Page 71 of Love in Training
“We can skip tomorrow,” Drew says in his low, even timbre. He starts disassembling the course and moving the obstacles aside, probably clearing the space for his next training class. “You should still exercise him, though.”
I look up, confused. We just agreed this was good for Rufus, and now—I bite my lip, a weight settling in my chest when I rememberI’mthe one who asked for a day off.
“Right... yeah, I’ll make sure he gets a run.”
Rufus lies on his side at my feet, now chewing lazily on his toy. He actually seems kind of tired. Or maybe sated is a better word. My stomach does a guilty little twist for not figuring out what he needed earlier, though I don’t know how I could have. Not without thedog guru.
“I can come back Monday,” I say hastily. “Anything to keep him from eating the other half of my couch.”
I add this last part as a joke, but Drew just nods and slides the tire jump thing to one side. Still no sense of humor, but no scowl. And heseemsless grumpy. Usually, his shoulders are square, back straight, and he walks around with this permanent resting assface.
Maybe it’s because he proved his point. Or we’re on his turf doing his thing. Probably both. But his eyes suddenly seem softer, his demeanor gentler. The lines across his forehead smoothed out.
Drew folds up the last of the obstacles and sits on the floor beside Rufus. When the dog rolls over to let him rub his belly, I realize they’rebothmore relaxed.
A lump rises in my throat, and I wonder if I’m doing the wrong thing, keeping them apart. I still don’t know why Kyle left Rufus to me, but it’s obvious that he and Drew can meet each other’s needs.
My one-hour timer vibrates gently against my wrist. I dismiss it quickly, but can’t bring myself to head for the door just yet. “I um... I was a little harsh yesterday.”
Drew’s hand pauses in the golden fur on Rufus’s belly, but he doesn’t look up. “I was a physician,” he says, clearing his throat. “I was going into sports medicine and had just finished my residency the first time Kyle got hurt.”
The edges of my vision darken, and I’m hurtling back five years.The first time.It should have been the last time. Kyle had been conducting a raid with several other servicemen. They came under enemy fire, and he was badly wounded. But his dog at the time—a German shepherd named Vinca—engaged the enemy long enough that Kyle’s unit was able to get him and others to safety. Unfortunately, Vinca did not make it out of that fight.
Kyle never spoke about what happened, not even to me. He came home for a short period during his recovery, but hisparents pressed him so hard to leave the service, he returned to duty as soon as he could.
“Even when we were kids, he always carried a... darkness inside him.”
I close my eyes, letting the tears burn under my lids. Because I know. “It got so much worse after he was hurt,” I whisper.
And then he’d been hurt again.
It happened six months before the wedding. Kyle had been back in the field for about a year. It was a struggle, but he’d been assigned a new dog, and we were counting down the days until we tied the knot. We had everything planned out. The church, the honeymoon. After that, I would finally move in with him.
He downplayed the second TBI, more concerned about the dog’s injuries than his own. But nothing was ever the same after that.
I sink my fingers into Rufus’s fur. I’m not sure when I moved to the floor. It doesn’t matter. I just need to feel his warmth. Feel the heartbeat inside him.
“Kyle and I used to dream about training dogs together. Having a place like this.” Drew’s face is a black cloud as he gestures around the room. “I always wanted to make it happen for him.”
I furrow my brow, adding up this information. “But you just said you became a doctor...”
“I did.” He shrugs.
My gaze flits around K9 Academy before landing back on Drew. “You mean you did this... for him?”
He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to.
I bite my lip, flooded with questions, but the words catch in my throat. When I meet Drew’s clear green eyes through his glasses, all I manage to whisper is, “Why?”
“I thought I could save him,” he says, voice flat and resigned. “But I guess I wasn’t enough.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
“Letme just make sure I’ve got all this straight,” Lydia says as we take our second slow lap with Rufus around the little park by her house. “Drew Forbesquitmedicine so he could open a dog training facility to try and help his struggling little brother?”
“That’s how I understand it.” I keep hoping the knot in my chest will loosen each time I rehash this, but so far it’s only pulled tighter. It doesn’t help that Lydia’s face looks like the holding-back-tears emoji.
