Free Breaking the Rules: The Honeybees, book 1 by Amy Archer

Taco for a few minutes, and then we stood back and watched him bouncing around with the other dogs and running back and forth across the length of the park. He definitely had some spare energy that I did not.
    We stood talking, and soon my curiosity got the better of me. “I have to ask,” I said, peering at Devin intently, “how did you lose Taco? You clearly care about him a lot, but I just don’t understand how he ran away and how you didn’t find him. I mean, he was in the shelter for two whole weeks.”
    Devin’s face darkened. “I don’t understand it either,” he said. “But here’s what happened. I was taking him for a walk in my neighborhood. Another dog we passed tried to intimidate him, and he got scared and backed right out of his collar. I ran after him, but he was fast. I guess that dog really spooked him, because he was just gone.”
    “Oh,” I said, startled. “So that’s why he wasn’t wearing a collar? I assumed he just didn’t have one.”
    “No, he has a collar,” Devin said. “I still have it at home. It had a tag on it too, with his name and my phone number. And he ran away without any of it.”
    My heart dropped, imagining the situation. “You must’ve been so worried,” I said.  
    “I was. In fact, I still have his tag. You should put it back on him,” he said, looking straight at me. “Just in case he ever gets away again. He’s a sneaky one.”
    “Okay,” I agreed, wishing I had thought to get a tag engraved myself. Devin suddenly seemed like a much more responsible dog owner that I was myself. “So you looked for him?” I prompted.  
    “Of course. I looked for hours. I was so scared that something had happened to him.”
    “Which day did you lose him?” I asked. “I found him on the 21 st of September.”
    He looked at me sideways. “You remember the date you found him?” he asked.  
    I blushed and looked away then. “Um,” I fumbled. “I guess…it was kind of an important day for me.”
    “I suppose you have it on your calendar to celebrate Dog Day every September 21 st now?” he chided me.  
    “No, not like that,” I said hesitantly. Should I tell him? “I mean, finding him was important, but that’s not why I remember the date. It was—I found him right after I got dumped.”
    Devin nodded slowly. “Sorry to hear it.”
    He didn’t ask, but I continued. “We were together for six years. And I didn’t see it coming. But right afterward, I found this amazing dog….”
    “And you decided to keep him for yourself,” Devin finished for me.  
    “No!” I said, suddenly angry, my voice rising. “It wasn’t like that! I tried my best to help him find his way home. I followed him around. I let him lead the way. I looked for you—even if I didn’t know it was you. And when you didn’t show up, I took him to a shelter, in hopes that you would find him again. I did everything right!” My voice sounded shrill and I hated it, but I was angry that he would accuse me of something so patently untrue, so opposite of what I was trying to do for him. I had been trying to help.
    “So why didn’t you get him?” I asked, my voice more accusatory than I’d intended.  
    “I looked. I searched the neighborhood every day. I put up missing flyers. I went online every day trying to find him. The animal shelters around here all post photos of the dogs they find, and every day I searched their database. At first I searched for black and white dogs with some shepherd in them, but then I got desperate and expanded my search to all dogs with any black in their description. Do you know how many dogs I had to sort through to see if I could find mine? There are a lot of dogs that go missing in this city.”
    I froze. “You searched the database by fur color?” I asked. A creeping realization spread through my body.  
    He nodded.  
    “Taco was misidentified,” I said quietly.  
    “What do you mean?” he asked, wary.
    “When I went to get him, after I