Chapter Fourteen

JULIAN ROLLED HIS foot over the small ball as Sprinkles kneeled. She wanted it. He could tell by the way she huffed and wiggled that she wanted the ball desperately. He watched her carefully, then rolled the ball quickly and grabbed it with his other foot. “Too slow, Sprink,” he said, teasing her. “Gotta be quicker than that.”

Sprinkles pawed at the foot the ball was under, letting out a tiny bark. He smiled in response, then realized what he was doing. He was playing. With the dog. A dog he’d actually started to like. He wasn’t entirely sure how to handle the realization. She was barking a little bit, pawing at him, and he didn’t feel annoyance, or indifference, but enjoyment. He lifted his toes, and with a quick movement, she stretched her paw under, snatched the ball, and pulled it toward her. Gripping it in her mouth, she ran to a small pillow in the corner and laid down so she could gnaw on it.

“Yeah, whatever. I totally let you win.” He picked up the remote and turned on the TV, but for the first time in a long time, he started to wonder what it would be like to have a dog. Would he want a little one like Sprinkles? Maybe not. He was so tall, so broad, he’d probably look ridiculous. But one like Bruiser? He wasn’t sure he could handle a dog wash or a car ride with such a large dog. Still, the fact that he even entertained the idea was a bit of a surprise. He’d never even contemplated it before. Now, though, he realized if he left this house at the end of the month and said goodbye to Sprinkles, he’d probably be moving somewhere empty. No dog. No people. Nothing at all but whatever was stashed in his sister’s garage.

He hadn’t started looking for a place to live. Maybe it was the desire to stave off the inevitable, to push the thought out of his head a little longer. Or maybe it was because his full focus had been on making sure Sprinkles stuck to her schedule, and an hour every day spent at the dog park wasn’t conducive to extensive job searches beyond sending out his resume online to a few that matched his area of expertise, nor was it suited to apartment hunting.

Honestly? He hadn’t wanted to face facts. He hadn’t wanted to think about where the end of the month left him. Sure, Molly was paying him. He’d be okay for another month, maybe two, without a job if he didn’t have time to dig in and really look for something good. But he’d need a place to live. Staring around him at the opulence of Molly’s life, at the nice house she owned and the large yard and the pool house in the backyard, then thinking about the apartment he’d inhabited, now a pile of rubble—or worse, an empty lot soon to be a yoga studio or upscale coffee shop—hurt. But it wasn’t even about comparing their homes, their situations, their lives. It was about the fact that he finally had something more in his life. He had Sprinkles. Hell, he had a friend in Cole. He couldn’t remember the last time he had a friend who wasn’t a coworker, and a friendship that didn’t end as soon as the job ended.

At the end of the month, he didn’t know where he’d stand. Because to be honest, Cole probably didn’t see him as any more important than Molly. Were they friends? Probably not. They were bench buddies. People who saw each other at the dog park and didn’t exist in each other’s lives outside of it.

The idea of that kind of relationship, or the lack of one, left him feeling so…hollow.