Page 19 of Love in Training
Drew slammedthe door as he entered the house. Exhausted. Defeated.
Again.
The universe pulled him toward bed. Toward blackness and oblivion, at least for a few hours. And he would have kicked off his shoes and succumbed to it if he wasn’t met at the door by a troop of hungry faces.
“Sorry.” He sighed. “I know I’m late.”
The old shepherd gave him a long, assessing stare. He had wise, dark eyes that had seen too much of the world. Much like those golden-brown eyes in the crate. The ones Drew had failed.
He went through the motions, putting food in each of their bowls, adding the correct supplements and medications. Then he patted every one of their heads the way they liked.
The English bulldog was the one to break the tension, of course. She snuffed and snorted, wiggling at Drew’s feet, more interested in getting her butt rubbed than dinner. He sighed and sank to the ground to give her what she begged for. Excitement radiated from her stocky tan and white body as she grabbed a squeaky duck off the floor and presented it to him.
“Pudding, if you don’t eat your dinner, Blitz will,” he muttered.
The border collie glanced up at his name, gave a light wag of his tail, and kept eating. Not a surprise. He burned so many calories just existing, he never missed a single scrap.
Pudding ignored him, turning to rub her burly body against his legs with several delighted snorts. The shepherd, Diesel, was more attuned to the moods of his handler. He came over and quietly lay his head in Drew’s lap, calm and reassuring. Telling Drew he knew he’d tried his best.
Except he hadn’t. He’d failed RufusandKyle.
Drew dropped his face into his hands.
Naturally, that’s when his phone rang. He didn’t need to see the screen to know who it was. He didn’t want to answer, but his fingers worked against him.
“We missed you at family dinner,” his mother said in her stolid voice.
“Sorry.” Drew sighed. “Something came up I had to deal with.”
“I’m sure.” She dismissed his excuse with just two words, like she was picking a piece of lint off her sleeve. “Next week, then.”
He closed his eyes and said nothing. He should have flown to North Carolina to get Rufus himself. If he had, he might’ve been able to convince the rescue to give him the dog.
If he’d gotten there before Theo Phipps, that is.
Except... he hadn’t known about the will. It was so uncharacteristic of Kyle to cross his T’s and dot his I’s like that. But his brother was always full of surprises.
“And youwillbe attending the ceremony next weekend?” his mom said in his ear, not asking so much as laying the expectation.
“Uh, yeah. I’ll be there.”
He’d rather chisel Pudding’s dried drool off the ceiling, but he would go.
This was so like his parents. It wasn’t enough to just hold a memorial service for Kyle when he died, pretending he hadn’t taken his own life. They had to broadcast their grief. Make sure no one important missed their suffering. And just to ensure they didn’t, it would now take the form of an annual local event.
Drew’s stomach churned. All at once, he was grateful the first actual anniversary of his brother’s choice to leave this world would fall on a weekday. He would sit in the high school auditorium with his parents next weekend, listening to whatever the principal chose to say based on the award being given and the size of the donation his parents surely made to the PTA. But on Tuesday, the actual first anniversary, Drew could remove himself from everyone. Everything. Spend it alone with his thoughts.
His guilt.
Just not Rufus.
“Good. Principal Beck will be announcing the scholarship winner, and it’s important you be there.”
He tried not to snort. In memory of his brother, a US Army dog handler who’d clearly and firmly rejected his parents’ desires for him to follow their paths into medicine, they were going to set up some deserving local kid for medical school.
“Right,” Drew murmured. Affirming and acknowledging what she said, the way he’d learned to in childhood. It was easier if you played along.
He stood abruptly, grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge. Then he scooped up Pudding’s bowl, putting her behind a gate to finish eating where Blitz couldn’t sneak in and steal from her.
