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He opens the door and we both stare at a black cat who is sitting on my porch, staring back at us.
“It’s Cat,” he says.
“I can see that it’s a cat.”
“No, I mean it’sCat. I forgot to put food out for him tonight. I’ve been training him to come get food every morning and night.”
I look from Henry to Cat and back again. “It’s cute you thinkyou’vebeen traininghim.”
Henry looks from Cat to me and back again. “Fair point.”
“Do you think he’d come over here if we put food out for him once a day? Like maybe we could give him breakfast?”
“Probably, but how is Evie going to feel about walking out to decapitated animals every morning?”
“Uh, not great.”
“I better handle his meals then.”
I nod. We’ve run out of things to say, which means the only thing left to talk about is what happened on my sofa. But I would love to not do that. I’m debating how to head off the conversation when Henry makes it simple.
“Good night, Paige.”
He walks out without waiting for me to say anything, and I sit down. Like down on the floor, my knees no longer supporting me.
I press my finger against my still-tingling lips where his scruff marked me.
Markedme.
I still feel him with every one of my senses.
What have I done?
And more importantly, how do I undo it?
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Henry
Paigeisavoidingme.
It’s not subtle. I’ve seen her heading toward her trash cans only to turn around and disappear into her house when I step out of mine, her bulging garbage bag still in hand.
Evie isn’t avoiding me. So far this week, I’ve found a pinecone tied with a yarn bow, a box of staples that has no staples but does have a soft black feather in it, and a rock taped to a note telling me to put it in water to make it shiny.
Cat isn’t avoiding me. I take too long with his breakfast on Wednesday morning, and he yowls and knocks again.
But I understand Paige’s retreat. I have no idea what to say to her either. Principles of anthropology, cultural anthropology, and paleopathology stuff have all ceded ground to Monday Night on Paige’s Sofa, which plays on repeat in my mind. That’s unfortunate since grades are due by noon tomorrow, which gives me less than twenty-four hours to pull myself together.
I have never been thrown for a loop by a kiss until now.
I try to tackle it from a scientific angle. What had caused that kind of chemical reaction? Proximity plus opportunity? That can’t be it, or I would have experienced other kisses with the same level of . . .
Conflagration.
Damn. That woman, as my students might say, is fire. And for a handful of desire-drenched minutes, I had embraced the burn.
I should regret that, shouldn’t I?
