I shove him off and get up. “I’m going for a run.”
“Good. I’ll go with you.”
I glare at him. “I don’t want you to go.”
He shrugs as he grabs shorts and a t-shirt from his dresser. “Tough shit. I’m not taking a chance on you deciding to bridge jump or scale a building for whatever reason you do stupid shit when you’re freaking out.”
“I’m not freaking out.”
“Uh-huh.” He strips off his shirt and pulls on his t-shirt. “Sure you aren’t.”
***
By mile three, my brain is starting to quiet. “What I need to do is figure out if Amelia had the stomach bug this week,” I say.
Next to me, Cash pants. “How…Are…You…Talking?”
“I run four days a week. You should try it sometime.”
"I work out, man. I just don’t run for hours at a time.”
“We haven’t even been running for half an hour,” I say. Cash isn’t usually such a big complainer. “Can we focus on how I’m going to find out if Amelia had the stomach bug this week without seeming desperate?”
Cash stops, panting, hands on knees. “I can’t talk like this. Can we walk?”
“We’ve got three miles home. If we walk, it’ll take us like an hour to get there.”
He pulls a cell phone from his pocket. “I’m calling Levi to pick us up.”
“Levi’s not going to pick us up. He’s trying to avoid…” I slap my forehead. “Aw shit, I was supposed to distract Sebastian so Levi could escape. There’s no way he’s going to help us. Let’s just run home.”
Cash grabs my shoulders and shakes me. “Look at my face. Do I look like someone who’s ready to run another three miles?”
Now that he mentions it, his face is red, and he’s still panting pretty hard. “You need to start running with me every morning to get in shape.”
He shoves me away with a growl. “I’ll call… Shit. I don’t know enough people in this town.”
“I could call Amelia,” I say. “See if she’s working in this area. If she picks us up, I can ask how her week’s been and see if she cops to having the stomach bug.”
“Very romantic,” Cash says with a sneer. “Call the woman you’re trying to impress to pick up your sweaty ass because you’re too weak to make it home.”
“You’re the one who’s too weak.” I drop my phone back into my pocket and start walking. At least we can make progress toward home while we talk.
“And I’m never going to admit it,” he says. “I’m definitely going to blame everything on you.”
“You’re such an asshole.” But I’m already thinking about another strategy for figuring out if Amelia is DogPerson. “I could send her a picture of Dani’s skunk on his little wheelchair, since she got sprayed by a skunk. That could start a conversation.”
“Why don’t you just tell her the truth?”
I stop in my tracks. “Amelia wants to keep things super casual and chill, and DogPerson doesn’t want me trying to figure out who she is.”
Cash shrugs. “If they are the same person, you’re going to have to tell her the whole story, anyway. You might as well accept this woman isn’t the one and move on.”
That knocks the wind out of me. I sink slowly to sit on the paved trail. “I don’t want to lose her. Cash, I think I might be falling for her.”
He drops next to me on the trail, rubbing the nose of a dog on a leash as it passes us. I assume the leash is attached to a person, but I don’t lift my head high enough to check.
“You should get out now before you do fall for her,” he says. “I mean, it’s not entirely definite she’s going to dump you. Maybe she’s falling for you too.”
