His head tilted, his frame relaxing a little at the sound of my voice.
“I know you didn’t mean it. I’m like that, too, you know. I do stuff and I don’t always know why. Can’t see what might happen as a result.” I carefully opened the bag of hot dogs and tossed a few in his direction. One bounced close enough that he lowered his nose to smell it, then took a step closer to eat it off the ground.
I stayed still. He took another step and ate another one. Then another.
When the pieces I’d thrown were gone, he lifted his head and watched.
“Still hungry?” I tossed a few more, making sure the majority of them landed inside the loop of the leash. “I tell you what, dude, if I could bring you in there safely, I’d get some pretty major brownie points with her.”
Remi had been calling him Bandit, and he paused again, not moving closer to get more food.
“Not that that’s your responsibility,” I told him. “It’s my problem to fix. Sometimes things that come easily to other people don’t always come easily to me. Usually relationship stuff, you know. I didn’t have a good example growing up. And I shouldn’t find it this hard to be around a beautiful woman who interests me without acting like a jackass, but I’ve spent the entire week doing that.”
He ate another piece but kept his gaze flicking back to me, just to make sure I wasn’t moving.
“In college, and even the first couple years in the pros, no one cared much if I was a nice guy. I didn’t have to be the best version of myself. I just had to win.”
I tossed a couple more pieces closer to him, and he ate them quickly. When he stepped forward to eat the pieces inside the loop, I held my breath, making sure my body stayed perfectly still.
“When Coach benched me, then I got injured, that all seemed to change.” My stomach sank as I actually said the words out loud. “People looked at me differently, and I didn’t know how to change it. I still don’t. Definitely not now.”
All the pieces were gone, and Bandit stared at me expectantly.
I tossed him a few more, keeping them inside the loop. He ate them.
I threw a couple more.
“Maybe it’s just about being patient,” I said as I watched him. “Doing little things that add up to something big.”
Bandit lowered his head to eat, and I moved quickly, shifting onto the balls of my feet and tugging backward with the leash so that the loop pulled over his head. He jerked back with a yelp, but jerked in exactly the right direction—darting to the side instead of back—so that the leash was firmly around his neck.
I stayed down at his level. “Easy, buddy, I’m not going to hurt you.”
He wrenched his body as far away from me as possible but wasn’t fighting the restraint like I thought he might. I gave him the last pieces of hot dog, and he only hesitated for a moment before inhaling them like he had all the others.
“You’ve probably been struggling out here a long time, huh? Nowhere soft and warm to sleep. That’s gotta get old. You come inside and you’ll have the cleanest floors in the world, I promise.”
I let out a slow breath when he raised his head—there was slack in the leash.
“Good job. Should we go inside and say hi?”
The door flew open behind me.
“How did you—”
Remi was wide-eyed, glancing incredulously between me and the dog. I held out the leash in her direction. Bandit stared between us, much in the same way she’d just been doing.
“I guess he was ready today.”
Her mouth fell open, and the way she looked up at me made me feel ten fucking feet tall.
“Archer,” she exhaled softly, then shook her head. “Thank you.”
This. This was so much better than her anger.
It was a heady thing, and my mouth went dry at the way her eyes held mine. It wasn’t how she’d looked at me when we sat in that darkened corner in the bar. It wasn’t how she’d looked at me on the dance floor.
She didn’t know me then. I didn’t know her either.