“An animal shelter?” If I had even attempted to make any guesses to our final location, an animal shelter would have never even occurred to me.

“You’re not afraid of animals, are you?” he asked, coming around to get the door for me. Clearly one of the baseball coaches was teaching those boys some manners. Or maybe it was just Chris and Nathan. Either way, I was more than appreciative of the gesture.

“No,” I told him. “Haven’t had much experience with them, but I’m not afraid.”

“That’s for sure,” he said with a wink. He was being so nice to me. He hadn’t even commented when I came downstairs ten minutes after the ten minutes he had allotted, in jeans and a T-shirt and my tear-stained face scrubbed clean. It was the last thing I needed in terms of my growing attraction to him, but totally necessary in terms of how my day had gone so far.

I paused before we got to the shelter door.

“This isn’t some sort of doggy death row, is it?” The last thing I needed was to see some sad-eyed pooch that needed to be rescued or else he’d be put down. My heart was already feeling tender as it was.

“It’s a no-kill shelter,” Nathan assured me. “No death row here.”

The lobby of the shelter was clean and bright, pictures of happy-looking animals on posters adorning the walls. When I thought of animal shelters, the first thing that always came to mind was the one from Lady and the Tramp—a sad, dark place full of abandoned, downtrodden animals.

Nathan thanked the woman at the desk and came over, two visitor badges in his hand.

“Here you go,” he said.

We put them on and I followed him through a heavy metal door, also decorated with a poster. It read: “Who Rescued Who?” and had a picture of a little boy holding a puppy. It was stupid cute.

“Do you come here every month?” I asked Nathan as he led us down a hall. I kept waiting to hear the whimpering and whining of animals in need, but the place was pretty quiet and calm.

“Every week,” he told me. “It’s how I relax.”

I was about to ask him how spending time with sad, lonely animals helped him relax when we came to another door.

“Ready?” he asked and I nodded, not knowing what to expect.

Nathan rapped his knuckles on the door and I heard the patter of feet on the other side. Definitely not animal feet. Human. Then came the buzz of whispers and one authoritative voice that said:

“Hands up, mouth shut!”

The buzzing stopped and I heard something like a gate open and close and then finally the door opened.

A pretty young woman poked her head out of the room, her face breaking into a smile at the sight of Nathan. There came that annoying stab of jealousy. She looked a little older than I was, but I remember Nathan telling me that very first night we met that he preferred older women. And this “older” woman was very attractive, with a charming heart-shaped face, smooth brown skin and shiny jet black hair.

“Nathan!” she said, opening the door wide. Behind her I could see a small holding area, and beyond that a room where a bunch of elementary-aged kids were gathered, looking at us with wide, excited eyes. “We were wondering if you were going to skip today.”

“You know I would never miss this,” Nathan said.

“Well, it is a few days before an important game,” the woman said, stepping aside to let us through the door.

“Exactly,” Nathan said. “No better way to prepare.” Once we were all in the holding area, the door shut behind us, he gave the woman a hug and kiss on the cheek. Stop it, I told the jealousy monster growling in my stomach. You said no, remember. Over and over, you said no.

“Yvette,” Nathan said, turning to us. “This is Sophie. She’s going to help out today.”

“So nice to meet you,” Yvette said, holding out her hand. “Nathan always brings us the best volunteers.”

“Does he?” I asked, casting a sideways glance at him. He just shrugged.

“Come on,” Yvette said, leading up towards the gate where the kids were gathered. “Let me introduce you to the kids.”

“And what exactly have we volunteered for?” I asked under my breath as Nathan and I followed.

“You’ll see,” he said with a grin. “But I guarantee you won’t regret it.”

He was right. Because on the other side of the gate wasn’t just two dozen charming elementary school students, but an entire room filled with adorable, roaming kittens.

I noticed that most of the children had picture books in their hands. When I asked Yvette about it, she smiled and explained.

“The kids come and read to the cats,” she told me. “It allows them to practice their reading, and it gets the cats used to being around humans, which makes it easier to find them homes. It’s a win-win situation.”

“An adorable win-win situation,” I said and she smiled in agreement.

“Would you like to sit with one of our students?” she asked. “Sometimes they need help sounding out words. That’s what Nathan does when he volunteers with us.”

Sure enough, Nathan was seated on the floor next to a pigtailed youngster who was reading Shel Silverstein to a rapt audience of tabby kittens, who each took turns crawling across Nathan’s lap. My heart melted into a puddle of goo.

There was a tug on my shirt and I looked down to find a towheaded little boy with a copy of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.

“I need help with some of the words,” he said and my goo-puddle heart melted even more.

“Of course,” I said and followed him to one of the seats under the window. The whole room was painted in bright colors with ledges built into the walls. Above us were open rafters and there were cats and kittens everywhere, some perched above, some peering out of little cubbyholes, while most seemed to be patrolling the situation on the ground, occasionally weaving through little legs or curling up on little laps. The minute I sat down with my reading partner, a beautiful Siamese came strolling up to us, purring wildly.

Like I told Nathan, I hadn’t had much experience with pets—there had always been some feral cats around our apartment complex, but they weren’t friendly and definitely had no interest in children. These cats, on the other hand, seemed thrilled to be around all of us. The Siamese wasted no time in leaping into my lap and settling down for a nap while my young friend read out loud to him, only needing help with two words.

Sitting there, I was filled with the kind of calm and peace I hadn’t felt in a long time and I understood exactly why Nathan came here. Nothing outside this room mattered at the moment. It was amazing how I was doing so little, really just sitting there, and yet, it made such a difference to both the kids and the pets.

Every so often, I would glance up and find Nathan looking over at me. It hadn’t taken long for him to get practically covered in sleeping kittens and the sight was obscenely adorable. My heart did that twisty thing that it seemed to be doing a lot now, but for once, I didn’t fight it. Yeah, I liked Nathan. I liked him a lot and today I was going to allow myself to feel that way, no matter how ill-advised it might be down the road.

When my reading pal, whose name was Jordon, went to retrieve another book, Yvette came over to sit next to me. The Siamese in my lap purred with pleasure as she reached over and gave it a scratch between the ears.

“Thank you so much for coming,” she told me. “We’re always short volunteers.”

“Really?” I asked. “This seems like something a lot of people would be interested in doing.”

“No one really knows about it,” she said. “The shelter is volunteer-run and it’s mostly retirees who aren’t really that savvy on social media. I do what I can, but I teach full-time and it takes a lot of energy wrangling these guys at the end of a day of teaching.”

This close, I could see that there were dark circles under her eyes, though they didn’t take away from her beauty in any way. I felt that twinge of jealousy again, but mostly because I couldn’t imagine being so altruistic. Though, if giving back to the community meant hanging out here for a few hours a week, I couldn’t imagine why more people wouldn’t be interested. The wheels in my head started turning.

“How did Nathan get involved?” I asked Yvette.

“One of the assistant coaches is my husband,” she said and that other, unpleasant jealous feeling I had had about Yvette and Nathan immediately vanished. “A lot of the guys come and volunteer,” she told me. “But it gets a little harder around game time. Nathan is the only one who is consistent. We’re really going to miss him when the majors take him.” A small frown appeared on her face.

“What is it?”

“Oh.” she looked around and lowered her voice. “There’s been some talk about shutting this program down.”

“Why?” I couldn’t imagine who would object to something that seemed to serve a community so well.

“No one wants to pay for it,” she said. “All the other local shelters are state-run, but that means they have to euthanize pets when they run out of space. We’re a non-profit, but we can’t do much without donations. And things haven’t been great lately.”

But Yvette smiled in Nathan’s direction. “He’s been a great help, though. Donates a lot every month, but he can’t support us forever. It’s not fair, either.”

If only other people in the community were as dedicated as he was, I thought, following her gaze. Or maybe the problem wasn’t that people weren’t interested. Like Yvette said, the volunteers weren’t great at social media. Maybe no one knew this place even existed.

Across the room, Nathan was totally engrossed in the book he was reading with the pigtailed girl, who was now sitting in his lap, with two tiny kittens in her own. I imagined it as the main image for the article, only now the article wasn’t about Nathan. It was about the shelter.