Page 22 of Absolutely Pucked
“I’m still the same me,” Jonah pointed out.
“Yeah, but you’ve got a life outside of this place.” I settled back a bit further into the seat of the car and glanced along the horizon. The place used to seem so alien from where I’d grown up—the arid West Coast desert was nothing like this.
Now, this place was home.
And that wasn’t as comforting as I expected it to be right then.
“This’ll pass. It has to, right?” Jonah asked.
I felt like the world’s worst friend when I couldn’t give him an answer to that. I wanted to say yes, but considering the way things had gone since I was a kid, fuck only knew if it would ever be better than what I had right now.
“I want to pet the kittens,” Jonah said, bouncing on his heels and tugging at my arm.
“If you pet kittens, you’ll adopt one, and then Micah will murder you in your bed,” I reminded him. Micah had a slight but annoying allergy to cats, which often kept him out of my house. Everyone loved Nugget, including Micah, but he was not about to suffer in his own home.
“That’ll be a great excuse to move out,” Jonah said, tugging my arm in the entirely wrong direction of thelittle glass area they kept all the foster cats. I almost let him lead us across the store, but it felt mean.
“Wrong way, babe.” I adjusted his hand on my arm, then turned and waited for him to find the path with his cane. “And fine. We can see the cats, but only for a few minutes.”
This pet shop had an open area where any visitor could walk in and play with the fosters, which was nice, not having to track someone down. Jonah’s cane tip trailed along the edge of the glass room, and then he tapped it impatiently while I got the door open.
“After you. To your left on the far side of the room are two cat trees, and if you reach out like a foot and a half, there’s the bench.”
“Don’t let me step on any of them,” he said, sounding almost frantic as he folded up his cane and felt for the seat.
There were only three kittens, and all of them were cuddled up in a little basket a few feet from where he was standing. “You’re fine. Just sit, and I’ll push their little kitten bin over.”
Jonah settled on the floor instead of the bench, and I balanced carefully on my leg while I used my cane to hook the basket and pull it between his spread legs. His hands immediately went out and brushed over the tops of the little furry babies.
“I’m going to die. They’re so cute. What color are they? They feel black.”
They were black. “Yeah. One of them has Halloween eyes.”
“I don’t know what that means, but I love her anyway.” Jonah carefully lifted all three and set them onhis chest, where they curled up almost like they were made to be there. “If I died on the way over here, I’m fine with it because it means I went to heaven.” He put his face in the purring cuddle pile.
I snorted. “There’s not a chance in hell you’re going to heaven, bro. I’ve seen your incognito browser.”
Jonah grinned, even as he rubbed his cheeks back and forth across kitten ears. “Whatever, dude.” He breathed in. “I want one. I’m being serious.”
Biting my lip, I glanced across at a couple of workers who were staring at us. It was hard to tell why. Most of the time, it was because Jonah was hot, but people got weird when he didn’t use his prosthetics. And I was in shorts, so my leg was obvious.
“Are you and Micah planning on splitting up?”
“God, you make it sound so creepy,” Jonah complained, and there was some edge to his tone, which reminded me of how many people assumed he and his brother liked to have threesomes. “And yes, I think so. I mean, we eventually want to settle down, and I don’t want him in my fucking pocket while I’m trying to figure out my life. The only reason we’re as close as we are is because of our mom.”
I grimaced. I knew a lot about his family. Too much. They were different from mine, but the trauma was just as heavy. “He’s actually a good dude.”
“No.” He deflated quickly. “I know. It’s just…I want to do something for me for once, you know? We’re on different teams, but we play on the same goddamn ice half the time. We’re both goalies. We’re both shitheads. The only difference is that he likes dudes, and I…usually don’t.”
He’d been flirting with the idea of bi-curiosity for a little while now, but I wasn’t going to push him. “I get it. I mean, living with Boden and Tucker was nice, but it wasn’t nicer than having my own space. It gets a little lonely, but I have Nugget, and she’s basically my child.”
“I want a child. Like this,” he added quickly, scratching the top of the Halloween-eyed cat. “Not a real child. That’s nasty.”
I laughed. “So maybe this little trip was a good idea.”
“I could get this one, and you could babysit her until I move out,” Jonah wheedled. His face turned up to me.
“You forgot your puppy dog eyes at home, babe.”
