Page 103 of Wild Card 13

“She chose me,” Lucy offered. It was quiet. Almost too quiet to hear beneath the bicycles clicking past and the distant bark of another dog near the playground.

Lucy’s hand tightened around the leash again, but this time it did not look like defense. It looked like memory. Like whatever had happened yesterday still sat warm and impossible in the middle of her chest.

“She chose you?” I asked.

Lucy swallowed, eyes still fixed somewhere over my shoulder. “There was an adoption event at North Line. She got loose. Ran straight to me.” Her lips twitched faintly. “Ignored everyone else.”

“Smart dog,” I muttered.

Lucy looked at me then. For one stupid flash, all the cold disappeared. Then she glanced away. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Make it sound like something.”

I stood slowly because staying crouched in front of her felt too much like asking for forgiveness. “Maybe it was something.”

“It was a dog adoption.”

“Lucy.”

Her eyes snapped back to mine. There it was. The wall. It rose in pieces. Her shoulders first. Her jaw next. Then her eyes, shuttering one careful inch at a time until the woman in front of me looked almost like the one who worked at the arena.

Except her cheeks were still pink from the cold. Her curls were still loose around her face. And the dog was still sitting on her foot with a dead leaf hanging out of her mouth.

“I should keep going,” she said.

“Can we talk?”

“No.”

The answer came too fast. The dog’s ears perked at the sharpness of it.

I nodded once, like it hadn’t hit me. “Okay.”

That seemed to surprise her more than if I’d argued. Her brows drew together slightly. “Okay?”

“If the answer’s no, the answer’s no.”

She studied me like she was looking for the trap. “Since when?”

Fair.

The wind moved across the lake, roughing up the surface in silver shivers. A runner passed behind us, breathing hard, shoes striking the pavement in a steady rhythm that faded into the trees.

“Since I’m trying not to keep making the same mistakes,” I admitted.

“I don’t know what to do with that,” Lucy bit back.

“I don’t either.”

Her mouth softened, and that was almost worse than anger.

Then the dog darted between us after another leaf, the leash wrapping once around Lucy’s calves.

“Oh my God.” Lucy looked down, exasperated. “No. We talked about this.”

“It’s been two days,” I said. “Seems early for performance reviews.”