Page 78 of Chasing You

“Language!”

“Fuck that,” Gage said. “Tell me you’re not joking.” And oh, his voice was thick now. “Please don’t be messing with me.”

Kash sat up as quickly as he could. “Are you angry?”

“No!” Gage sniffed loudly. “Oh my God. I’mhappy. You really…you’re gonna be my dad?”

Kash’s heart felt like it was about to beat out of his chest. “If you want me.”

“Oh my God, shutup,” Gage said. Then he burst into tears and fell into Adele’s arms, shaking with his sobs. “Sorry, sorry,” he was gasping. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

Kash was holding back his emotions, and he could see Adele’s eyes shining in the dim light as he held his son.

“It’s been a day for all of us. It’s okay to feel fragile,” Adele murmured very softly, rocking him like he’d done when he was little. “We’ll talk about that more tomorrow too, yeah?”

Gage sniffed again, then pulled back. “Can I have a hug?”

“I am—oh,” Adele said. He let Gage go, then sat up and swung his leg over Kash, settling behind him.

It took Kash’s medicated brain a second to catch up, and it was right in time for Gage to hesitantly shuffle closer. Kash didn’t make him wait. He opened his arms and held Gage as tightly as he had when he was dragging him out of that damn fire.

“Promise this is for real,” Gage muttered against his shirt.

“I promise,” Kash vowed. And he meant it. Until death do he and Adele part. Hopefully on the same day, in the same hour, and the same minute, with the same final breath.

twenty-one

ADELE

Over the courseof Adele’s career, he had seen his fair share of injuries and a few deaths, though those were rare in their little town. He’d seen homes blazing, heard people screaming, himself caught up in the adrenaline of making sure everyone was safe and unharmed as they got the flames put out.

But he’d never been around for the aftermath. After the trucks packed up and rolled back to the station. He saved his own sanity by tucking those images into tiny boxes in his head, showering off the smell of soot, and putting on comfy sweats.

He’d go home to his kid and the little family he’d created. In recent months, he could cuddle Audra to get his baby fix, or play dress-up with Briar, or let Rex wax poetic about the dress shop he planned to own when he was a grown-up while watching videos on YouTube about cake decorating.

He could forget how bad it was because he never saw what came after.

But this time, he couldn’t hide. This time, the blackenedrubble was his. Everything that wasn’t burnt was soaked. The house reeked with the stench of growing mold and rot. There was a hole in the roof that had let in the elements, and although it had been nearly a week since the fire, it still felt fresh.

The embers had cooled to blackened husks, and he was now forced to face the reality of his situation: they were homeless. The life he’d spent building over eighteen years had burned down by a single freak accident, and there was no saving it.

Photos were gone. Everything Gage had spent years building with his D&D games were ash. Important paperwork that hadn’t been in his safe could be ordered all over again, but all the cards and notes and drawings and little elementary school projects Adele had meticulously saved over the course of his son’s life were no more.

His stomach ached.

“I think I found a few bins in the basement,” came a voice from the stairs. Bowen appeared a few seconds later, his arms weighted down. “And I think Lane found Gage’s baby clothes.”

Adele’s heart twisted in his chest. They were doing a last sweep now that the adjuster had gone through and declared it a total loss. They’d be bulldozing the lot and starting over again. He had a fuckload of equity in the house, so the check would be fat.

He could start from the ground up, rebuilding it all to the specifications they needed for Kash, but that didn’t really ease the pain. Not completely.

“You wanna quit for the day?” Bowen asked as he looked at Adele.

He sighed. “I don’t think I have it in me to go down in the basement right now.” Or at all. He didn’t know why, butevery time he thought about digging through the house, it felt like his arms and legs were stuck in superglue.

“Let us take care of it. I know what’s important and what isn’t.” Bowen set the box down on the ground, then tugged Adele close. “Anyway, don’t you have an appointment downtown today?”

If anything could perk him up, it was that. He was getting married in a few days, and today was the day they got to pick up their license.

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