Clutching fast to the well-worn sweater, the only
thing she’d had time to grab before rushing Max out the apartment door, Rebecca
shivered against the piercing, cold wind that tore at the thin fabric.
Her friends and family had warned her that caring
for Max alone would be hard, and there were times, like now, when she, too,
wondered if keeping him had been a mistake.
But when she felt the warmth of his body snuggling
against hers, his breathing in rhythm with her own, and the gaze of those
innocent brown eyes, her heart filled and she knew she could not give him
up. They had both been left too many times.
So here she was again, her hand a frozen fist
around the leash, waiting for the giant, Shepherd pup to stop his endless
circling and do his business in the goddamn snow, while reminding herself that
she had put up with a lot worse for love.
This post in
response to the prompt “clutch” at Five Sentence Fiction.
