest parts of her—that was a man she could love.

  That was a man she did love.

  But they couldn’t spend the next sixty years hiding away from the world. Slipping past Harrison’s walls and into his heart was everything she’d imagined it would be, but she couldn’t live there.

  “Well, I can’t,” Harrison said. “I want to—you have no idea how much—but I can’t.”

  He sounded so beaten, so small, that her heart stopped.

  “Don’t look at me like that, Sophie,” he said, his voice breaking. “You knew who I was going into this. I told you. I warned you.”

  That was true. He had warned her, listed his flaws like he was reading off the worst job application known to mankind. But what he’d forgotten to include, what he couldn’t even see, was all that was great inside of him.

  So she did it for him.

  “You’re brave,” she said, ticking off one finger. “Scary brave, and in this weird kind of way where you won’t even acknowledge it. Honestly, I don’t know if you can. But most people don’t just give up everything and spend months at a time fighting huge, dangerous forest fires. That’s not a normal state of being.”

  “Sophie, don’t—”

  “You’re kind.” She ticked off another. “Oh, I know you try your best to hide it, but not even a magician could get the whole of your heart tucked away. You’re kind to animals, to your friends, to me. Jessica upheld your original story, you know. She told me that you were so tough on her, you made her cry during training…
but then she also told me that you made sure she was the one who got to keep fighting fires after her boyfriend left her. I’m sorry, Harrison, but that was a kind thing to do.”

  “It wasn’t like that—”

  “You’re generous.” She bit her lip and flushed at the memory of their lovemaking mere hours before. “And I don’t just mean in bed, though that’s definitely true. I mean as a person. As a human being. As someone who opened his home to me without a word of protest—and right when I needed it most.”

  “You have to stop.” Harrison’s hands came crashing down, clutching at her upper arms in desperation. “I know I gave you permission to push me, but I’m rescinding it now. No more. Not another word.”

  “Harrison, you can’t—”

  His hold on her didn’t lessen, his eyes as hard as granite. “I can and I did. No more pushing, no more playing. The game is over.”

  “You’re not thinking clearly right now,” she said. “You’re upset, and you’re feeling hurt, and that’s okay, but—”

  “Goddammit, Sophie! Can’t you understand?” He let go of her then, dropping her like a man who’d just been burned. “I’ve had enough. Enough of you sauntering around and acting like you know what I need, like you have all of life’s answers stored up in the tip of your pinky.”

  She opened her mouth and closed it again. The hurtful things Harrison was saying were bad enough, but even worse was the way he was saying them. He was like a trapped animal, a puppy-mill puppy cowering in fear inside his tiny cage. He was howling and lashing out at his captor.

  He was howling and lashing out her.

  “Fearless little Sophie Vasquez, tackling the big, bad giant. Brave little Sophie Vasquez, taking on the case that no one else will touch.” His voice mocked her even as his arms crossed in a protective and antagonistic move over his chest. “We both know you’re not nearly as strong as you pretend to be. It’s easy for you to tell me that I need to forgive my mother for what she’s done, but you don’t even have the nerve to tell your own mother that she’s suffocating you.”

  Sophie stood motionless, feeling as though she’d been slapped.

  He gave a short, bitter laugh. “It’s not so fun being on the receiving end of all that pushing, is it? Do you want me to keep going?”

  She shook her head against what she knew was coming, what she was powerless to stop.

  “You push and you smile and you laugh and you fuck, but only because you know there are ten thousand people ready to catch you if you fall.”

  It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t be Harrison saying these things.

  But it was. “Spend one day in my shoes, and I guarantee you won’t be so bold,” he said, his upper lip curling. “There’s no one here for me, Sophie. No sisters. No parents. No nice knitting ladies. When I fall, it’s a long, dark descent that never ends. My mother abandoned me, my father gave up on me, and even you have finally realized that I’m not worth the effort.”

  “No,” she said, but her throat was so thick with emotion she wasn’t sure she made any sound at all.

  “I can’t spend another twenty-two years in that house waiting for a love that won’t last,” he said. “And even more to the point, I won’t. Not even for you.”

  Every wall, every shutter, every barrier came crashing down over him at once, sealing him up tighter than a tomb. There would be no getting in there now, Sophie knew. Not if she pushed for the rest of her life. Not if she died trying.

  Which was why she stood perfectly still and accepted the words she knew were coming next.

  “I’m done, Sophie. We’re done. It’s over.”

  Chapter 19

  “I brought you some ice cream for breakfast—it’s rocky road, your favorite.”

  “And coffee. Fresh coffee. With a little brandy in it. Okay, it’s all brandy, but it’s the good kind, so sip slowly.”

  “What about a hot pad? You always used to like a hot pad when you weren’t feeling well.”

  Sophie kicked off the blankets that had been solicitously wrapped around her and took the mug of brandy from Dawn. Downing it in one quick gulp, she glared at the relatives hovering over the couch as though she’d rung death’s doorbell and was merely waiting for someone to answer.

  “Knock it off, you guys.” The kick of the alcohol hit her in a fiery wave. She welcomed the burn both in her stomach and in her resolve—she could use it right about now. “I’m not going into a decline. I broke up with a guy. There’s a big difference.”

  She didn’t miss the look that passed between her two sisters.

  “Is it really breaking up if you were never formally dating? I mean—”

  “Lila, so help me, if you take it upon yourself to analyze my relationship with Harrison right now, I’m going to turn this bowl of chocolate ice cream over onto your pristine white couch. And I’m not going to clean it up afterward. In fact, I’m going to stand watch over it while it dries.”

  Dawn chuckled at this outburst. So did Lila, though she was careful to pick up the ice cream and put it well out of Sophie’s reach.

  Her mother, unfortunately, wasn’t so easily put off. She placed a warm hand on Sophie’s forehead and peered anxiously down into her eyes. “I still don’t understand what happened. Did he yell at you?”

  “No.”

  “Did he say all those terrible words like the ones Paulette heard?”

  “I wish.”

  “Did you argue about something?”

  “We argued about lots of things. That’s the whole point of Harrison.” She glanced at the clock sitting on the mantelpiece. “Oh, geez. Is it eight o’clock already? I still need to shower and change before I head over to the DNR office for the air force training.”

  All three women stared at her as though she’d spoken a foreign language.

  “That clock isn’t wrong, is it?” She cast a worried look at her watch, but it showed the same time. “Okay, phew. I should have just enough time if I hurry.”

  “Uh, Soph?”

  “You’re joking, right?”

  “Darling, are you sure you don’t want a few minutes with the heating pad first?”

  “What’s wrong?” Sophie asked. “Why is everyone looking at me like that?”

  The women shared another one of those worrisome looks before Dawn stepped forward. “You’re going to Deer Park? Now?”

  “Um, yes? It’s Monday, which means Oscar is bringing in a whole bunch of people for wildfire training today. I know I look terrible, but I doubt Harrison will notice.” Sophie shrugged with a nonchalance she was far from feeling. She’d hoped that having a weekend apart would help ease the sting of his final words, but it hadn’t worked. All the ice cream and brandy in the world wouldn’t change the fact that Harrison had ripped her heart out of her chest, stomped it into the dirt, and then walked away.

  I could have taken all of it—except for the walking away.

  “Actually, he probably will notice, but I don’t care. I hope he thinks I look like garbage. I feel like garbage. He made me feel like garbage. The least he can do now is face the steaming heap he created.”

  Lila opened her mouth to protest again, but Sophie forestalled her with a glare.

  “Well, Dawn?” she asked, her tone falsely bright. “You’re the expert when it comes to this sort of thing—is it cutoff jean shorts? A see-through tank top? Pasties with tassels on them? What does one wear to work with a man who destroyed all one’s chances of happiness?”

  “One could always ask one’s sister to go to work in her stead,” Dawn suggested gently.

  Sophie set her face, remembering all the things Harrison had said about her—that her strength came from the safety net her family provided, that her bravery had never been really tested. “No, thank you.”

  “We wouldn’t mind,” Lila said. “If you’re not up to the task of facing him, it’s just as easy for one of us to finish up. In fact, I think it’s in our employee handbook.”

  “It’s true.” Dawn cleare
d her throat with a false sense of authority. “After sleeping with the client, dog trainers are allowed a two-week leave of absence, at which time one of her sisters solemnly promises to finish the job, no questions asked.”

  “No, thank you,” Sophie said once again. She didn’t know how to make them realize that their kindness, though to be expected, was only making her feel worse. It proved how right Harrison had been, how easy her life was compared to his. How could someone like her possibly understand what it cost him to open up? How could she know anything about real strength?

  Everything she had, she owed to the people in this room. Everything she was, was built on the promise that their love for her would never falter.

  “It’s nice of you to offer, guys, but I was aware of the difficulties when I took this job. I made the decision to get involved with Harrison knowing the risks.”

  “Oscar will understand,” Lila said.

  “No one will think any less of you for staying home to nurse your broken heart,” Dawn added.

  “You might not think less of me for it,” Sophie allowed, “but I will. It’s going to be awful, and I’ll probably cry before the day is over, but I have to do it. Not for Harrison or even for Oscar, but for me.”

  To her surprise, Dawn laughed—her familiar chuckle full of music, her dangling silver earrings shaking around her neck. “Well, crap. I can’t argue with that. Lila?”

  Her oldest sister offered a prim smile. “I could argue it, but I’m not going to. I know better than to go up against Sophie in battle. She wins every time. She always has.”

  Dawn heaved a mock sigh. “She does, doesn’t she? The tenacious wretch. I’d hate her if I didn’t love her so much.”

  “Wait—I do? I am? You really mean it?” Sophie looked back and forth between her sisters, waiting for the catch. “You aren’t just calling me a tenacious wretch to be nice?”

  She couldn’t tell which of her sisters laughed the most at that, but she did know that the sound out it far outstripped their earlier sympathy. It always had. During her darkest moments and in the midst of her bleakest fears, Lila and Dawn had always managed to make her laugh.