Page 274 of Branded
Less exercise.
More of Sparky sniffing himself into blissful oblivion.
Eventually, Spark managed to tear himself from the bush, and we continued meandering our way down the sidewalk at a snail’s pace, eventually turning into the park. Soon enough the path would be cold and covered with snow, but today, with the sun shining and the sky a clear blue overhead, it was filled with kids running on the grass, clambering on the playground equipment. Some adults were tossing a football around. A soccer practice was being held in the distance.
Spark’s ears pricked, but where once, he would have been quivering to join in on the excitement, today he wagged his tail a couple of times and ambled toward another bush.
Which was when I heard it.
“I know, bud.” Her voice slid like fingers down my spine. “But we can’t always get everything we want.”
A knot in my gut, that statement hitting too close to the childhood memories of my parents struggling. Those memories and how they’d still found a way to give me so much clung to the edges of my mind, and that paired with the voice—a voice I knew as well as any of my teammates, as any of my family, had my fingers tingling.
I looked up from where I’d been watching Spark sniff his thousandth bush and watched Jules walking toward me with a boy who must be her son. The little boy held her hand as he skipped by her side, and I couldn’t help but frown as I tried to ferret out the resemblance.
The boy was stocky where Jules was thin. His hair was dark, a deep brown that rivaled my own, not the light blond of Julie’s, and his skin tone more olive than the peach of hers.
But when they came closer, the resemblance became obvious.
His coloring was similar to mine, but his face was Julie’s.
They had the same lips and eyes and nose. They even wore the same expression—serious as it was. Drawn brows, flat mouths, though only Jules had the shadows in her eyes.
Fuck that shit.
The thought rippled through my mind like a rock splashing into a lake, crashing into the water with a huge impact, radiating fault lines, and then, eventually, settling to the bottom, an ever-present reminder.
I was processing that feeling, the intense promise that had just sewn its way into my soul, when Spark barked.
Drawing both of the Blackstars’ attention.
The serious expression disappeared from Jules’s face, the shadows evaporated, and her lips turned up as Sparky pulled at his leash, tail wagging, a glimpse of that puppy energy from long ago.
“Look, Mom!” her son cried. “It’s a golden retriever!”
Now those lips turned up higher. “Yeah, bud, it—” Her words cut off as her gaze rose, sliding up, reaching mine, her smile and pace faltering so abruptly, it was almost comical.
“And he’s got a handkerchief!”
Of course he did.
Sparky needed to look good when he went out, and his bandana was quite dapper in my opinion.
“Mom!” He tugged on Jules’s hand when her feet slid to a stop and she didn’t reply. “Mom, look!”
Jules was looking, just not at Sparky. She was looking at me and, fuck, I could just spend all day doing the same, staring back at her, noting every minute change in her face.
So fucking beautiful.
“Can I pet him, Mom?” Her son tugged at her hand. “Can I?”
“He’s friendly,” I said, moving toward them, not going to be an idiot—not this time, anyway. I was taking the opening, but I was doing it slowly. Carefully. “If your mom says it’s okay,” I added quickly. “Spark would love to have some scratches.”
Wide guileless eyes pointing up toward Jules. “Mom, can I?”
A long moment of quiet. Then her shoulders rose and fell on a breath, and she nodded. “Okay, Ethan, but just do it the slow and steady way that I taught you, all right?” The little boy had started to drop down already, was reaching for Sparky (not that Spark would have minded—he loved people, but he loved kids most especially and didn’t mind them crawling all over him), but Ethan stopped at the first mention of his mom’s but, had waited for her to finish. Then he nodded.
A good kid.
