Hosed (Happy Cat #1)(56)

“Ain’t thank you for nothin’.”

“You’ll be thanking me for not recording this. Hey, Jace! Come get the door.”

Are my lips numb? I think my lips are numb.

The world spins again, and I’m suddenly upside down with a shoulder in my gut. “Wha tha fuuuu…?”

“You might not be recording,” Jace says, “but I sure as hell am.”

“No more lemonade after a double shift,” Blake grunts. “You know what sugar does to him.”

I must be dying, because I swear Jace just laughed.

Jace doesn’t laugh.

Now I get why.

I’ll never laugh again either.

I close my eyes. There’s Cassie.

Lighting the fire.

Pale and limp on Jojo’s back.

Lighting the fire.

Lying seemingly lifeless outside the building.

Lighting the fire.

Coming to on the stretcher, those bewitching eyes lying to me.

“Oh my goddess, what are you doing?” Olivia’s voice shrieks into the floaty area around my ears. “Are you going to drop him on his head?”

“Might be more effective than taking him home,” Blake muses.

“You can’t drop him on his head! We need him to help Cassie!”

“He’s not in good enough shape to help George Cooney right now, let alone a human being.”

“Put. Him. Down.”

Is that really Olivia?

Whoever she is, she’s persuasive. I’m suddenly back on the ground with my ass in a chair, mist spraying into my face. “Ow! Hey! What the hell?”

“It’s an aromatherapy spritzer.” Olivia gives the perfume bottle one more squirt in my direction. “It cures dumbness. And hangovers.”

“It smells like burnt tar and cat spray.” But the fog in my head is clearing. Whatever’s in that shit is potent.

And effective.

“You need your chakras realigned,” she declares.

“He needs to get over being scared,” Blake replies.

I shoot him a what the hell? look.

He shrugs. “Love’s a big fucking deal. And scary as hell. You want to go slow, go slow. But don’t sabotage the one thing you’ve always wanted. You can’t protect the world, Ry. Sometimes people get hurt. And that includes the people you care about. You can be afraid of it, but don’t let fear stop you.”

“I’m not afraid,” I grunt.

“Dude, Jace is less terrified of being a father than you are of admitting seeing Cassie on that stretcher almost killed you.”

“A f-father?” Olivia’s brows crinkle.

Jace grunts and gives a short nod, not looking at her.

Her lips part, and if I wasn’t sleep-deprived and tipsy on more than just an adrenaline crash, I’d say she was hurt.

“Blake’s right,” Jace tells me. “You’re being a chickenshit.”

“I’m not scared,” I insist.

“Then why didn’t you stick around to listen to what she had to say?” Blake asks.

I offer him a middle finger. “I read people pretty damn well.”

He snorts. “You shut the cover on that book before you got to Chapter One. C’mon. You can crash at my place for a few hours. And then we’re calling Clint, and all three of us are going to kick your ass together.”

“I’m protecting you,” I tell them all. “Protecting you from an arsonist getting too close to this family.”

“You’re an idiot,” Jace says.

Blake shakes his head. “You ever stop to think about why you’ve never had a steady girlfriend more than a few months? I used to think it was because you didn’t want the responsibility of a relationship after all you did for us. But I don’t think that’s it anymore. Know what I think?”

“That you think too much?”

“That you’re afraid you’ll get a wife and kids and you won’t be able to keep them safe. That you won’t be able to be the hero every second of the day.” He pauses, arching a brow. “Or maybe you’re worried you’ll have a kid who’s just like you, who feels like he has to pick up your slack and worry all the time and he’ll never give himself a moment’s peace.”

“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

The low-lit interior of the bar is in sharp focus now.

So’s the clenching in my chest.

And the twist in my gut that says my brother has a fucking point.

Blake’s green gaze doesn’t waver as he shrugs. “Maybe I don’t. But I also know it’s not like you to abandon someone you care about who needs you. You should think about what’s really going on here, brother.”

What’s really going on is that Cassie Sunderwell played me. Hard and ugly.

But…she was so excited about that gaming app she wanted to write.

Seemingly sincerely excited. Was that really just a ploy to ensure she’d have a strong defense when she lit up her sister’s factory? And the way she blushed her face off, but kept trying to get comfortable with sex toys. And the way she brought a dildo to bed and trusted me to help her to figure out how to use it.

And the way she made my heart jolt fully awake for the first time in my life and how she nearly stopped it cold while she was lying unconscious on that stretcher and there was nothing I could do.