Chapter 4 #2
He doesn’t ask me to explain, and that is a huge point in his favor.
“Sign it again,” he asks, so I do, slowing down for him.
“The cat was…fine,” he tries, and I nod, “when you got it?” I nod again.
“Sick after?” I nod one last time, and he looks somewhat relieved.
“Okay. I can work with that.” He hesitates, then asks, “You’re not hard of hearing, are you?
Because if you need an interpreter, I can get one. We have—”
“No.” I shake my head, cutting him off. The smells in here are still a lot, but I’m less overwhelmed now, and my tongue has started to unstick from the roof of my mouth.
Sometimes, when it’s bad, all I can manage is a high-pitched whining sound, but my voice feels relaxed now. “I just struggle with words sometimes.”
“Totally understandable. I will do my best to communicate how you need.”
That’s…nice of him, I suppose. I should probably care more, but I don’t.
Palmer looks like he’s waiting for some kind of response, so I nod at him and gesture for him to go on.
“I’d like to keep this little baby for a few days if you don’t mind. Run some tests, see what’s going on. I can have Alana go over the cost of everything at the front desk—”
“No.”
He stops and stares. His eyes are wide and a little watery behind his glasses. I’ve always been kind of shit at reading expressions, but…is he going to cry?
Fuck, I hope not.
I never know what to do when people burst into tears. When I was younger, I would just hit them, but my father made it very clear that was the wrong response.
I take a breath, then hold up a finger and dig into my pocket for my thin, tattered wallet. I’ve had it since I was fifteen. Percy made it for me out of duct tape because it was one of the few materials I couldn’t accidentally shred while I was using it as a fidget.
“This is my brother,” I say slowly. I set Milo’s card on the counter so he can see my brother’s name. “He runs the cat café.”
Palmer’s eyes widen. “Oh. I know that place.”
I nod again. “Money doesn’t matter.”
“Are you sure? This can get pricey and—”
“Money doesn’t matter,” I repeat.
Money has never mattered. Money is just…
money. It exists, and we have it, and I don’t fucking care about it more than that.
Nico hates when I say that. He yells at me about privilege, which I get because he’s had to work all of his life for what little he has, and he’s spent years refusing to take what my father has offered him.
But it’s just not something I can bring myself to care about, just like the health plan for the cat.
As long as Palmer can make it better, that’s all that matters.
I don’t want to be here. I want to get away from these smells and back out on the street to see if I can find Denver.
My mind has already started wandering back to him, and pretty soon, I won’t be able to hear anything Palmer is saying because the only important thing is that Denver has been trying to track me down, and I was forced to leave him.
So now I want to hunt my little rabbit just like he was hunting me.
“O-okay,” Palmer says, putting the card into his pocket. “Then leave the cat to me.”
I nod and move to step away but freeze because I need him to understand something. “Do not let this cat die.”
Palmer’s eyes go wide. “I can’t guarantee that. I don’t know what’s wrong with her, and there might be nothing I can do.”
I grunt. “Do not let her die if you can help it,” I clarify. “Do you understand? Milo will find out.”
And Milo will be so pissed if Palmer doesn’t do everything in his power to save this cat. A pissed-off Milo is like unleashing actual hell on unsuspecting humans, and I don’t think this poor man really deserves my brother’s wrath.
Palmer swallows thickly. He now looks appropriately afraid, which means he’s read my threat for what it is.
But I need to drive it home. “Do what you need to do.”
He lets out a small breath. “For a stray cat who will probably never get adopted?”
I snort. I can’t help it. “Milo will find her a home. Trust me.”
He blinks, then nods and shuts the cage door again. “Let him know I’ll be in touch soon.”
This time, I don’t bother to respond. I pull the handle on the exam room and get the fuck out of the vet’s office before I have a sensory meltdown. The fresh air does wonders at erasing the stench, but it was cloying and sticks to the inside of my nose for a little too long.
Rolling all the windows down in the truck, I lean my head back against the seat and let my fingers work out some of the fidgets I’d been holding in the entire time. My first and middle fingers walk through the air, and I watch them cross through beams of sunlight.
Then my wrists bend, hands flapping, and as they do, tension starts to leave my body. I don’t open my eyes. I don’t want to know if people are watching. I just want to calm myself down so I can hit the road and head back to where I left my prey.
It doesn’t take me long to get back to the cemetery once I’m in the headspace to drive. There’s never any real traffic in this little town, and the cemetery is right at the edge, before the road that leads to all the farmland.
As I pull into the parking lot, my heart sinks when I realize that Denver’s car is gone, but it’s not exactly a surprise. He’s obedient. He was from the very moment I had him in that alley and wiped his attacker’s blood off his face.
But he’s also not a foolish man. He has pride, and he’s not going to wait, bent over a grave with his panty-clad ass out all day. Maybe someday, he will. Maybe someday, I can test his patience for me. But I’ll be doing that after I have him thoroughly trapped in my web.
And I’ll do it with a vibrating butt plug in his ass and a remote in my hand.
My cock thickens at the thought of that as I get out of the truck and do a quick sweep of the graves to see if he left me anything behind. Maybe there’s a note. A gift, some sign that he wants to see me again.
I’m entirely unsurprised to find nothing. There’s not even the smallest trace of him, and that probably means he’s angry with me for abandoning him the way I did.
Fuck, I want to put my fist through the wall for not thinking ahead and dragging him with me.
But I’m really not good at thinking on my feet.
It’s one of the few things I actively hate about being autistic.
I wish I could be more like my brothers when it comes to being able to pivot, but once I have a task in my head, it’s hard for me to divert.
Even if diverting means getting to play with Denver and his pretty hole after.
But it’s fine. Like I told myself before, I will make it up to him. I will make him forget all the ways he’s upset with me and instead overwhelm him with all the ways I will spend the rest of my time making him feel good.
With a deep breath, I begin to pace amongst the graves. In the grand scheme of human burial grounds, this land is newborn. The church has been here less than a century. The oldest markers date back to the 1930s.
It doesn’t spark interest or joy, but it’s still a quiet place where I feel like myself.
I know more about human burial customs than any man should know, but I can’t help it.
Before I knew the words autism or special interest, I knew the types of stone used to make grave markers.
I knew how the first homes were built over the bodies of their ancestors to keep their spirits close.
I knew about the pits where early homo sapiens used to leave their dead.
I knew about the first rituals humans used to pray to those who had long since passed.
And where death scares so many people, for me, I find it a comfort.
It’s an inevitability we can’t escape. Life is constantly unpredictable, and my inability to control the world around me has always made everything feel so…
so difficult. But knowing that it will all end—that we will all cease—brings me peace.