She took off.
For a second, I held my breath. Her back leg still wasn’t perfect. There would always be a hitch in her stride, a reminder etched into bone.
But she didn’t care.
She ran like nothing had ever tried to break her.
When she came back, ball clutched proudly in her mouth, her whole body vibrating with excitement, I couldn’t help it—I laughed. Not the quiet kind. Not the polite kind.
The kind that comes from somewhere deep and unexpected.
She dropped the ball at my feet, tail whipping back and forth like it might take off on its own.
“Yeah?” I said, grinning. “You want me to throw it again?”
She barked—a sharp, bright sound that turned a few heads nearby.
It hit me then, standing there in the sunlight, that this—this moment—was something nobody could have predicted that night in the storm.
