“Any sign of Cash yet?” I asked as Kayla shut down her computer for the night.
“Nope.” She slung her handbag over her shoulder. “What’s that look for?”
“What look?”
She narrowed her eyes and pulled the corners of her mouth down. “This sad face thing you’re doing. I’m sure he’ll be here soon. You have a dog and kittens. You’re irresistible.”
I ignored the implications of that word and grunted. “Okay, see you tomorrow.”
“See you!” She sailed out the front door, and I locked it behind her and turned off the lights in reception.
We were officially closed for business, which was usually my favorite part of the day. But as I let Dog back inside and scruffed him, I didn’t feel the same sense of relief and peace settle over me now the clinic was quiet, and I suspected I knew the reason why.
Dog looked around, ears pricked, as though he was also waiting for someone to appear.
“I know,” I said. “I don’t know where he is either.”
And I pretended the only reason I was put out was that I’d have to mop my own floors tonight.
CHAPTER 10
CASH
It was just Chase and Danny and me for dinner that night. We were having grilled cheese with bits of ham on top because it was the closest we could get to pizza without driving all the way to Brodnax, and also we were too broke for pizza. But it was nice, just the three of us. It felt like it might be a good time to practice talking to people. And I needed to practice if I wanted to get better at it—and there wasn’t anybody safer than Danny.
“We have stray kittens at the vet clinic,” I said quietly.
“Shit,” Danny said. “Don’t tell Gracie!”
“I won’t,” I said. Then I cleared my throat. “They’re really small and have to get fed every few hours.”
Danny looked surprised, and it probably wasn’t about the kitten-feeding schedule. It was about the fact that we were having a whole-ass conversation without Chase as the middleman. Like, I hadn’t just answered with a nod to show I’d heard and understood. I’d answered with words and then actually added some more to continue the exchange. But he recovered quickly and said, “How many are there?”
And this was why Danny was the best. He’d asked me something that I could answer with one word or just hold up theright number of fingers. Or I could keep talking. But either way, it was my choice. And it was tempting to sink back into silence and safety. But that wouldn’t get me any further ahead than I was now. So I sucked in a breath and said, “Four of them.”
Danny gave me an encouraging smile. “I bet they’re cute.”
“Yeah,” I whispered, grinning back. “One of them’s orange. We had to—” Words failed me for a second, and Chase gave me a sharp look, like he thought he might have to step in. “We had to go look for the orange one because the guy only brought three of them in.”
Chase’s gaze flicked back and forth between us like he was watching a tennis match.
“That’s awesome,” Danny said. “Where’d you go looking?”
“By the old bridge.” And I was pretty much done with words at that moment. I felt wrung out, but also weirdly elated. It was dumb because Danny was my brother and I trusted him, but I’d spent the last couple of years letting Chase talk for me, even here in this house, because it was easiest. My silence might have been for safety in the beginning, but now it was an ingrained habit that I would have to work hard to break.
“We definitely can’t let Gracie know there’s an orange cat,” Danny said. He gave me an encouraging smile, like he was waiting to see if I was going to say anything else. Then he said, “Is this cheese okay? I think it was past its expiration date.”
“That just makes it fancier cheese,” Chase said. “Like that blue moldy stuff. People pay a shit ton of money for fancy French shit, but when we eat moldy cheese, suddenly it’s because we’re trash.”
“Oh, we’re trash for a lot more reasons than that,” Danny said with a broad grin. “I caught you cutting your toenails on the back porch yesterday.”
“Wasn’t the front porch where the neighbors could see,” Chase pointed out. “So fuck you, I’m practically a gentleman.”
I grinned and listened to the two of them talk shit as I ate my grilled cheese. I found my thoughts straying back to Mason—they seemed to be doing that a lot lately—and wondered what he was doing. Probably feeding the kittens and making them poop by rubbing their butts, which seemed gross and cute at the same time.
“I wasn’t expecting you home so early, actually,” Danny said to me. “You’ve been spending a whole bunch of time visiting that dog.”
I nodded and held the words at the front of my mind before I pushed them out. “I’m going over later to spend the night.”
