Page 1 of Chasing You

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KASH

“Kash?Please tell me my brother didn’t forget to pick you up?”

Kash grimaced at the sound of Bowen’s question. Staring across the walkway, he spied Adele’s miserable face in the back of the cop car, and he sighed heavily. “No. He didn’t forget to pick me up. He, uh…well. He got arrested.”

There was a long beat of silence, and then Bowen said, “Well. I guess that’s one way to welcome you home.”

Kash should have known to expect something ridiculous. Adele was the master of ridiculous. On prom night, Adele crashed the dance wearing the school mascot costume.

During Homecoming, he put fireworks under the float—and that had nearly been a disaster for the entire school. The only reason he wasn’t arrested for that one was that no one knew who’d done it, and Kash wasn’t about to sell out his best friend.

For graduation, Adele broke out into a break dance—not a good one, but a memorable one.

When they finished their firefighter training,Adele got down on one knee and proposed to him, asking Kash to be his partner for life. But not in the way Kash had always fantasized about.

Adele was married then, and he seemed happy. And while Kash laughed at the ridiculous question and said yes, his heart shattered into a thousand pieces knowing that Adele would never want him back.

He’d moved shortly after that and hoped things would grow stale between them. That his feelings would fade and his heart would move on.

Now, almost twenty years later, he realized that had been entirely and completely false hope. He was as in love as ever, as exasperated as ever watching Adele stare forlornly across the street, and feeling completely and utterly fucked. But he was home.

And this time, he was pretty sure it was for good.

Something was wrong with him—something very, very wrong—and the only person he wanted to be around was Adele.

Who was, of course, currently sitting in the back of a cop car because he thought pretending to be a kidnapper at an airport was a good idea.

Kash hadn’t expected it—even though he probably should have. But he was jet-lagged and exhausted and stressed. So when a stranger came up and tried to put a bag over his head, he’d fought with all of his weak limbs and screamed for help.

The cops had Adele on the ground before Kash realized who it was, and no amount of apologizing was changing their minds about slapping him in cuffs and shoving him into the back of the patrol car. For all the people in the world who should have known not to fuck around like that at an airport, it was Adele. And for all the people whowould have thrown that out the window to be a dipshit in hopes it would make Kash laugh, it was also Adele.

“How much bail money should I pull out?” Bowen asked.

“I’m not sure. I think it’s a bigger crime when you’re involved in an attempted kidnapping at an airport,” Kash said miserably.

“He did what?” Bowen demanded.

Kash laughed in spite of himself. “Yeah. He thought it would be funny. He bought a black bag to put over my head and jumped me from behind. Cops were on him before I figured out who he was, and they were pissed.”

“Oh my God, he is a moron,” Bowen groaned. “Fuck, let me find my keys and Lane’s emergency credit card. You’re going to need a ride, and he’s going to need a damn lawyer.”

“Yeah, I,oh—” He stopped when one of the officers opened the back door and Adele stepped out. He wasn’t in handcuffs, and he looked absolutely mortified. “Wait, I think they’re letting him go.”

“He probably had them call that jackass Tom?—”

“Wait. The guy who used to bully you?” Kash asked. He remembered Tom. He and Adele had threatened Tom more than once, but the guy had it out for Bowen.

“Yeah,” Bowen said with a laugh. “He’s a little better now. Though no surprise the guy became a fucking cop. Anyway, he owes Adele, so I’m sure he’ll get him out of this.”

“He’s walking over,” Kash said. His legs felt even weaker, and he knew it was from the stress, but he was officially terrified he was going to collapse and be forced to explain everything before he was ready. “Talk later?”

“I’m sure I’ll see you this evening,” Bowen said.

Kash hung up and shoved his phone into his pocket as the airport cop and Adele made their way over to him. The cop had dark, narrow eyes, and he didn’t look entirely convinced this whole thing was on the up and up. Kash had half a mind to make Adele stew in his own juices in a holding cell for a while to remind him that actions had consequences.

But the moment he looked at Adele’s face, he couldn’t. He’d missed him. He wanted nothing more than to curl up in Adele’s arms—and technically, that was allowed again since Adele was divorced now and had been for years.

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