The purr goes on underneath my hand, steady as a motor.
“It’s kind of nice, though.” I scratch behind his ear. “Being picked.”
The purr changes. Deepens. He presses his head up into my wrist and holds it there, and I tell myself that’s a coincidence of cat. I leanback in the chair, and everything is, for one entire hour of my life, completely fine.
Which is when I notice someone standing in the doorway.
“Well, look who it is.”
Kyle.
“Told you I’d find you.”
Chapter 24
Elara
Kyle is standing in my doorway.
Kyle is standing in my doorway because I don’t have a door, and the part of my brain that handles paperwork during emergencies notes that we really should have led with the door today.
They tried. I know they did. That’s where they are now.
It doesn’t change the fact that Erik left me here alone.
Please. Let me do this.
He said that, and now here I am. No door. No Erik. Alone with my ex.
Under my hand, the purring stops.
Not winds down. Stops.
“Look at this place.” Kyle steps inside. No knock. No may I. Kyle has never needed a door to be open to walk through it, and the one time in my life I don’t have one, here he is. “Still cozy. Not as cozy as when we were together, but you never were that good at decorating.”
My phone is on the kitchen counter. Across the room.
Okay…
Okay.
I breathe in, trying to calm myself.
It doesn’t work. It never did with him.
So we’re doing this the old-fashioned way.
“You can’t be in here,” I say.
“There’s no door.” He smiles like that settles it. To Kyle, it does. Kyle’s whole life runs on technicalities that only work in one direction.
Muffin pours off my lap and onto the floor. Unhurried. He crosses the rug and sits down directly between us, tail wrapped around his feet, and looks at Kyle like he’s an annoyance in his new kingdom.
“You got a cat.” Kyle doesn’t look at him. He’s wandering now, hands loose in his pockets, doing his lap of my apartment like it’s a showing. His eyes catch on the pull-out. The pillow wall. The blankets. “Big bed for one person, El.”
El. There it is. Everyone in my life is renaming me lately and his is the only one that feels like being handled.
“What do you want, Kyle.”
