Chapter 17: Ally - Purrfect Valentine

The porch light was off, and I sat in my driveway like an idiot for a solid three minutes, staring at my dark house. Bulbs burn out. People forget. Corbin had only been leaving the light on for me for a week—that wasn’t long enough to become a habit. That wasn’t long enough for the absence to mean something.

Except he never forgot. Not once. Not even on the nights when I came home so late that he was already asleep, Muffy curled on his chest like a tiny furry guardian. The porch light was always on because Corbin paid attention to things like that. Small things. Quiet things. The kind of things that made a person feel seen without ever being told they were being watched.

My dashboard clock read 11:56 PM. The emergency surgery had run four hours longer than expected—a Pitbull hit by a car, multiple fractures, touch and go until the very end when he pulled through—and every muscle in my body ached with the kind of exhaustion that goes deeper than tired. But the heaviness in my chest had nothing to do with work.

I’d left Corbin standing in my exam room with Muffy pressed against his chest and tears on both our faces. I’d walked away because a dog was dying, and that’s what I do—I leave when animals need me.

I always leave when animals need me.

The question I couldn’t stop asking myself, the one that had been circling my brain for the entire drive home, was simple: Would he still be home when I got back?

I grabbed my bag and headed for the door, but the house was wrong before I even stepped inside. Bernie greeted me like always, but there was nothing cooking in the kitchen. No one standing there waiting to greet me when the animals got bored of me. I flipped the light switch and looked down automatically, expecting to stub my toe on⁠—

Nothing.

Corbin’s shoes were gone.

They’d migrated to their spot by my door within three days of him staying here, always slightly in the way, always making me smile when I tripped over them in the dark.

The spot where they’d been was empty hardwood.

I moved through the house and saw ghosts, remnants of where he’d been or where I’d gotten used to his things being. His jacket wasn’t on the hook. The phone charger he’d bought wasn’t plugged in by the couch. In the kitchen, the pot we’d used three nights ago—when he’d stood behind me and guided my hands through the spices and kissed my neck until I burned the onions—sat clean and dry in the dish rack. Like he’d washed away the evidence before he left.

The bathroom was worse. His toothbrush was gone. His razor. The towel he always left draped over the shower rod instead of folded on the rack was now folded on the rack, and somehow that tiny detail—the proof that he’d taken time to erase himself—was worse than everything else combined.

I made it to the bedroom doorway and stopped.

His side of the bed was too neat. Pillows arranged. Blanket smooth. No dent in the mattress, no evidence that anyone had been sleeping there for the past week and a half. But when I crossed the room and pressed my face to his pillow, it still smelled like him—cedar and soap—and the dam inside me shattered.

He’d erased himself from my house, but left his scent behind like a cruel joke.

My legs folded. I sat on the edge of my bed, still wearing scrubs that smelled like antiseptic and fear, and I let the tears come.

Bernie found me first.

I heard his nails on the hardwood long before I saw him—that familiar galloping thunder that usually preceded him body-slamming whoever was closest to the door. But this time he didn’t launch himself at me. He padded into the bedroom, let out a low whine, and pressed his massive head against my knee.

“Hey, buddy.” My voice came out wrecked. “Yeah. I know.”

He licked my scrub pants, then my hand, then tried to lick my face when I leaned down to scratch behind his ears. His tail wagged, but it was the uncertain wag of a dog who knew something was wrong and didn’t know how to fix it.

The rest of the chaos arrived in waves. Luna appeared in the doorway, assessing the situation before trotting over to shove her head under my other hand. Harold and Steve followed, and then the others. The cats materialized from various corners of the house. They arranged themselves around the bed—one on each pillow, two on the comforter, and Daisy settled directly in my lap. From his pen in the corner, Nutter Butter thumped his foot once. Twice. Then settled into his hay.

I laughed through the tears. It came out wet and pathetic.

“This is ridiculous,” I told them. Bernie’s tail thumped. “I’m crying over a guy I’ve known for weeks. Who came here to win back his ex-girlfriend. Who couldn’t even tell me—to my face—that he was choosing her over me.”

Bernie responded by trying to climb into my lap, which was physically impossible and pissed off Daisy, who ran away, but it didn’t stop him from trying. I ended up half-crushed, half-comforted, with a Saint Bernard’s head on my chest.

“I’m an idiot,” I said to the ceiling. “A complete and total idiot who should have known better.”

The thing was, I really could handle him leaving. I hadn’t lied to him. I’d been left before. Men didn’t stay. It was a fact of life, just like the sky being blue or water being wet.

What I couldn’t handle—what was making my blood boil underneath all this sadness—was Muffy.

Corbin’s bitch wanted him to abandon a kitten he’d carried for miles. A kitten who’d been dying on the side of the road. A kitten who loved him so much that she screamed every time he left the room.

And according to Corbin, he hadn’t argued. He’d stood there in my exam room and admitted he hadn’t pushed back. Hadn’t defended Muffy. Hadn’t told Andi to go to hell.

God, I wanted to tell her to go to hell. In fact, I’d happily push her down into the fiery pit myself. People who didn’t respect or care for animals didn’t deserve to breathe the same air as them.

Andi didn’t deserve Corbin either.

I could survive him leaving me. I was a big girl. I’d built walls before; I could build them again. But Muffy? Muffy didn’t get a say. Muffy didn’t understand that the person she’d bonded to, the person she trusted with her tiny life, would walk away because his ex-girlfriend found her inconvenient.

“If he leaves her,” I said to Bernie, who was still half in my lap, “I will never forgive him. Never.”

Bernie licked my chin. It wasn’t helpful, but I appreciated the gesture.

I don’t know how long I sat there before I reached for my phone. Long enough for my back to ache. Long enough for the tears to dry into itchy tracks on my cheeks. Long enough for the anger to settle into something heavier—not gone, but banked, waiting.

Jamie answered on the second ring.

“Hey, J.”

“Hey, Al—” He stopped. “What’s wrong?”

That was the thing about brothers. The good ones could hear a single cracked syllable and know.

“He left.” My voice broke on the second word. “His stuff is gone. All of it. I got home and the porch light was off and his shoes weren’t by the door and—” I sucked in a breath that was more sob than air. “He’s gone, Jamie.”

Silence. Then: “Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s—shit. I’m sorry. That was a really terrible thing to do. Are the animals alright?”

I loved my brother. I loved him so much.

“They’re fine. It’s fine.” It wasn’t fine. “I mean—it’s not fine, obviously, but I should have expected it. He literally told me he was driving here to win his ex-girlfriend back when his car broke down. I knew what I was signing up for. But there’s more.”

I filled him in on the fact that Andi had shown up wearing the ring Corbin had proposed to her with.

“That bitch!”

Best little brother ever.

“Yeah, she is a bitch. But she’s beautiful and he loves her.”

He listened as I continued, crying off and on. Bernie curled up at my feet, licking my toes every once in a while in solidarity.

When I finished, Jamie sighed. I could picture him in his cramped apartment, probably still wearing the button-down from his new big-boy job at the bank, running a hand through his hair while he tried to figure out what to say to his disaster of a sister.

“God, that all sucks, Alyssa. It really does.” He paused, and I scratched one of the cats under her chin. “And I know you didn’t sign up to get hurt, but you did sign up to help a guy with a sick kitten. Everything else happened after.”

“And I let it happen. That’s on me.”

“Hey—”

“I let myself hope. I knew better, and I hoped anyway, and now I’m sitting on my bed covered in dog hair, crying over someone I’ve known for less than a month. I’m pathetic.”

“You’re not pathetic.”

“I’m literally surrounded by foster animals because they’re the only creatures who won’t leave me intentionally.”

“Okay, that came out sadder than you meant it to.”

“Did it?”

“Hey.” His voice softened. “You love those animals. You love them even though you know they’re going to leave. Every foster you take in, every clinic patient—you know they’re temporary. You know they’ll get adopted, or go home, or sometimes—” He paused. “Sometimes they don’t make it. And you still do it. You still open your heart to every scared, sick creature who comes through your door.”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

“Animals don’t intend to leave.” I scrubbed at my face with my free hand. “Corbin chose. He looked at what I was offering—me, Muffy, this life—and he chose something else.”

“You don’t actually know that.”

“His stuff is gone.”

“His stuff is gone,” he agreed. “But you don’t know what’s happening in his head. You don’t know if he’s sitting somewhere right now regretting everything.”

“Even if he is, it doesn’t matter. He still left. He still—” My voice cracked again. “He’s going to leave Muffy. His ex told him to drop her back on the side of the road where he found her, and he didn’t even argue. He didn’t defend her. He didn’t say no.”

“Okay, that’s fucked up.”

“And she’s still sick.”

“That’s really fucked up.”

“Thank you!” I threw my free hand up, startling the cat on the pillow next to me. “I told him—I looked him in the face and told him I could survive him leaving me, but leaving Muffy was unforgivable. And he didn’t have an answer. He didn’t have anything.”

Jamie was quiet for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was gentler.

“Al, listen to me. I know you’re hurting. And I know you’re pissed—you should be pissed about the kitten thing, that’s genuinely awful. But I need you to listen.”

“What?”

“Loving him wasn’t a mistake.”

“But—”

“It wasn’t.” He cut me off. “You did something brave. You let someone in, knowing the risk, knowing it might hurt. That’s not stupid. That’s not pathetic. That’s the bravest thing you do. You put that big ass heart to use.”

I didn’t say anything. Bernie had settled his full weight against my legs, pinning me to the bed, and I focused on the warmth of him while my brother kept talking.

“You know what I think?” Jamie said. “I think Corbin was basically another foster. Some scared, lost creature showed up on your doorstep, and you did what you always do—you took care of him. You fed him. You gave him a safe place to land. You helped him figure out who he was when everything else in his life had fallen apart.”

“And now?”

His voice was soft. “And now you have to let him go. That’s the deal with fosters, right? You love them while they’re yours, and then you let them go and hope you left them better than you found them.”

The tears were back. I pressed my palm against my eyes, trying to hold them in.

“What if I didn’t?” The question came out small. “What if I made everything worse?”

“Don’t be dumb, it doesn’t look good on you.” I could hear him shaking his head. “There’s no chance in hell you made things worse. You probably showed him what it looks like when someone gives a shit. You saved that kitten’s life. You gave him a few weeks of something amazing.” He paused. “And if he’s too stupid to see what he’s walking away from, that’s on him. Not you.”

“I hate this.”

“I know.”

“I really hate this.”

“I know.” A beat of silence. “You should get some sleep. Call me tomorrow?”

“Yeah.” I wiped my face. “Thanks, J.”

“Love you, Al.”

“Love you too.”

After I hung up, I slid off the bed and onto the floor next to Bernie. And then I flopped onto my back on the hardwood, eyes staring up at the ceiling I’d painted a soft gray when I moved in because I wanted my bedroom to feel calm. Peaceful. Like a place where nothing bad could happen.

So much for that.

The animals followed me down. Bernie thumped onto the floor next to me, his massive head finding my stomach. Luna curled against my hip. Harold, Steve and the others arranged themselves near my feet.

The cats observed from above, too dignified to join the floor pile but unwilling to leave entirely. I lay there, surrounded by fur and warmth and the steady rhythm of heartbeats that weren’t my own, and I let the grief settle.

I’d fallen for him.

Swell.

Sometimes shit happens.

But that was the truth I’d been avoiding. I’d fallen for a grumpy, guarded man who’d shown up with a kitten in his coat and a chip on his shoulder the size of Alaska. A man who brought me coffee without being asked and learned all my animals’ names, and looked like Superman’s sexy brother. A man who reminded me what it felt like to be touched and worshipped and cherished.

A man who’d whispered stay against my hair once while he was half asleep, like I was the one who might leave.

And now he was gone.

Maybe Jamie was right. Maybe the pain didn’t mean I’d been wrong to love him. I gave Muffy those GS-441 injections every day—agonizing shots that made her scream and fight and hate me. The treatment was brutal. It hurt her. And it was still saving her life. Maybe the right choice was the painful one.

I’d given Corbin my whole heart, all the while knowing the risk. Knowing how it might end. And if he never came back—if he’d made his choice and I had to live with it—I decided I wouldn’t regret that.

Even if it felt like shit now.

I don’t know how long I stayed on the floor. Long enough for my back to ache against the hardwood. Long enough for Bernie to start snoring; his wheezy breaths oddly comforting in the dark. Long enough for the anger to soften into something that felt almost like peace.

Eventually, I turned my head and stared at the empty doorway.

No footsteps. No headlights sweeping across the ceiling. No miracle arrival to make everything okay. Just me and my animals.