“Oh my God!” I breathed, reaching towards him, knowing they had to hurt like hell.
He waved a hand. “Already cleaned and painless. I think his ego hurts more than my arms, but purple is his color.”
“How long have you been waiting?” I asked, watching Hank waddle to the food bowl in the kitchen, famished despite his rodent snack.
“An hour or so,” he replied. “I figured you were ignoring me in here.”
“Why didn’t you call?”
“I did.”
I patted my pocket, and my heart dropped, my phone not where I expected.
Jason flicked his head towards the counter where it was resting. “Good place for it, huh?”
Crap.
“Go change. I’ll make sure he doesn’t repel off the balcony.”
I left them to head to the bathroom, stripping out of my sopping wet coat and hanging it on the shower nozzle to dry. I gently pulled back the beanie and the bandage on my head, relieved to find the stitches intact. They were wet but not gaping open or bleeding as I feared.
I washed my hands like a madwoman, the memory of grabbing a random heap on the side of the road all too present. What if it had been a dead squirrel or something?
As cold and gross as I felt, I’d figure out how to shower after he left, needing to let the stitches air out. I headed to my room, peeling off articles of clothing the instant my feet touched the carpet. Regardless of the man in the other room, I wasn’t worried about appearances, changing into an oversized sweater and black fleece bottoms, chasing warmth, not beauty.
When I stepped back into the living room, I found Jason tidying the kitchen, the leftover beer bottles and the pizza box gone, the coffee table spotless. “What are you doing?”
He froze mid-wipe on the counter. “Cleaning up?”
“Do you always clean other people’s houses?”
“Only when I’m a giant anxious asshole.”
“Good to know.” I scooped up Hank and flopped on the couch, bundling us together under a blanket. His head popped out of his plush pouch like the chubbiest of all kangaroo joeys.
Jason tossed the paper towel in the trash and headed into the space slowly, sitting on the opposite side of the sofa. “So, as I was saying...”
“Thank you,” I interrupted, offering a watery smile. “For Hank... the harness, the leash, the cleaning...”
Regardless of our spat earlier, I was more than grateful for everything he’d done. God knows what would have happened if he hadn’t found him.
“I am the world’s biggest asshole, and I’m sorry for the way I treated you. I own that. That was one-hundred percent my fault, and I was in the wrong. I should have listened to you instead of jumping to conclusions.”
As hurt as I still was, I couldn’t blame him. If I found a gift from another woman in his suite, it would piss me off, but unfortunately mainly break my heart.
“I ran into Mr. Goatee while I was looking for Hank -”
“Wait...” I cut him off. “You were looking for him while you were still mad at me?”
“Of course, I was.” He looked at me like I was the nut job.
“Anyway, I ran into him outside of Bertie’s while checking the trash. He apologized for sending my girl flowers. He split with his girlfriend and felt bad about what he did to you now that he’s on the shit end of the stick. The baby isn’t his, and she left him for another man. He sent the flowers as a sorry, not a romantic gesture.”
Jesus flippin Pancakes. Talk about karma. As much as a deep dark crevice of me pitied him, it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person.
“So, as usual, I made an ass of myself and hurt someone I cared about rather than hearing them out,” he explained. “I’m so sorry that I hurt you. I can’t take back what I said, but believe me, you deserve all the flowers in the world, and you’ll get them. It’ll have to be when I don’t have a raging beast of a cat to tend to, however.”
My heart raced, a nervous jolt of anxiety erupting.
“You deserve to know everything there is to know about me before I ask you something crazy, okay? Just hear me out, and you can ask questions later. I’ll tell you everything you want to know, I promise. Just let me get it out before I run away like I always do.”
I nodded, hugging Hank tight.
“It’s no secret I can’t be intimate. I can fuck, yes, but I can’t do the lovey-dovey cuddles and all that — that is until I met you. It sounds insane, but I feel safe with you. I feel... trusted, whole, complete... You make me a better man.”
He swallowed, focused on his hands, the steely calm I’d grown used to shattering as they trembled. “But I owe you an explanation. I come from nothing and expected nothing for myself but learned that hard work gave me anything I wanted, including trouble. I made mistakes and spent a lot of time in a deep depression I almost didn’t come back from. If I control things like sex, or people, or workouts, it keeps everything on track. But I don’t want to control this. I want the spontaneous stuff.”
He ran his eyes over me, the blue suddenly not as stormy as I remembered. “I want to give us a chance. Can we do that?”
A million different feelings came bursting forth. Fear. Apprehension. Excitement.
“We can take it slow. I’m okay with that.”
The only sound between us was the rumble of Hank’s purrs, and my heartbeat, the organ ready to burst from my ribcage at the rate it was going.
Everything about it was wrong but so right. The timing was horrendous. The situation was unethical and possibly illegal. Everything was pointing towards disaster. Yet it was painfully perfect.
“Yes,” I replied, a smile cracking through the happy tears. “We can do that.”
Jason
I thought Elena cared
