Page 86 of Texting Dr. Stalker

Her soft voice called after me. “Hey, Zander?”

I couldn’t stop the rush ofblisteringhope. I spun in my dress shoes and waited for her to tell me we could be friends, after all. That I had a chance in hell of claiming her as mine instead of fucking everything up the longer I deceived her as X.

“Yeah?”

She couldn’t hold eye contact. Staring at the kitten, she asked quietly, “What’s his name?”

The fizzing and popping of hope left me dead on my feet. My voice sounded a little flat, even to my ears. “He doesn’t have one.”

“You haven’t named him?”

“You do it.” Turning again, I left her property before I could do something equally as moronic—like confess everything.

* 23 *

Sailor

I Have One Request

“HOW ABOUT PUMPKIN?”

The kitten pounced on the blue ribbon I’d borrowed from my nana’s face cream decorations. Flipping upside down, he battered the ribbon with all four feet, his little claws flashing like teeny tiny daggers.

“Not pumpkin.” I nibbled on my bottom lip, watching him like I had for hours. “What about Cheddar or Marmalade or Ginger or Rusty? Those are all very good orange cat names.”

He attacked a dust mote, hissing as if he was a ferocious tiger and not the size of a hairball.

“None of those either, huh?” I lay on my stomach in the small snug off the living room. All morning, I’d been obsessed. I hadn’t showered or dressed out of my nightclothes. The moment I’d taken the box off Zander and plonked it down in the living room, the kitten had stolen my every thought and terror.

I’d never had a pet before.

My parents weren’t interested, and my grandparents kept saying they didn’t want an animal in case they died and the poor thing was left behind. I’d tried telling them they could’ve had four pets by the time they were ready to perish but…deaf ears.

I’d always been secretly jealous of my friends with dogs or cats, and I’d been especially envious of Rosalee—a girl at school who had an aviary that took up the entire back garden thanks to her parents rehabbing wild birds. They kept the ones too badly broken to return to the wild and even rehabbed a penguin once.

“How about Penguin?” I giggled as the kitten darted into me, tumbling onto his side and rolling under my chest. Rolling off my elbows, I scooped him against my heart, utterly addicted to the purring rattle from his frail little body and the absolute wonderment that something so small could be soalive.

It made me want to cry because I wanted to be that effortlessly happy.

Then it made me mad because I had nothing stopping me from being that happy—if only I could let go of the past.

“So you like Penguin?” I sighed as the kitten wriggled closer and headbutted my chin. He smelled a little from living wherever he’d been before Zander rescued him. His whiskers looked as if he’d stuck his paw in a socket. And his ribcage was far too prominent.

But those eyes?

Good grief, they were heartstoppers.

Violently green and inquisitive and scarily intelligent. In fact, they reminded me of Zander’s eyes.

I snickered. “You know…if you were a deep red instead of ginger, you’d match the man who rescued you rather perfectly. Both redheads. Both green-eyed charmers.”

The cat meowed and yawned. He made no move to get out of my embrace, and I lay on the carpet with him, lulled into a drowsy daydream, thanks to his contented purring.

Soft images floated in my mind. Snippets of my childhood when Zander would rescue animals and do his best to fix them. Sometimes he was successful, and his parents would track down the owners who’d lost their pets, reuniting them with a happy ending. However, sometimes he wasn’t, and he’d drop into a solemn solitude full of mourning.

He has such a good heart.

I smiled a little, grateful that men like him still existed.

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