Stray for You (Rainbow Rescue Cat Café #3)

Chapter 22

Chapter Twenty-Two

Julian

“SORRY, MY PLACE IS kind of…”

It’s perfect.

I step into a one-bedroom apartment in a small town somewhere north of Seattle and south of Tripp Lake. The entrance reveals nearly the entire space. To my left sits a kitchen where the refrigerator squeezes in beside a countertop and stove. A table separates the kitchen from a living room containing a couch, a coffee table and a TV mounted on the wall. A potted plant basks in the sunlight filtering in through the glass doors that lead to the balcony. Cameron’s guitar rests on a stand in the other corner. A sweater lies on the couch, and used dishes litter the table. I stand amid a pile of mismatched shoes scattered atop a welcome mat.

Cameron bustles past me, sweeping up the dishes and putting them in the sink. He snatches the sweater on the couch and tosses it to the right, presumably into his bedroom.

“I meant to clean,” Cameron says. “I just ran out of time.”

“I love it,” I say, beaming.

He looks skeptical, but I can’t stop grinning. The guitar. The notebooks on the coffee table. The band posters on the wall behind the couch. This whole place positively reeks of Cameron. It looks like him, it smells like him. Every nook and cranny is him, his space, his love for music, his haphazard clutter.

I drop my bag on the floor beside the pile of shoes and stride to Cameron, cupping his face before he has time to try to tidy up anything else. I seize his mouth, holding him against me for a long, deep kiss.

“God, I’ve missed you so fucking much,” I say when we part.

Cameron doesn’t respond, but I don’t care about playing coy anymore. My usual games pushed him away for most of our lives; only when I treated this with sincerity during that conference did Cameron open up and give me a chance. I’m not going to make the same mistake twice.

I go in to kiss him again, but Cameron halts us after only a moment. “You must be hungry after your flight.”

“I’m okay,” I lie, before my stomach grumbles and gives me up.

“You’re hungry,” Cameron says more firmly. “Come on. We can walk to the store.”

I couldn’t care less about food, but Cameron takes my hand and tugs me toward the entrance and out into the hall. I remind myself that I have a whole week with him, no conference, no other obligations, just him. I can wait until we eat. Probably.

Cameron doesn’t release my hand as we head down the stairs and out of the apartment complex. The big, blocky structure lets us out onto a sidewalk beside a busy two-lane road. We hike uphill, which serves as a stark reminder of how far I am from flat, open New Jersey. The grocery store is only a few blocks from the complex, which is convenient except in that Cameron finally drops my hand in order to grab a basket when we enter the store.

I remind myself to calm down, but it’s difficult. He’s being so calm. Is this sort of thing ordinary for him? Has he dated so many people that this is yet another notch on his belt? Despite my colorful past, that stings. A piece of me wants to be special to him. A piece of me wants to stand out in his life.

We weave through the aisles, but the rows of boxed pasta and bags of chips and cans of vegetables blur. I mostly watch Cameron, occasionally lobbing out some sort of tepid agreement when he asks if I like the curly noodles or the bow ties.

“Hey, hold up,” I say as we head down the frozen isle. I open a cabinet and pull out a huge tub of rocky road ice cream. “This was your favorite flavor, right? Let’s grab it.”

Cameron doesn’t respond at first. His face does that thing where it goes very still and blank and I can’t read anything on it.

“Yeah,” he says, and adds it to the basket.

We leave the store with the tub of ice cream, as well as enough pasta and shredded cheese to open our own Italian restaurant. Only when we return to Cameron’s place and kick off our shoes again does Cam reveal the plan.

“I learned about it on Reddit,” he says. “It’s surprising how many decent recipes you can get there. First, we cook the noodles. Then, we add in some canned veggies and top it off with the cheese.”

He works on the noodles while I open cans of corn and vegetables and drain out the water. Once the pasta is ready, he has me dump out the canned stuff into a pan. As it begins sizzling, Cameron tosses the noodles in and stirs it all up along with seasonings.

“Okay, here’s the part that actually makes it taste good,” he says. “Can you open that bag?”

I tear open the bag of shredded cheese, and Cameron pours a terrifying amount onto the mixture on the stove. He lets it sit, and, when it’s all melted, starts doling everything out into bowls.

“Mac ‘n’ cheese?” I ask.

“Sort of. I find this more filling because of the veggies. It’s good. Try it.”

He holds up his fork, a gooey mass of corn and cheese and noodle dripping off it. It takes a moment before I realize he means for me to eat right off his fork, but when I do, he could be feeding me the dirt on the bottom of his shoes and I’d lunge at it with just as much enthusiasm as I spare for the mac ‘n’ cheese. I barely even taste it, my mind stuck on the casual intimacy of this simple gesture.

“Good?” Cameron says, a note of anxiety tightening his voice.

Right. Of course. He hates failing at things, and me hating this meal would definitely be a failure in his eyes.

“It’s great,” I say.

I mean it, but the meal is even better when we sit snuggled up on the couch and Cameron puts on a show about detectives with psychic abilities. The cheese is warm and filling, but letting my shoulder casually rest against Cameron’s while we eat is what really leaves me warm and satiated.

“Did you want to watch something else?” Cameron asks when the first episode ends.

At least, I think it was the first episode. Cameron turns his head and catches me staring at him, and I realize I haven’t watched more than a couple minutes of the detective show. I’ve been busy sneaking glances at him, like I’m trying to fill up a reserve for the long, dry days I’ll face when I return to New Jersey.

Normally, I’m quick on my feet, but Cameron’s dark eyes leave me disarmed.

“Oh, um, yeah, I don’t mind,” I say.

“Don’t mind what? Watching more of this? Or changing it?”

“Um, this show is fine,” I say. “It’s, uh, maybe I should get the ice cream.”

I take our empty bowls and hurry to the kitchen, eager to cover my stumble. How is this so damn easy for Cameron? I’m the one with the silver tongue, and I can barely manage a coherent sentence in his presence. Meanwhile, he’s as cool and calm as ever.

I deposit the mac ‘n’ cheese bowls in the sink and grab the ice cream out of the freezer. I don’t bother with more bowls, just snag a couple spoons and bring the whole thing back to the coffee table. Cameron has fortunately started the next episode of detective shenanigans. We dig into the ice cream as we watch it, and this time I do my best to actually pay attention. It’s hard when the only investigation I care about is how deep down my throat I can fit Cameron’s—

No. Julian, be good. We’ve got to be good.

This isn’t the hasty, meaningless hookups I usually engage in. This is way too important to treat like a fling. I’m not here merely to have sex with him, though, boy, do I ever want to have sex with him. This is a whole week in each other’s space, and the tension is already so high that the air in his apartment feels hot enough to melt the ice cream into soup.

I sneak a look at Cameron. He opens his mouth for a spoonful of ice cream, and I watch his lips as he cleans off the spoon. His tongue flickers out, catching a bit of ice cream on his lips, and my thoughts burn away in a haze of lust.

My spoon clatters onto the coffee table.

I startle, and so does Cameron. I didn’t even feel the spoon slipping out of my fingers. I didn’t notice at all, too transfixed by Cameron beside me.

“You okay?” Cameron asks, dark brows drawing down.

“Yeah, sorry, yes. Just the … time difference or something.”

It’s a blatant lie. Cameron saw me during that conference. He saw how easily I adjusted to a new timezone. That sort of thing is a matter of survival for someone in my line of work. Still, he doesn’t comment on it, and I breathe a tiny sigh of relief.

It is going to be so hard to act normal this week.

Surely, he knows I’ve wanted him since the second we met in high school. Surely, he realizes I’m helpless around him. I mean, I couldn’t even hold back when it looked like our parents were going to get married. If that doesn’t scream desperation, I don’t know what does. It was kind of messed up how I acted back then, but I was caught between wanting him so bad it hurt and wanting my mom to be happy. I was going to slip up eventually. It’s unfortunate it happened when our moms were in the next room over and could catch me, but Mom always assured me that wasn’t a factor in the breakup, that things were heading that direction anyway.

Now, I don’t need to exercise any such caution. Cameron has let me into the most intimate parts of his life. He’s mine for this next week, and I don’t need to pretend anymore that that’s anything less than my every fantasy come to life.

“Hey,” I say, “let’s go to bed.”

Cameron quirks an eyebrow, but that’s the biggest reaction I get. “The episode isn’t done,” he says.

I tug his spoon out of his hand, put the lid back on the ice cream, and set our dessert aside on the coffee table. I take his hand in mine, my other hand sliding around his waist as I lean close to his ear.

“I don’t really care about the show, Cam,” I say.

This time, I get a shiver, a delicious little shiver that trembles against my lips. I take my chance, kissing his exposed neck, trailing down to where his shirt covers his shoulders. I start tugging at the collar, trying to reach more of him, and Cameron squeezes my hand tighter for a moment.

“Couldn’t even last a day,” he says, but the grumbling is pure affect.

“No, I couldn’t,” I admit freely.

Cameron huffs, but with far less genuine annoyance than I might have expected. “That’s kind of pathetic.”

“Mhm,” I agree, nuzzling against his neck, kissing my way back up it. I find his earlobe and tug it between my teeth, and Cameron sucks in a deep, full breath.

“Fuck,” he says. “Fine. Come on. Let’s go.”

He rises from the couch, and I hop up after him like a happy puppy. He keeps a hold of my hand and heads for his bedroom, the one room in this apartment I haven’t seen yet. The one room I’m never going to want to leave.