The Weight We Keep

Some secrets are kept out of fear. Some out of love. The worst ones are both at once.

On a cold early spring morning, Rocky opens his front door and nearly steps on a puppy the size of his forepaw. There's a note pinned to her collar. The last word on it is streets. He stands in the doorway with the note between his teeth and understands, with the complete and wordless certainty his body sometimes offers before his brain has finished assembling an argument, that he is not going to let that happen.

What follows is not a rescue story, though it begins like one. It is the story of what Rocky does next - and what that choice costs, over four years of daily proximity to a daughter who doesn't know she's his, a team that knows and says nothing, and a question that gets more direct with every birthday that passes.

The Weight We Keep is told in the spaces between secrets: the three-in-the-morning bottle feeds with a grabber claw held at precisely the right angle; the stool moved from the back of the workshop to within conversation distance; the equipment check that Skye builds herself from the inside out, not knowing whose habit she's inherited. It is about the specific loneliness of loving someone from a distance you've chosen, and about what happens when the distance finally, inevitably, runs out.

For readers who love slow, layered emotional storytelling: this is a book about the weight of love when it can't announce itself, and what happens when it finally can. It will sit with you.

This story should only be on Wattpad!!

Hey everyone! This story is a fanfiction based on Paw Patrol, which belongs to Keith Chapman, Spin Master Entertainment, and Nickelodeon.
I don't own the characters or the original series - all rights go to their rightful owners.