In the distance, a screech owl trilled.
I thought of Dog and how much I’d wanted him to be mine. Then I thought of the bill that came along with him, and how itwould have taken me months of mopping the floor at the clinic to pay it off. It wouldn’t have been so bad; I liked going to the clinic. I liked visiting Dog twice a day and was glad I could keep doing that. I liked Kayla, who was sarcastic and sharp at times but never mean about it. And I especially liked Mason.
Liking someone the way I liked Mason was new, and new things were frightening, but experience had taught me they weren’t always bad. There was a time when this house and the people in it, my brothers now, had been new and frightening as well. I’d been terrified to take a risk in trusting Danny back when he’d found Chase and me at Goose Run Gas, but we’d been desperate. It had been life and death, literally. I’d trusted Danny because I’dhadto, and I’d pushed Chase into trusting him too, and it had worked out because Danny was a great guy. But it just as easily could have gone bad.
Trusting Mason felt different. I hadn’t made a conscious choice to do it. It had crept up on me instead, in slow increments, just by hanging out with him and sharing breakfast—his first and my second—and watching him work. Watching him smile almost against his will when Dog did something naughty, like he knew he shouldn’t encourage it, but it was just too funny, so he couldn’t help laughing. The serious expression he got on his face when he had to go and deliver bad news to a client. The way that expression dropped into something sad and hurting when they were gone. That twenty-one seconds he said he allowed himself to cry—though I’d never seen actual tears—before he got back to work.
Being with Mason was like sitting here in the dark at night. If you were patient, whole different layers revealed themselves to you. Another creaking floorboard—the bathroom this time—as Miller brushed his teeth before bed. The scrape of a chair on the kitchen floor—Danny studying his college textbooks there so the light from the desk in his room didn’t keep Miller from sleeping.And footsteps coming my way a moment before the back screen door creaked open.
“What are you doing out here?” Chase asked.
“Just thinking. I’m going to bed soon.”
Chase stared at me. I wasn’t looking at him, but I could feel it. Then he said, “Make sure your shit is off my old bed. Lee’s snoring is driving me nuts.”
He was such a liar.
“Okay,” I said, knowing that he’d only stay in my room as long as it took me to fall asleep. Then he’d go back and sleep with Lee. “You’d better not snore either, though.”
“Fuck you,” he said. “And hurry up. I don’t want you disturbing me by coming in late.”
Chase had layers too. Like, hesoundedlike an asshole, except everything he’d said was bullshit. It wasn’t his sleep he gave two shits about; it was mine.
I flipped him the bird, because that was what we did, and took one last look at the night before following Chase inside to go to bed.
CHAPTER 9
MASON
It was barely dawn when someone started hammering on the door, and I was upright and out of bed before my eyes were fully open. Knocking like that usually meant one thing, and it was never good. I ran down the stairs, hitting the light switch on the way and shouting, “Hold on!”
Dog scrambled down the stairs behind me, his ugly knitted bundle in his mouth, and I took a second to close him in the laundry room before I answered the door.
There was a young guy standing there dressed in construction gear. He was holding an old blanket bundled against his chest and wearing a panicked expression. The blanket let out a long, pained yowl. “She ran in front of my truck and I hit her, and when she ran into the long grass, I followed her, and?—”
He peeled the blanket open to reveal a mother cat and three kittens. The cat was still making an ungodly noise, and her leg was sticking out at an odd angle, with a whole lot of blood matting her fur. The kittens were covered in it too, squirming and twisting as they let out a series of pitiful mewls. I couldn’t tell at a glance how old they were, not in the state they were in, but their eyes were open, so at least they weren’t newborns.
“Shit,” I said, and the guy nodded.
“It was right at that bend before the old bridge, and, uh, I think there might be another kitten. I could hear it but I couldn’t find it,” he said.
“Come on through to the clinic,” I said.
“Dude,” he said, “I’m already running late, and I can’t afford to lose this job.”
He held the bundle out to me and I stared at him in disbelief for a second before taking it. The guy skedaddled out of the place quicker than Dog with a phone charger.
And as much as I hated being dumped with a problem like this at ass o’clock in the morning, I had to begrudgingly admit the guy had done the right thing, even if it meant that once again I wasn’t getting paid. He could have kept driving, but he hadn’t. He’d cared enough to stop and look for the cat and grab at least most of the kittens. I knew from bitter experience that it was more than a lot of people would have done.
So, first things first.
I hurried the bundle into the treatment room, ignoring Dog’s whining. He was out of bed, which meant he was expecting to be let outside to pee, but I needed to keep him contained while I dealt with the cats.
“Sorry, Dog,” I murmured as I set the bundle gently down onto the table. Then I thought of Cash and the puddle he’d have to clean up when he arrived this morning. “Sorry, Cash.”
There was a box of paper towels on the nearest shelf with only a few left. I hooked it over with my spare hand, tipped the paper towels out, and carefully transferred the kittens into the box. Mama Cat was making unhappy subvocal growls and panting heavily. Not only was she in a lot of pain, but I was fucking with her babies.
“It’s okay, Mama,” I told her. “We’re just keeping them out of the way while we take a look at you.”
