Page 33 of Chasing You

Had Gage distracted him that much, or was he getting used to it?

He wasn’t entirely sure any of it really mattered. What mattered was the reality checks he was being given left and right. He had to figure this out—he had to keep living.

Not just surviving.

Kash was pretty sure he had himself sorted out after the incident with Gage. His mood was better, and his body was being kinder. He was able to move around freely, and whilehe still wasn’t comfortable looking for a job since he was waiting on his final test results, he could help around the house. He ignored Adele’s protests when he started laundry or cooked dinners, and he even managed a couple of game nights with Gage and Lucas—though he couldn’t even begin to understand Dungeons & Dragons, he still had fun.

And then things turned upside down.

Literally.

Normally he had some kind of warning before his legs gave out on him, but apparently, that wasn’t always going to be the case. He’d been having a decent Tuesday, doing yard work and a deep clean of the kitchen cabinets while Adele worked on his taxes. He was filthy after weeding, so he opted for a quick shower before starting dinner, and that’s when it all went wrong. Between one breath and the next, he found himself lying on the floor of the bathtub with an aching head and water spraying in his face.

The bathroom door flew open a second later, and Kash wanted to die of humiliation as Adele shoved his head past the curtain and stared down at him.

“How many fingers am I?—”

“I’m not concussed,” Kash attempted to say with water pouring into his mouth. He turned his face to the side. “Fuck! Help me up, will you?”

Adele’s fingers dug into his biceps as he hauled Kash into a sitting position, pulling him away from the spray. He still had soap in his hair and a fluffy bit of lather on his dick from where he’d been scrubbing at his pubes.

He was so mortified he was pretty sure he was never going to recover.

“Did you fall off the chair?” Adele asked.

Kash groaned and let his head drop against the tiles. “I was standing. And before you make that face,” he said,because he knew Adele was glaring at him now, “I was feeling fine. I didn’t have any damn warning.”

Adele sighed, the sound barely audible over the water. Then, he pulled back and left Kash to his mortification. Or so he assumed. But he was wrong on that count because a second later, the curtain slid to the side, and Adele stepped in wearing only his boxers.

Fuck his life. Fuck it entirely.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to finish washing you.”

“The hell you are,” Kash said, shoving him back when Adele attempted to lift him from the floor. “You’re going to slip and knock yourself unconscious.”

“Doubtful. My head’s way harder than yours, so if you survived, I’m good.” Adele tugged at him again, but Kash attempted to kick his feet out from under him. “Stop it. You’re being a child.”

“You’re being a child!” Kash fired back.

Adele leaned his elbow against the wall and looked down at him. “Why are you fighting me?”

“Because this is fucking embarrassing, Adele. Jesus Christ, I did not expect to be picked up off the shower floor until I was at least eighty-nine.”

Adele’s face fell a little, and he slid to the floor, blocking most of the spray, leaving Kash cold and soapy. “Is this more embarrassing than the night we got your cousins to buy us sake?”

Oh God, he hadn’t thought about that in years. They’d just turned sixteen, and his older cousin had come home on leave while being stationed in Japan. He’d been going on and on about how good the food and alcohol were there, so Kash and Adele convinced him to buy a couple of bottles of sake from the corner store.

They’d promised only to have a single serving each, but then Carson and Colt had wandered off, so he and Adele stole one of the bottles. They hid under the back deck and took the whole thing down in under four minutes. Kash had never been so sick in his life. He had a vague memory of Adele holding his head up for him while he threw his guts up into the toilet and an even foggier memory of Adele attempting to wash his hair in the sink after Kash had gotten sick all over him.

He remembered waking up, mouth tasting like something had died in the back of his throat, a bruise on his ass he couldn’t remember getting, and the strange feeling like he was missing something.

Unfortunately, Adele’s memory was worse than his, but he remembered the getting sick part. And Kash trying to get a block of cheese out of the fridge, falling, and breaking several shelves. Kash found out that morning that memory was true after his mom went in for her morning coffee and started screaming about the mess.

Kash had never been so grounded in his life.

It was the best and worst moment of his teen years.

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