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Ford practically peeled himself away from me, grinning at my protest.
“I’ll go see who it is.”
He was gone for about five minutes, and in that time, I used it to sink deeper into the bed. To meld myself with the sheets and get into the cozy spot that Ford had just vacated.
When he came back into the room, I was on the verge of sleep, body hovering in that space between awake and asleep.
I shivered as he slid into the bed next to me, curling his rather cold body around my warm one.
I was no longer on the verge of sleep anymore.
“What the fuck?” I hissed, trying to pull myself away.
But he wouldn’t let me go.
He stayed there and kept me pinned to him, using my body to warm his.
“S’cold,” he murmured, burying his face into my hair. “Somebody’s missing their cat and was asking to see if we’d seen it.”
I closed my eyes, once again relaxing, and found myself quickly warm and right back on the verge of sleep.
“About those missing cats.”
“Hmmm,” I said against his throat, my hot breath playing along his Adam’s apple. “What about them?”
I never found out, because the next thing I knew, I was dead asleep.Chapter 13
I don’t ride on the crazy train. I conduct it.
-Ashe’s secret thoughts
Ashe
After class, I texted Ford to find out where he was, curious to hear about the cats that he’d been trying to tell me about last night before I’d fallen asleep.
But when I’d gotten up, he’d been dead to the world, and I hadn’t wanted to wake him.
After making a pit stop at my house for my keys that Uncle Luke had dropped off, I hailed Rowen down and got a lift to the station for my car.
Class hadn’t been anything special. The announcement of a guest speaker coming to the school next week had me enthralled, but ultimately my mind stayed on the man in the bed that I’d left this morning, and definitely not on my school work where it should be.
Luckily with next week being a guest speaker, and the week after that being an off week due to a holiday, we didn’t have much going on that I needed to pay attention to.
And when I got out of class hours later, I only had one thing on my mind.
Ford.
Pulling out my phone, I shot him a text and walked to my car, my eyes taking in the crowd that was gathered around my car.
Or, more importantly, the storm drain next to my car.
“What’s going on?” I asked curiously to the man who was closest to my car door.
“There’s a kitten in the drain.” He gestured to the manhole they had uncovered. “But nobody will go down there.”
I sighed and stowed my shit in my car before walking over to the drain.
“Anybody have a flashlight?” I asked.
“I have a penlight,” one girl said, dressed in the school’s nursing uniform that indicated she was part of the nursing program there.
“Great,” I said, walking over to the opened manhole.
Jumping down, I used the light to scan the area, easily spotting the kitten in the corner.
It was making enough racket to let everyone on earth know where it was.
Grinning, I looked up at the man who’d originally told me about the kitten in the drain.
“I have a towel in my back seat. Will you get it for me?” I asked.
Seconds later the towel appeared, and I carefully draped it over the kitten, then walked over to the manhole and handed the toweled kitten up.
Then I realized that there was no way in hell that I was getting out of the hole without help.
“Umm,” I called out. “I’m gonna need help out!”
“Give me your hands.”
I didn’t know who the hell had said that, but I wasn’t going to complain or ask questions seeing as being in the hole was kind of creepy.
I held up my hands and went flying, surprised to see a familiar face on the other end.
“Dax.” I smiled at him when I was on firm ground. “What are you doing here?”
“PD was called,” he answered, letting me go. “You shouldn’t have gone down there.”
I rolled my eyes and nearly stepped back straight into the hole.
He caught me before I could make myself look bad and then guided me to open ground before bending over to replace the manhole cover.
“Thanks,” I said, dusting my pants off. “Why was the police department called?”
He stood back up and wiped his hands on his pants like I’d just done before answering.
“It seems to be an epidemic,” he answered. “This is the eighth call today about kittens being tossed in storm drains.”
My brows flew up. “Really?”
He nodded. “Always near a place where people will care enough to do something about it, though.”
I frowned. “What?”
“Like people are purposefully putting the kittens down there around a populated area,” he answered. “Two were in a storm drain near the high school. Five were in a storm drain next to the elementary. Six next to a coffee shop where people sit outside.”
