A Vet Saved a Mafia Boss’s Dying German Shepherd at Midnight — Then Discovered the Owner Was the Boy Who Stole Her First Kiss and Vanished 14 Years Ago

Chapter 2

Her hand stopped moving. She looked up slowly, the way you do when your eyes need a second to confirm what your brain is already doing something embarrassing about.

“Nick.”

The word came out barely above a breath. “Oh my god. Nick.”

His eyes sharpened. Something moved across his face — recognition first, then something harder and faster underneath it. “Jen.”

They stared at each other across a veterinary clinic at midnight on Easter Sunday, surrounded by a nauseated German Shepherd, a smug Scottish Fold, and two men named Tom and Jerry.

“No way,” they said at exactly the same moment.

Jen took two steps toward him. He took one toward her, and fourteen years collapsed into about three feet of fluorescent-lit clinic. “Nick Brown, I cannot believe it’s been fourteen years. Fourteen years.” His eyes went from her face to the balloon pajamas to the one missing sock and back to her face, and whatever he’d been about to say died somewhere in the journey. She hit his shoulder, not hard. “Fourteen years, and you could have at least called.”

Tom’s hand moved toward his jacket. Jerry stepped between them before anyone could blink. Nick raised one hand in Tom’s direction, eyes still on Jen, and Tom went still.

Behind them, Tom leaned toward Jerry. “Who’s Nick Brown?”