“He’s not my boyfriend.”
Jerry stopped in the door. “Friends don’t make you smile at your crotch in meetings.”
* * *
I knocked on the door. “Chase?”
He whipped the door open, and his eyes were bright red. He’d clearly been crying. He had a small black kitten stuck to his shirt and a creamy beige one sitting on his shoulder.
Chase looked fucking adorable.
“I am so sorry,” I managed.
Huffing angrily, he walked back into the kitchen to the left, and I guessed I was supposed to follow him.
I clicked the door closed and found him mixing up more KMR for the furballs. Pollux was licking one of the others that was inside a box on the floor.
He finally whirled around, holding the kittens to him and railed at me. “What the hell happened? You couldn’t even sneak out to send me a quick message? I could not handle being told this stupid cat we pulled out of a wall last night was dying of cancer and I had to make decisions—”
I took his face in my hands and kissed him, hard. He tasted just as amazing as I remembered from the night before and it took only a moment for him to go from angry to pliant and slip his tongue along mine.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered over his lips. “I am. Shit went down at work, and I never meant to ignore you.”
He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I was freaking out at the cancer diagnosis.”
My lips quirked in a smile. “It’s going to be fine. I promise. We might not be able to treat her, but we’ll make her comfortable, okay?”
He nodded. “Okay. Do you think we should bring her home and let her nurse the kittens?”
“If she’s able to, yes, absolutely.”
Chase slumped against the counter, picking up a third kitten and dropping her on his shoulder. “I just felt so bad that Mother Cat was so sick. She’s so sweet, Marcus. I’m going to keep her if I can.”
“Good,” I answered. “If we can’t get her cured, she’ll have a lovely few months or years with you.” I picked up the creamy tabby from his arms. “We need to feed these fuzz buckets?”
“Yes, they’re all hungry,” he said. “The vet said the KMR is good, but they can have a slurry to start weaning them. I can’t keep all of them…so I need to find homes for three of them.”
He looked at me and sighed. “I’m sorry if I freaked you out. We only had barn cats growing up. If the kittens didn’t make it, they didn’t make it. We weren’t allowed to bring the cats in. Cats were for…”
“I get it,” I said.
“I hope I didn’t get you in trouble at work?”
“Nah, not at all. That was the asshole rolling up from my nightmares.”
Chase handed me a bottle and a cat, and motioned to the table, for me to sit. “Nightmares?” He grabbed two more bottles and sat at the table with me. Putting the kittens on the table, he quickly moved the bottles to where they could grab on to the nipples. “What nightmares?”
“I…kinda don’t want to talk about it?” I cocked my head. “It took up too much of my headspace today and I’m done with it. The situation has been handled and it should be fine.”
He nodded, but I could tell he wanted to know more. I had literally lost five hours to that shit and didn’t want to tell him the whole story. “Can we suffice to say that it happened in college and that’s why I’m not further in my career? And the cause of it all walked into my office this morning.”
“Okay, yes, I don’t mean to pry. We’ve just been getting to know each other so well and this is the first time we’ve hit a wall.”
I nodded and flipped my kitten over to rub his full tummy while he kept on drinking. “I know. Just give me time.”
Chase nodded.
“So. Tell me about MC?”
