I found a spot on the street to leave the Caddy and bolted up and down the side streets calling both the dog’s name and the woman’s. I was out of breath by the time I found Poppy. She was walking up the opposite side of the street from where I was jogging, looking lost. She still had on the lightweight sleepwear she was wearing this morning with no coat and nothing but a pair of flip-flops on her feet. Obviously, she hadn’t been planning on keeping the dog out long and whatever had distracted her into letting go of that leash must have been pretty serious. I hoped like hell it wasn’t something as simple as someone crossing her path on the sidewalk, because if that was the case, she had much further to go on her path to recovering from her trauma than I thought.

I rushed across the street and wrapped my arms around her as she immediately threw herself into my chest. She tucked her head under my chin and against the front of my T-shirt where my coveralls were opened, and the shirt immediately got soaked through from her tears. I palmed the back of her head as her lithe frame shuddered uncontrollably against mine, and whispered that everything would be okay in her ear. I needed to get her somewhere safe and then I needed to find our dog.

“Let’s get you inside so you can warm up. I’ll look for Happy until the sun comes up if I have to. He’s tiny, he couldn’t have made it very far.”

She shook her head back and forth, her entire body moving as sobs ripped from her chest. “I can’t believe I let him go. Everything that loves me, I let go.”

I didn’t understand what that meant but I didn’t think she was in the right frame of mind to have a heart-to-heart about it. “Honey, you’re freezing. You have to go inside.”

She pulled her head back from where it was burrowed into me and blinked up at me. “I have to find Happy.”

“You will, but you won’t do him any good if you freeze to death.” We stood there staring at each other for a long time and I realized she wasn’t going to move. She was stuck on the spot, lost in her own grief and trapped by whatever had started this mess in the first place. I didn’t have a coat since I was still wearing my coveralls from the garage, so I decided the next best thing I could do to warm her up and get her to move was to hold her close and cradle her in my arms like she was a baby. I knew if she hadn’t been lost in the throes of her meltdown, she would protest because there was no part of her that wasn’t touching me, but since she was numb and practically catatonic, I swung her thin legs up into my arms and marched with her back to her apartment like she was my bride and I was carrying her across the threshold on our wedding night. She was so light, barely any kind of burden in my grasp. I vowed to bring her doughnuts every single morning until the day I died if it would give her the sustenance she obviously needed.

When I rounded the corner of the block where her apartment building was located, I almost dropped her when I saw a furry little blur dart around the side of her building. There was no mistaking that brindled coat or the excited way the puppy moved. Even though he was just a baby, he obviously knew where home was. He’d found his way back to love and shelter. Smart dog.

I put Poppy on her feet by the front door and told her I would be right back. I hated to leave her in the state she was in but I figured the best way to snap her out of it was to get the puppy back in her arms, whole and healthy.

Happy thought we were playing a game. Every time I got close enough to grab him he darted the opposite way. He barked and yipped, having a grand old time. Finally, I figured out if I crouched down on my haunches and just stayed still, the goofy little guy would come over to me looking for his head pats and tummy rubs. When I scooped him up I couldn’t believe the wave of relief that washed over me. I had to take a second to pull myself together because I didn’t want Poppy to see how upset I had been. She was already a mess, I wasn’t going to add any more to it.

When I got back to the front of the building she predictably lost her mind when she saw I had the dog safely in my grasp. She started crying in earnest again and couldn’t seem to make her words work. I handed the dog over without a fight, waved her off as she babbled her thanks over and over again, and felt my heart squeeze as Happy tried to burrow into her chest the way she had burrowed into mine.

Now more than dead on my feet, I decided I was done for the day. I needed a few hours of shut-eye and I needed to know both my dog and my girl were safe. The only way to accomplish all of that was to pile all of us into the same bed. I didn’t know if Poppy was ready for that yet, but I was too tired to ask. I picked her up, Happy delighted to be in her arms again, snuggled close. I made my way down the hallway into her apartment, and trudged along until I found her bedroom with no help or protest from her.

I set her on the bed, pulled off her flip-flops, and bent to tug off my boots. I didn’t want to crawl into her bed with my dirty coveralls but I didn’t have the mental fortitude to deal with another emotional breakdown once she realized she was in bed with a half-naked man.

I pulled her to me so that her back was plastered to my chest. I rested my arm around her thin waist as she continued to cuddle against me and coo at the dog. My eyes drifted shut as I felt her press more fully into me. I tightened my hold on her and inhaled the floral scent that clung to her hair. It had been a long day but I would do it all over a hundred more times without a single complaint if it ended me up exactly where I was right now.

Poppy

Most nights I woke up shaking and frozen all the way down to my bones. I couldn’t remember the last time I woke up feeling warm and safe, not to mention rested and refreshed. I blinked my eyes and waited for them to adjust to the thick darkness that was coating everything in my room. Happy was standing in front of my face, paws on my pillow, little tail wagging. I wrinkled my nose as his tongue shot out to lick the tip, waking me the rest of the way up. I had no recollection of getting into bed and I definitely didn’t remember falling asleep with the weight of a heavily tattooed arm locked firmly around my waist.

I waited for the panic. I anticipated the terror and the anxiety that would typically rise up and choke me when I fully realized I wasn’t, that there was a man behind me, breathing deep and even. I expected my skin to crawl, my eyes to tear up, and my heart to stop beating. I predicted the fear that would paralyze me and render me helpless … but none of it came. I was still rattled and unsettled from the phone call that had blindsided me and caused me to drop Happy’s leash, but all the icky, awful things I thought I would feel when I ended up in bed with a man again were nowhere to be found and I was pretty sure it was because it was this man I was cuddled up to. I might not know if I could trust my own judgment, but when my defenses were down, and when my mind was all tangled up in memories and mistakes from the past, everything inside of me decided it could trust Hudson Wheeler. All my barricades tumbled down and crumbled the instant he showed up to take care of me. I couldn’t let him hold me and comfort me fast enough when the past showed up with its gnashing teeth and inescapable grasp. I didn’t keep the pain from him … I welcomed him inside of it with open arms and let him take the brunt of some of it.