Chapter 10
ten
. . .
CONNOR
At some point, I must fall asleep, because the next thing I know, the cat sneezes directly into my ribs and jolts me awake.
I blink at the ceiling, disoriented. “What the hell was that?”
She sneezes again. Then a third time for dramatic effect.
I sit up, scrubbing a hand down my face. “You good?”
She blinks at me like I asked her to explain quantum physics, then lets out a pathetic little cough before flopping sideways against my hip.
Great.
That’s all I need—on top of wanting the girl I can’t have—now I get to worry about a cat I don’t own.
Against my better judgment, I grab my phone and search up cat sneezing.
It’s a mistake instantly. The internet informs me that the cat is suffering from at least fourteen different fatal illnesses, including but not limited to asthma, allergies, feline herpes, and something called calicivirus, which sounds like a wizard’s spell.
I drop my phone on the mattress and scrub my hand over my face. “You’re not dying. You’re just a menace.”
She climbs onto my chest like she owns it—which, fine, apparently she does now—and tucks her face under my chin. Her purr is steady, warm, a vibrating little engine that fills the empty corners of the room I trained myself not to notice.
I don’t get much sleep after that. I half-doze and half-monitor her breathing like I’m running my own feline ICU unit in a beach rental. Every time she sneezes, I’m awake again. Every time she doesn’t, I’m waiting for her to.
By the time my alarm goes off for morning practice, I’ve slept maybe forty minutes, and Pussy’s sneeze count is at seventeen.
I glance at her. “I’m going to practice. Try not to perish.”
She gives me a wet little sneeze in response, which I take as a threat.
Practice is a blur of laps, and whistles, and pretending I can’t feel Whitney’s presence on the other side of the pool deck. I don’t look at her. Not once. Which is a Herculean accomplishment given the scene my brain replayed on loop last night.
Afterwards, I check on Pussy between foam rolling and protein intake, half expecting to find a tiny cat corpse. Instead, she ambushes me from under the couch and sneezes directly at my knees.
“You need to see a vet.” I tell her, as if she could make the call herself.
The nearest vet can’t see her until late afternoon.
I ask if noon is possible. They tell me no.
I consider bribery—because what is all this brand endorsement money in my bank account useful for if not to get the stray cat who is taking over my life desperately needed medical attention? The receptionist is unmoved.
That translates to afternoon practice, then vet appointment.
By two, I’m back at the aquatic center. Whitney is there, obviously. She’s stretching with Ren and Dani. At one point she looks over her shoulder, and I pretend to be extremely focused on my water bottle lid. Real smooth.
But it’s what I need to do in order to diffuse the situation. The situation being that I desperately want the one woman that could derail every goal I set when I moved to Coral Cove to train with the Current.
After practice, I sprint home, throw on clean clothes and assess the cat situation.
I don’t own a carrier, obviously. I don’t own anything a pet would need besides the bag of food I bought on impulse and refuse to admit to. So, I wrap her in a beach towel and she settles into it like a tiny burrito of contempt and wheezing.
The vet is four blocks away, so I lock up and head down the sidewalk with the little furball tucked against my chest.
It’s not until I hit the corner of Wavecrest Way that fate decides to screw with me.
There—like a ray of sunshine and every fantasy I’ve been actively trying to repress, is Whitney.
She’s walking toward me, smoothie in hand, hair still damp from her post-practice shower.
And the way she spots me instantly and angles in my direction tells me she has zero awareness that I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours avoiding her like she’s a controlled substance.
She stops in front of me, straw between her lips as she squints into the late-day sun.
“Hey,” she says, freckles dancing across her nose in that way that makes not staring feel impossible.
My brain sends a signal to act normal. My body is like cool, but what if we remember every sound she made on that mat?
She nods to the towel bundle in my arms.
“So, you’re a cat dad,” she says.
“I’m not a cat dad,” I counter immediately, because hell no.
She arches a brow. “Mm-hmm. And yet you’re snuggling a cat in a towel-burrito.”
I look down and adjust the towel like that somehow changes the optics. “She’s not mine. She just showed up.”
Whitney takes a slow sip of her smoothie—the kind of slow that makes my pulse trip over itself —and tilts her head. “So, she adopted you.”
Before I can argue, Pussy pokes her head out and presses her nose under my jaw like she’s a tiny traitor with impeccable comedic timing.
Whitney breaks into a grin. “Right. Totally strangers.”
That grin does something to me. It’s warm. Familiar in a way that makes my chest go uncomfortably tight.
“She’s cute,” Whitney says, leaning in to scratch gently behind Pussy’s ear.
Her hand brushes my bicep and my pulse spikes like I just sprinted a 50M with no warm-up.
“She sneezed for eight hours straight,” I manage.
“Aww, even cuter,” Whitney coos.
“That’s not how that works.”
“It is for cats,” she says, absolutely certain. “Suffering equals adorable.”
I want to laugh. I also want to be less aware of how good she smells—the faint hint of chlorine under the scent of citrus shampoo, and something warm underneath that has no business being this distracting.
“What’s with the towel?” she asks. “No carrier?”
“She’s a stray. I’m not investing in a carrier.”
She gives me an obvious once-over. “Well, points for creativity. Seems to be a skill of yours.”
My first instinct is to grin. To lean into it. Toss out something smooth and let flirtation do what it does best. Because that’s what I’d normally do.
But Leo’s voice cuts in, sharp and annoyed. Avoid complications.
And standing on a sidewalk with a sneezing, towel-wrapped cat pressed to my chest while Whitney openly flirts with me?
Yeah. This is a complication with bonus levels.
Before I can respond, Pussy sneezes again—a tiny, wheezy explosion—and curls tighter against my chest.
Whitney’s expression subtly shifts into concern. And somehow that hits harder than the flirting.
“She okay?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” I admit before I can buffer it with humor. “Taking her to the vet. She didn’t sleep last night. Neither did I.”
Whitney softens. I hate how much I notice it.
“You were up all night with her?”
I shrug, adjusting the towel. “Someone has to make sure she keeps breathing. She’s tiny.”
The sentence is ridiculous and revealing, and I want it back the second it’s out.
Whitney studies my face and I swear her voice drops half an octave when she says, “That’s really sweet.”
I clear my throat and shove my free hand into my shorts pocket because I suddenly don’t know what to do with it. “Don’t tell anyone. I have a reputation.”
She gives me a look over the rim of her smoothie—amused, sly, like she’s deciding whether to call my bluff. “Oh, I know. I’ve heard.”
The words hit just enough to make something in my chest pull tight. Because I know exactly which versions circulate; the cocky bad boy, the sponsorship screwup, the guy who only cares about himself.
All of them technically accurate. None of them exactly true.
Before I can think of a comeback, she adds, “How’s your hip-stretching side job?”
I blink.
“It’s not a side job,” I say, heat creeping up my neck. “I was just helping.”
Her lips curve around the straw. “Mmm. It was super helpful. I give it five stars.”
It’s ridiculous. I’m twenty-seven and have been interviewed by international media without flinching, but one Whitney Shields Star Rating has me malfunctioning on a sidewalk.
“How is your hip?” I ask, but instantly regret it, because now I’m mentally replaying yesterday.
The memory of her on that mat, breathing through the tension, thighs under my hands, skin flushed, those little sounds she tried not to make.
And then, of course, the part where I jerked off last night to that exact memory, which is information she absolutely does not need.
“Good,” she says, rotating it slightly like she’s checking for tightness. “No locking. No pain.”
I nod. Too fast. “Good.”
Smooth. Perfect. Nothing awkward about that.
She bumps her shoulder into mine, playful, like this is just another Tuesday in small-town swimmer land and not the prelude to my moral unraveling. “Don’t worry. You didn’t break me.”
The line detonates in my skull. She has no idea. Zero. Meanwhile my body is like, yeah, but imagine if—
Nope. Not going there while I’m on a public sidewalk holding a cat burrito.
“So,” she says, eyes flicking to the cat again. “Vet appointment?”
“Yeah. I need to find out what’s wrong with her.”
“You want company?” she asks.
For a second, my heart stops. Because that wasn’t teasing. That was interest. Kindness. Maybe curiosity. I don’t know. But I feel it. And it’s so fucking dangerous.
“Sure,” I hear myself say, because I’m not thinking things through today. It must be the lack of sleep. Or it could be that I’m just an idiot looking to blow his life up even more.
We fall into step; Pussy tucked against my chest like a furry grenade. Whitney walks beside me, sipping her smoothie in small pulls that make her lips go plump and dark pink around the straw. My brain registers all of this without permission.
I should be thinking about the cat. Or Rory. Or the fact that I’m actively avoiding telling this girl I used to flirt with her online under a different name. Instead, my body is like…remember stretching her hip? Let’s replay that for the seven-hundredth time in high definition.