Page 36 of Two for Joy

“Chad…”

He looked up, finally connecting with Romeo. His eyes were still tired, the bags beneath were deeper. Romeo knew he’d look worse the longer the case went on, like Chad was slowly turning into a corpse.

He snorted.

Everyone was slowly turning into a corpse, that’s all living really was.

“I couldn’t stop.”

Romeo nodded.

“Maybe I do take after my mother. I’m addicted to something that’s bad for me, and even though I know it is, you’d have to pry it from my cold dead hands to stop me from having it.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Well, not so much the cold dead hands part…”

Chad laughed, enough that it reached his eyes. He looked at Romeo, then his smile started to fade.

“What happened last time,” Romeo started, “my…reaction—”

“I’ve been thinking about Toby.”

Romeo frowned. “Toby?”

“Yeah.”

“Your dog.” Romeo said slowly.

Chad nodded. “I cared about him, and he cared about me. We had a good bond, an understanding, but we were still alien to each other.”

“You were different species.”

“Sometimes I did things he wouldn’t have understood,” Chad paused, then laughed. “And sometimes he did things I didn’t understand, but the bond was there, it crossed species.”

Romeo nodded for Chad to continue.

“And I was thinking, that even though I saw a side to Toby I liked. He might have had another one, a side I’d consider bad if I didn’t understand it.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, to a rat he was a monster. He killed them, he enjoyed killing them, especially when he thought it made me happy, too. To me, it was only a rat, vermin. But he had that killer instinct, and if he killed something bigger, or if he joined in with other dogs while they killed something, or got excited watching, and felt like he wanted to join in, felt like he was missing out. It would’ve upset me.”

“I could see why it would.”

“But that wouldn’t have been Toby’s fault, it would’ve been mine for not understanding. He comes from wolves, they have instincts, desires, thought processes I couldn’t possibly understand. It would’ve been wrong for me to judge him by my own standards. We’re different species, but that doesn’t take away from our bond, it makes it stronger because we like each other enough to see past it.”

“You and Toby.”

Chad snorted. “Yeah, me and Toby.”

Romeo didn’t have to lie. He didn’t have to use his handsome mask, and fake disgust, or fear over the copycat.

Chad got it.

He didn’t like it, but he accepted it.

That made Chad pretty fucking amazing.

Romeo let out a long, slow breath. “You’re something else, you know that.”

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