Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
I almost stayed. I almost apologized for being so…weird, but it’s like I can’t stop. Micah, who has been nothing but nice to me, was close to tears, and I did nothing to help.
There’s an icy pit in my stomach. Why did I do nothing?
I’m sitting in my car, paralyzed. Since when did I turn into the person who watched someone else suffer and did nothing about it?
My throat tightens. I always do something about it. Except right now, doing something would mean I have to either let Micah help me or explain to him why I can’t. And the thought of explaining makes nausea creep up my throat. So instead I sit here, staring at the hood of my car.
“Princess?” There’s a muffled shout.
Slowly, my eyes drift to Micah’s door, where he’s running outside, looking panicked. “Princess? Come here, boy!”
The panic on his face melts the fog.
Something’s wrong.
Before I know what I’m going to do, I’m out of the car, striding up to his door. “What’s up?”
“Princess!” Micah turns in a circle, eyes wide. “I don’t–I can’t find him!”
In that second, Micah’s panic zips to me like an electrical current. Princess can’t run free; he’ll get run over by a car or chased by dogs or, fuck, starve. I see those same thoughts in Micah’s wide blue eyes, and it’s like a stab to my heart.
“We’ll find him.” I say the words, but they’re mostly for Micah. Because finding a skunk that doesn’t want to be found?
Micah is breathing fast, and his eyes are getting glassy. I have the impulse to grab his arm and squeeze. To comfort him somehow.
An impulse I refuse.
Instead, I straighten. “Tell me the last time you saw him.”
Micah swallows hard, then starts looking around the yard. I follow.
“Right before I left to get you!” He ducks, checking under bushes.
“Where was he?”
“In the kitchen? I don’t know!” Micah’s voice spikes with panic. “I was in a hurry, and I think I saw him but…”
“That’s okay.” I’m checking under bushes too, looking around the neighbor’s evergreen shrub. “Did you close the door all the way?”
“Yes? No? I mean, yes,” Micah’s voice drifts from where he’s checking the neighbor’s side yard. “I always close the door, but he’s fast. He could have slipped out? I didn’t think I needed to put him up. I was only gonna be gone five minutes!”
“Did you check inside?”
“Rattled his treats and everything; he’s not in there. This is all my fault.”
Micah is moving and talking so fast that I try to slow it down. It’s possible that Princess snuck past him, but if he did, there’s no way he’s still close, so searching outside has expanded to half the city.
My stomach sinks. No. He can’t have gotten out. If he did…I can’t even consider what would happen if he did.
So that leaves the potential that he’s still inside. Which isn’t very good either, because if he isn’t coming, he could be hurt.
I feel hot and cold at the same time, and I bolt up Micah’s front steps. I almost run inside, then get the weird feeling that this isn’t my house, and I can’t just be going in without permission. So I stop, awkwardly. “I’m checking inside!”
I don’t see Micah anymore, and he doesn’t respond. Then he pops around the edge of the house, flustered panic in his eyes.
“I’m checking in here,” I tell him, and he just gives a nod, spinning in a circle again and shouting for Princess.
I make quick work of the downstairs, calling Princess’ name and scouting every corner. Micah’s house is clean and organized, and it doesn’t take long. Then I move upstairs to a territory I’ve never been to before. It feels…weirdly intimate. Like I shouldn’t be here without him.
Upstairs is what I presume is his bedroom, which is slightly messier than the rest of the house, with blue lights over the bed and a TV mounted on the other side of the wall.
“Princess? You hungry? Dinnertime! Treats! Celery.” I try every word I can think of that he’d possibly know. “You wanna go on a walk? Stroller!”
Under the bed is pretty bare, minus a few shoes. When I flip up the covers to check underneath, I notice the bed frame is pretty chewed up. I make my quick rounds of the rest of the upstairs, which includes a guest bedroom and bathroom.
Nothing.
I force myself to slow down, despite my beating heart. If he’s hurt, maybe he’s making sounds I can’t hear. Gasping. Gurgling. Whining.
I stop moving in the hallway and listen. Micah shouts outside, the AC blows, and I hear…nothing, just the blood rushing in my ears.
Swallowing, I force a deep breath in through my nose and out through my mouth, listening again.
That’s when I hear it. A slight humming sound. No, not humming. It’s a grumbly noise that starts, then stops, then starts again. Moving toward the bedroom, I listen again. It’s louder now. I step inside, searching. Where the hell is it? What the hell is it? Is it…snoring?
“Maddox?” Micah calls from downstairs.
“Up here.”
The snoring gets louder toward the bed, so I rip the blankets off, then slow down in case Princess is inside.
Micah comes pounding up the steps. “I can’t find him; he’s not coming to my calls; he always comes!”
I move all the pillows, but after a thorough search, Princess isn’t there.
“Is he there? What are you doing?”
I motion for Micah to be quiet, and over the sounds of his heavy breathing, I hear it again. It’s definitely snoring.
Then I remember the frayed bed frame. Ducking down, I check the boxspring. Sure enough, it’s ripped to shreds, and my heart races. Flattening myself on my stomach, I check up under the frame.
Right in front of me is a hole in the fabric of the box spring. It’s dark, but there’s definitely a hole.
Micah drops down beside me, and I grab for my phone, hand trembling, and turn on the flashlight. There, tucked up inside the box spring, is Princess, fast asleep.
The relief that hits my system is instantaneous. That pressure lifts, and for a second, I’m floating.
Beside me, Micah lets out a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh. “Mother fluffer! That–” There’s a silence where it sounds like his words are all stopped up. “That kumquat!”
I pause for a beat because I have no idea what Micah is saying.
“That unsalted pretzel! He’s three lines short of a triangle! ‘Bout as useful as a…a chocolate teapot!” Micah sputters.
All the stress is crashing down, and I feel an odd high. Princess is okay. He’s fucking okay. And that makes warm tears gather at the edges of my eyes.
Micah keeps rambling, and I stare up at Micah’s ceiling, trying to keep the stupid tears back, giving a soft laugh.
Micah turns on me. “Are you defending him?”
I raise my hands. “Not me.”
“Holy Toledo, you are! You’re totally smiling!”
I try to stifle the smile, which just makes me smile more.
“Traitor!” Micah rolls over, and for a second, he’s gone. Then something is hurling down toward me.
I roll, but not in time. Something thwaps me on my back, and terror floods my veins. I roll to my feet, holding my hands in front of my face to fend off another blow.
Only, it doesn’t come. It’s just Micah, grinning at me, loading up another shot with the pillow.
Immediately, I scan his eyes. They’re their normal clear blue, the edges crinkled up. They don’t look like Arthur’s eyes. They look like he’s having…fun?
The longer I stare, the more those crinkles start to disappear.
Fuck! I try to swallow down my racing heart, mortification setting my cheeks on fire. But still, I search the lines of Micah’s body for tension.
“Sorry, I uh…” Micah drops the pillow. “I don’t know what came over me.”
It feels like fear has my neck in its jaws. Micah is seeing me. He’s seeing my weakness.
But instead of lunging for me, Micah just lets the moment pass. He groans, dropping his face into his hands. “Now the neighbors are gonna think I’m crazy. There goes the neighborhood kook, chasing his skunk at an ungodly hour.”
I struggle to recover. To sound normal. “It could be worse.” I clear my throat. “You could have been in your tighty whities.” As soon as I say it, I wince. What am I even saying?
Micah gasps. “First of all, that would be a blessing to their eyes.” He takes his hands away from his face to watch himself flex a bicep. “Second of all, don’t insult me; I don’t wear tighty whities."
I snort as Micah gets up. Relief that he said nothing about my freakout floods me, and then the words slip out, “I don’t know, I would definitely peg you as a granny panty kinda guy. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I’m more of a boxer guy myself.”
As those words settle, I want to die. Because why am I talking about Micah in granny panties? Suddenly, what Micah looks like in underwear is all I can think about.
Micah turns outraged eyes on me, but there’s a playful tilt to his mouth. “Excuse me? Granny panties?”
I raise an eyebrow, and immediately I see a shift in Micah’s body language. His pupils dilate, and he licks his lips, swallowing. I see that damn piercing again, and I wonder what it feels like.
I’ve dug too deep in the bit to stop, and there’s an absurd voice in my head that wants to keep going. So I just cock a questioning eyebrow.
Micah’s gaze flits down to my lips, then back up to my eyes. “I...” His voice is like a whisper. He takes one tiny breath through his open lips, everything hovering in the silence. Then a loud sound breaks the silence.
I jump before I realize it’s just Princess snoring. And like that, the moment is broken. Micah shakes his head, smiling. “You got me. It’s granny panties.” But the smile isn’t as genuine as it was before.
I shake my head, also plastering on a smile. “I knew it.”
“Yeah, yeah, don’t lord it over me.” He waves me off. “I won’t bow down and kiss your feet or anything.”
Then my head is filled with the image of him doing that. Of more than that, of Micah, shirtless, crawling to me. Of him staring up at me from his knees with a worshiping look in his eye. Of me behind him while he grabs the sheets, muscles bunching in his back as he holds on.
For a horrifyingly exhilarating moment, I’m stuck with that image. Then reality settles in like a cold towel, and I take a step back. Because no matter how hot Micah is, he’s still my boss, and I’ve still sworn off men.
I glance around the room, desperate to change the subject. My gaze lands on something I didn’t see in my haste earlier–a framed gun.
“Is that real?” I ask. It’s a handgun in a fancy wood frame, but there’s no glass, almost like it’s being presented to be used. Which is interesting; I didn’t peg Micah as the gun-toting type.
Micah turns, then snorts. “Yeah. Dad got that for me.”
“Do you shoot?”
Micah flushes. “I’ve dabbled.”
That’s when I notice the marksman trophies up next to it. Fuck, I’m an idiot.
“It’s stupid, Dad kinda liked guns, so I thought…
I don’t know what I thought, really.” Micah rubs a hand on the back of his neck.
He seems uncomfortable, so I switch my attention to a bulletin board pinned full of a bunch of pictures of what looks like Micah and animals.
Pictures of him and goats, a horse, a pig, what looks to be a wolf, and…
“You had sugar gliders?” I ask in surprise.
“Oh yeah! Got them in college ‘cause someone was giving them away and I thought they’d help me study.” Micah is climbing to his feet.
I stare at the picture of a younger Micah, grinning at the camera and holding two sugar gliders, pure joy on his face. His joy makes me want to smile, but the reminder of my pet makes a streak of melancholy pass over my chest.
“I had one too, as a kid.”
“No flipping way!” Micah’s next to me now, bouncing on his toes.
“Yeah.”
“That’s so freaking cool, man! I’ve never met anyone else who had them!”
“Yeah.” I don’t want to cut down Micah’s joy by talking about what happened to them, so instead I say, “Animals are the best.”
“Agreed! Way better than people.”
Definitely. I meet his gaze, and we share a moment of re-evaluating the other person, and then reality hits me. It’s late.
Fuck.
I’m more than late to work.
“Shit, I gotta go.”
“Oh, really?” Micah sounds like he’s trying not to act like I took his puppy away.
“Work.” I’m backing away, even though I don’t want to. I don’t want to go.
And that thought makes me sober up, for the second time.
What am I doing? I don’t know Micah, like even a little bit. What if he’s a horrible person? Like my parents? Loves people and animals just for what he can get out of them, but the second they don’t do what he wants, he throws them away.
Maybe he’s like him.
I make quick apologies and practically run out of the house and into my car.
Hopefully, Mr. Parker won’t fire me. I’m not sure what I’ll do if he does.
Although if I’m being honest, it’s not Mr Parker that’s making me run.
It’s the guy who loves his pet so much that it seems like he’d do anything for him.
The guy who has done nothing but offer to help me. The guy who makes me want to stay.
That’s who I’m really running from.