“You established that! I remain unconvinced!”
I picked up the mouse, anyway. It was lighter than I expected, barely more than a handful of fluff and tiny bones. A month ago, this would have sent me into a spiral of germaphobic panic. A month ago, I would have called someone—anyone—to handle this for me.
But a month ago, I’d been a different person. A person who let Ollie order for him at restaurants because it was easier than having preferences. Someone who’d built his entire identity around being agreeable, accommodating, easy.
That person probably wouldn’t have kissed a soap opera star in a driveway, either.
I deposited the first mouse into the plastic bag and moved to the kitchen for the second. Purrsephone followed me, winding between my legs in a way that was either affectionate or a deliberate attempt to trip me.
“You’re a menace,” I told her.
She purred.
“She’s not sorry,” Samuel observed from his couch sanctuary. “Not even a little.”
“She’s a cat. Remorse isn’t in their emotional vocabulary.”
Mouse number two went into the bag. I moved to the fireplace for number three, and as I crouched down to collect the final offering, I found myself thinking about endings.
Not the mice—though they had certainly met theirs. No, I was thinking about the end of my relationship with Ollie.
It died not in a single dramatic moment, but in a thousand small betrayals I’d been too blind to see. The late nights he’d claimed were work meetings, and the phone calls he’d taken in other rooms. The way he’d stopped looking at me—really looking—months before I’d walked in on him with Roger.
I’d been mourning something that had already been dead. I just hadn’t known it yet.
And now here I was, standing in Samuel Bennett’s cabin with a bag full of deceased rodents, thinking about how easy it would be to fall into something new. Samuel was gorgeous. He was funny. He kissed like he meant it, like I was the only person in the world worth kissing.
It would be so simple to let this happen. A holiday fling with a famous actor—something bright and temporary to burn away the memory of Ollie’s betrayal. We had three weeks left. Three weeks of proximity, attraction, and the type of chemistry I’d never felt with anyone before.
But this didn’t feel like a fling.
This felt like the beginning of something. And beginnings terrified me more than endings ever could.
I tied off the plastic bag and stood up, my knees protesting from the crouch. “Done. All the mice have been collected.”
Samuel cautiously lowered one foot to the floor, then the other. “Are you sure she didn’t hide any more somewhere? Under the bed? In the closet?”
“I suppose we could search the entire cabin, but I think three was the extent of her murder spree.”
“Murder spree.” He shuddered dramatically. “That cat is a serial killer.”
“She’s a hunter. It’s instinct.”
“Instinct to traumatize us?”
I grinned. “I’m going to take these outside. And then we should probably get the groceries from the car.”
“Right. The groceries.” Something shifted in Samuel’s expression—uncertainty flickering across his features. “And then...?”
I knew what he was asking. And I knew what he wanted the answer to be.
I wanted it too. That was the worst part.
“Let’s deal with the groceries first,” I said, and pretended I didn’t see the flicker of disappointment in his eyes.
Unloading the Range Rover took longer than it should have.
Not because there was so much—we’d been reasonably restrained in Charlottesville, all things considered—but because neither of us seemed to know how to act anymore. The kiss hung between us, unaddressed, a neon elephant in the room that we kept carefully sidestepping.
