Chapter 10
CASH
It was just Chase and Danny and me for dinner that night.
We were having grilled cheese with bits of ham on top because it was the closest we could get to pizza without driving all the way to Brodnax, and also we were too broke for pizza.
But it was nice, just the three of us. It felt like it might be a good time to practice talking to people.
And I needed to practice if I wanted to get better at it—and there wasn’t anybody safer than Danny.
“We have stray kittens at the vet clinic,” I said quietly.
“Shit,” Danny said. “Don’t tell Gracie!”
“I won’t,” I said. Then I cleared my throat. “They’re really small and have to get fed every few hours.”
Danny looked surprised, and it probably wasn’t about the kitten-feeding schedule.
It was about the fact that we were having a whole-ass conversation without Chase as the middleman.
Like, I hadn’t just answered with a nod to show I’d heard and understood.
I’d answered with words and then actually added some more to continue the exchange.
But he recovered quickly and said, “How many are there?”
And this was why Danny was the best. He’d asked me something that I could answer with one word or just hold up the right number of fingers.
Or I could keep talking. But either way, it was my choice.
And it was tempting to sink back into silence and safety.
But that wouldn’t get me any further ahead than I was now.
So I sucked in a breath and said, “Four of them.”
Danny gave me an encouraging smile. “I bet they’re cute.”
“Yeah,” I whispered, grinning back. “One of them’s orange. We had to—” Words failed me for a second, and Chase gave me a sharp look, like he thought he might have to step in. “We had to go look for the orange one because the guy only brought three of them in.”
Chase’s gaze flicked back and forth between us like he was watching a tennis match.
“That’s awesome,” Danny said. “Where’d you go looking?”
“By the old bridge.” And I was pretty much done with words at that moment.
I felt wrung out, but also weirdly elated.
It was dumb because Danny was my brother and I trusted him, but I’d spent the last couple of years letting Chase talk for me, even here in this house, because it was easiest. My silence might have been for safety in the beginning, but now it was an ingrained habit that I would have to work hard to break.
“We definitely can’t let Gracie know there’s an orange cat,” Danny said. He gave me an encouraging smile, like he was waiting to see if I was going to say anything else. Then he said, “Is this cheese okay? I think it was past its expiration date.”
“That just makes it fancier cheese,” Chase said. “Like that blue moldy stuff. People pay a shit ton of money for fancy French shit, but when we eat moldy cheese, suddenly it’s because we’re trash.”
“Oh, we’re trash for a lot more reasons than that,” Danny said with a broad grin. “I caught you cutting your toenails on the back porch yesterday.”
“Wasn’t the front porch where the neighbors could see,” Chase pointed out. “So fuck you, I’m practically a gentleman.”
I grinned and listened to the two of them talk shit as I ate my grilled cheese.
I found my thoughts straying back to Mason—they seemed to be doing that a lot lately—and wondered what he was doing.
Probably feeding the kittens and making them poop by rubbing their butts, which seemed gross and cute at the same time.
“I wasn’t expecting you home so early, actually,” Danny said to me. “You’ve been spending a whole bunch of time visiting that dog.”
I nodded and held the words at the front of my mind before I pushed them out. “I’m going over later to spend the night.”
Chase’s jaw dropped. “You’re what?”
And that was too many words, so I leaned over and whispered into his ear, “To feed the kittens at night. It’s not fair that Mason has to do it all on his own.”
“You can’t sleep somewhere else,” Chase said.
It wasn’t a refusal. It was a statement of fact. At least, as far as we both knew. But then, there were a lot of things that we thought were true that had changed. Maybe this had too.
“Won’t know if I don’t try,” I whispered.
Chase didn’t say anything else, but he gave me some serious side-eye, and I couldn’t exactly blame him. Going to stay at Mason’s could be a disaster, and I hadn’t even asked Mason first. The idea had just dropped into my head as a fully formed thought and I’d gone with it.
But I hoped it would work out. I’d seen the shadows getting darker under Mason’s eyes over the last week until they were almost the color of bruises, and I knew from experience what that meant.
At least if I took over feeding the kittens, then he’d get some sleep.
And he needed it more than me—I was used to running on only a couple of hours’ worth.
Chase stared at me for a moment longer and then nodded. “Call me if you need me to come get you. I’ll kick Danny out of bed and he can drive me there.”
Danny shrugged. “If you need to, sure.”
“I’ll be fine,” I said with a hell of a lot more confidence than I felt.
But Dog would be there and so would the kittens.
And since the kittens needed me, I didn’t get to tap out, right?
And maybe it wasn’t just the kittens that needed me.
Maybe Mason did too, even though he hadn’t asked.
You could need something without knowing it.
And when someone needed looking after, you stepped up.
That was what Chase and I had been doing for each other our whole lives.
So maybe I could be there for Mason too.
Because who else did he have in his corner? In all the time I’d spent hanging out at his place, he’d never invited a friend over—and okay, he didn’t know anyone in town yet, but sometimes he seemed lonely.
Mason did important work, and he needed his sleep.
And he needed to know that someone had his back, even if that someone was just the guy who mopped his floors and folded his towels.
Except I thought—hoped—that I was more than that now.
We were friends at least, weren’t we? Friends who didn’t talk much, but we shared our space.
And maybe we were more than that, because I didn’t think I’d misinterpreted that moment between us in the treatment room.
He was attracted to guys—he was attracted to me—and I was attracted to him in return, and we’d almost kissed.
And if that moment had felt so big, as big as the universe, and so heavy and giddy at the same time, then what would an actual kiss feel like? I didn’t know, but maybe if I was brave enough, I could find out.
“I’ll be fine,” I said again.
And this time, I meant it.
It was dark by the time I got to Mason’s. Dog must have heard the dirt bike coming because I could hear him whining and scratching at the front door before I even made it onto the porch. A second later the lights came on inside, and the door opened.
“Cash!” Mason had one hand on Dog’s collar. His face split with a smile. “I thought you weren’t coming.”
“Sorry.” I made myself hold his gaze. “I had to go home and get some stuff.” I held up my backpack. “I thought I could stay over and help with the kittens.”
Mason’s expression froze and then wavered, and then he pressed his mouth into a line and swallowed.
He cleared his throat. “That’s—shit, Cash, that’s great.
Seriously.” He tugged Dog back inside and closed the door behind us.
“I’d do the whole polite ‘Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly let you!
’ except you might take me up on it and leave. ”
I snorted.
He knocked me gently with his shoulder. “I like having you around.”
My stomach did a couple of flips. “You do?”
He grinned. “I had to mop my own floors. It was a travesty.”
I snorted again, but the anxious knot inside of me that had been growing on the ride over here—that one that told me I was being stupid and Mason wouldn’t want me here—dissolved into nothing at his grin.
Dog sniffed excitedly around my ankles as we headed for the kitchen. The back door was open, and Dog darted outside.
“Did he have his food yet?” I asked.
Mason nodded.
“And the kittens?”
“Not yet.” He checked his phone. “They’re due for another feed soon, though.”
The kittens were in their carrier in the kennel room, snuggled up in a pile of soft old towels.
My gaze was drawn immediately to the orange one—my favorite, because it was the one I’d found—and it was the first one I picked up when Mason opened the door.
It was so tiny and helpless, and I held it close to my chest to keep it warm.
“I thought I could bring in a chair from outside,” I said.
Mason gave me a quizzical look. “What for?”
“For staying in here,” I said. “Overnight.”
“Hell, no,” Mason said. “These guys are already in a carrier. We’ll take it upstairs and they can sleep in the spare bedroom with you.” He shook his head, smiling. “I’m not going to make you sleep in the kennel room, Cash.”
We snuggled with the kittens for a while—Mason called it examining them, but it was really just cuddling—and then we put them back in the carrier and went upstairs.
It felt strange to suddenly be in what was Mason’s personal space.
Or, rather, his uncle’s, because it had that old-man vibe of a bunch of the apartments at Sunny Fields.
Everything was a little out of date, but in a comfortable way, and smelled a bit musty like a thrift store.
I didn’t mind it. I liked spaces that were lived-in and undisturbed at the same time.
The spare room was tiny, hardly large enough to open the door without hitting the bed. Mason squeezed his way around the bed to the window, avoiding a bunch of plastic crates that were stacked against the wall, and wrenched it open with a squeal.
“Sorry,” he said. “I haven’t really been in here at all. I’ll find you some clean sheets.”
We made the bed.