It’s almost ten at night, and there’s still enough daylight for me to squeeze in an hour of training with Storm. She’s graduated beyond obedience lessons. We covered those as soon as she was old enough. We’ve passed manners training, too, which is particularly critical given her size. Greeting people by jumping on them ceased to be adorable about twenty pounds ago. By the time she’s full-grown, even leaning in for attention could topple people. Roughhousing is for playtime and only with a select few people. For the rest, she must comport herself with queenly dignity.

Tonight’s lesson is also critical for her breed: distraction and dominance training. She’ll weigh more than me in a few months, which means I will physically be unable to restrain her. I’m putting her through her basic paces—sit, stay, come—while Dalton sits on the porch and tosses her favorite ball in the air.

“Storm . . .” I say when she looks his way.

Her ears perk, but her gaze doesn’t move.

“Eyes on me.”

Her head shifts, just enough so she can see me out of the corner of her eye.

“Uh-uh. Eyes on me. Both of them.”

Her gaze shoots to me. Back to Dalton. He chuckles.

“Storm.”

She sighs, a deep one, her jowls quivering. Then she looks my way and keeps her attention there.

Dalton fake-fumbles the ball. As it thumps to the ground, her head whips toward him.

“Storm,” I say. “Eyes on me.”

Another sigh, as she looks my way with a glower, like a teen saying, Happy now?

“Stand.”

She does.

“Sit.”

She grumbles at that, having clearly hoped the stand meant she was about to be released.

“Down.”

She flounces to the ground. Dalton pitches the ball. It springs past us, and her muscles bunch.

“Stay.”

She hesitates, muscles still tense. Then she gives in and tears her gaze from the ball.

“Are you ready?” I say.

She whimpers, body quivering. But she doesn’t rise. Doesn’t look at Dalton. Keeps her gaze on me.

“Wait . . . wait . . . and . . . go.”

She leaps up and tears toward Dalton . . . and I see that sling on his arm.

“Shit!” I say. “I mean, no, wait—”

He falls on his ass before she can get to him. As she pounces, I’m running over with “Storm, no—”

“It’s fine,” he says. “We’ve got this.”

He sits on the ground and rubs her with his good hand as she dances on his lap. Then he raises his arm for me to toss him the ball. I do, and I retreat to the deck to watch them play fetch. Except Dalton has never actually known a dog, so his version of fetch is, well, unique. He throws the ball, and they both run after it, which usually results in a football tackle. That’s more his style, getting in there and working off energy, and Storm loves it, so I wouldn’t argue . . . if he didn’t have his arm in a sling.

When I try to intercede again, though, he waves me off, and he is being careful, so I settle on the deck. I watch him shrug off his day and become the guy he can be only in the relative privacy of our backyard. The guy who slides on the grass and tackles a dog and gets a faceful of fur and comes up sputtering and laughing and crowing in victory, too, as he waves a slobbery ball over his head.

I think of Phil’s thinly veiled threat to exile Dalton, as if he’s committed some terrible crime. That “crime” is devoting his life to this town, risking his life today to protect a man who did not deserve protecting. Dalton might stride through Rockton like he owns the place, but it owns him, too, and it owes him better than this.

I never want to lose the guy I see tonight, playing with a dog. This problem isn’t mine to fix, and it’s patronizing to try, but sometimes I peer down Dalton’s life path, to a future where he becomes the front he shows others—harsh, tough—and then continues along that road until he reaches bitter resignation, no longer even bothering to fight back, because he knows it won’t do any good.

I fear for a future where Dalton is no longer Rockton’s protector, its best advocate, its biggest cheerleader. A future where he’s just a guy doing a job, putting in his time here because he has no place else to go, hating the town and himself for that.

I want to tell myself I’m overreacting. I see him playing with Storm, and I want to say, See, even amid all this, he’s fine. But I know Oliver Brady will not be an anomaly. Phil hinted at that today. If Brady survives his stay here, there will be others. If he doesn’t? I don’t know what happens then, but I fear that outcome would be even worse. For Dalton. For Rockton. For all of us.