“I think I’m done with this. I’ll come clean up later.” I pushed my plate away and got up, then briskly walked toward the stairs.
“River!” Lake called after me, sounding disappointed.
I couldn’t take it, so I…walked away.
* * * *
Rey slipped inside my room without asking a couple of hours later.
“Lake’s mad at you.” He glanced at the windows to assess the situation. He had pretty severe agoraphobia and couldn’t deal with all the sky around here. He hadn’t left our New York apartment at all after we’d managed to get him back when he tried to run away once. He’d stormed out when we tried to ask him questions about his family and why he was running from them.
The second time he left was to come here, and now he was confined within another building. Except this one was nice, he had more things to do, and he could count on us not grilling him about his past. We’d learned not to ask.
Ruth and Lake’s lawyer (and Theo’s good friend) Hudson had privately told Lake and I that he fully believed Rey was in some sort of trouble with his family. He’d seen this sort of thing before, and he encouraged us to be there for the kid and try not to inadvertently push him away. These kids were runners, he’d told us, and based on our experience with Rey, we believed him.
“I know.” I sighed and watched as Rey deemed the night dark enough for the windows to not bother him as much. He wandered over and climbed onto the bed with me.
Curling up against my side for comfort for both of us, he hummed. “I like it here.”
“Good.”
“He was your first crush, wasn’t he?”
I put down my laptop I’d been trying to concentrate on all evening. “Yeah.”
“He seems oblivious to that.”
I chuckled. “He always was.”
“Huh.”
“How are the kittens?”
Theo’s friend Jules had had three kittens they struggled to find time for, so Theo and Lake had brought them for Rey to take care of. The kid was ecstatic about them, which wasn’t hard when you spent any time around the hissy little things.
“Oh, they’re eating a lot, and Seb says they’re healthy. I’ll have to keep an eye on them and take care of them properly.”
He had a huge crush on our veterinarian, Sebastian, who was gorgeous as fuck, completely in love with cats, and the kindest man I’d probably met. Seb was a complete package, at least on the surface, and I couldn’t blame Rey for his infatuation. He was also safe for a teenager to crush on, which was nice. Not all adults would be.
“How has the horsey stuff been?” I asked to take the spotlight off myself and Ben.
Rey grinned. “It’s been good. Theo’s been really busy, but he did come to show me one of the ponies the other day.”
Rey hadn’t gathered enough courage to go outside yet, so Theo occasionally brought a hooved friend into the backyard, right where I liked to sit with my morning coffee. The concrete slab reached the doorway which was the farthest from the immediate safety of the house Rey had gotten so far. He’d been down the two steps, touching the animals, but he couldn’t do that for long yet.
Theo had told Lake that Rey was getting better about it though. If only Theo had more time to teach him more.
“That’s nice. At least you have a whole library of horse books.”
Chuckling, Rey nodded against my side. “Yeah. Ruth’s office is great for that. All the anatomy and illness stuff is kind of fascinating. Like…don’t get me wrong, it can get icky, too, but they have such complex systems it’s interesting.”
We’d been gently poking at Rey to think about maybe becoming a veterinarian when he could get his GED eventually. To our surprise, he hadn’t shot us down immediately, unlike with any suggestions of getting that GED. It all boiled down to timing and his fear of being found by his family, so with this, too, we let him be.
“I’ll concentrate on human anatomy, thank you very much.” I smiled. “Makes more sense to me.”
“It’s the legs, isn’t it?” Rey pushed himself upright. “You can’t deal with four legs and would miss the arms.”
I laughed. “Yeah, that’s definitely it.”
