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

chaotic force in my life.
    “Want to go for a run?” I asked. I was feeling antsy, even though my feet were still tired from this morning.  
    “Right now?” he asked.  
    “I need all the training I can get,” I admitted. Devin probably could’ve run the marathon tomorrow, but I was far from ready.
    “Sure, let’s do it!”
    Devin called Taco over and attached his leash to him, and together the three of us left the dog park and began jogging on a path just outside it. Devin held the leash, but Taco was easily distracted, and as we ran Devin was jerked back over and over again as Taco stopped to sniff flowers and bushes and to pee on anything he could. Each time Devin pulled on the leash and told him to heel, and Taco would look up as though he’d forgotten what he was doing, and start running alongside him again.  
    We ran in silence, and my mind turned toward work. To make up for the kids losing art class, I was planning a few additional art-related activities, but it wasn’t enough. Surely I could find ways to incorporate art into the other activities I had planned. Let’s see…I could turn addition practice into an opportunity to paint popsicle sticks and build a box out of them. We could talk about how if you used nine sticks on one side of the box, you’d need nine sticks on the three other sides as well…
    Absorbed in thought, I wasn’t paying much attention to where we were going, one foot in front of the other, over and over, until suddenly Taco jetted out in front of me without warning. He was crossing my path to get to a beetle scuttling toward the grass, I saw in the last moment before I tripped over the dog and felt myself falling.  
    It happened so quickly that I hardly had a chance to react. One moment we were running along, and the next I was falling, hard, toward the gravel path. Trying not to fall on top of Taco, I made a split-second decision that landed me flat on one knee, and before I could even figure out exactly what had happened Devin had stopped and was examining the damage.  
    “Sophie, I’m so sorry,” he said, genuine concern in his voice. “Are you hurt? I should’ve held him tighter.” I remembered what he’d said the last time we’d met, about how he hadn’t pursued a skydiving job out of fear of hurting someone else.
    “It’s not your fault,” I said.
    I moved to a sitting position, my knee stinging. The marathon! I thought, fear creeping in. My knee was bleeding and covered in tiny gravel, and my wrist was scraped but not bleeding. It would probably be sore—I had caught myself on both knee and wrist—but right now I was more concerned with the knee. I could still run with a sprained wrist, but not with a hurt knee.  
    “How bad is it?” he asked. “Did you twist it, or just scrape it?”
    “Just scrape it, I think,” I gasped out. “But—oh, it really hurts.”
    “Sit there as long as you need to,” he said, and he and Taco moved aside to let other runners, bikers, or walkers who might come upon us on the trail pass by.  
    I was in pain, but more than anything I was angry with myself. How could I have let this happen? I wasn’t supposed to let anything happen to interfere with my plans. I was not supposed to get hurt, was not supposed to derail my goal.  
    After a couple of minutes I let Devin help me up, and we slowly made our way back the direction we’d come from.  
    When we came to an intersection, Devin offered, “You can stay here while I go get my car, if you’d like. You shouldn’t walk on that more than you have to.”
    I was surprised to hear he had a car; he always arrived at the trainings and our doggy play dates by bike. I started to protest, to say that I’d be fine and could go along with him, but my knee gave another sharp pain, and I nodded.  
    “Okay. Thanks, Devin,” I said. I sat on a bench near the street and watched as Devin and Taco disappeared into the distance. Watching the dog walk away with Devin gave me some