No matter how much I don’t want to.
He lowers his gaze and crosses the room to drop to one knee in front of me, setting the cat carrier gently on my rug. “Kittens?” he asks quietly.
“I will accept kittens.”
“You feeling okay?”
“I am so mad at you.”
He winces as he opens the carrier and lifts a gray kitten out.
Jellybean.
It’s Jellybean.
And she’s meowing as he sets her carefully in my lap.
“I left Fred home with Miss Doodles, but the rest of them are here. Litter box is in the car. I’ll come clean it. Or send someone else over if you don’t want to see me.”
“Why are you still being a dick?”
This is not me. It’s not. I’m the polite woman my mother trained me to be.
But I’mso angrywith him. And I’mso gladto see him. And he looksso damn rightin here. Like he’s the touch that’s been missing against the sage green couches and the lavender walls and the ivory brick fireplace.
Like he’s what makes it home.
His gaze wavers as he looks at me again. “I’m really bad at hope. Much better at action.”
“And self-sabotage.”
“Not mincing words today.”
“Should I be?”
He drops another kitten in my lap. Jellybean’s crawling up my chest to lick my chin. I close my eyes and let her while I order the tears to stop.
But Jellybean’s licking them all away, and it’s so sweet, and it’s making my heart all kinds of soft and open and vulnerable.
I cannotbe vulnerable to this man again.
Not if he’s only here out of guilt or obligation or anything other than because he wants to be here, with me, because I matter to him enough to have the hard conversations.
“I’m sorry, Laney,” he whispers. “I’m an ass.”
“You don’t have to be.”
Another kitten lands in my lap.
I know my mom’s hovering. Watching all of this. But she’s not saying anything.
And Theo’s still here, dropping kittens into my lap.
He squeezes my thigh on my good leg. “Want me to leave them long enough that they’ll need their litter boxes?”
“Yes.” I do. I want them here, with me, crawling all over me and making their little meows and licking my chin and climbing on my shoulders to sniff my ear and tickle it with their little whiskers.
I want themhere, so he has to come back and check on them.
