Page 12 of The Fixer

“Oh.” I jerked my head back as my attention whipped between the box and him. “I thought I was supposed to come pick them up.”

He stepped backward again, and all those flutters inside of me dropped like a rock in my stomach. But they swirled again, lifting and spinning as he pulled his lip between his teeth, his molten silver gaze dripping down my body and heating me up. “I wanted to do it myself. To check on you. After what happened.”

His stammering made me smile, the rosy color in his cheeks bringing warmth to my own.

“Thank you for saving me.”

And Lord, the smile he gave me was wicked and dangerous and made everything inside of me clench. “My pleasure.” He stepped forward. Every clenching thing inside me tightened until I was sure my heart had stopped. “Again.”

A small laugh burst free, and I brushed a strand of my hair behind my ear before realizing I’d done it with my injured hand. “Ouch!”

Jet was in front of me in an instant, and my knees parted to make room for him as he took my hand, as if he might somehow take something more. “We need to get this taken care of.”

We.

He was gone before I could stop him, into the kitchen and running the water at the sink. He turned, reached for a cupboard under the counter, and stopped. “You have a cat.”

I peered around him. Mr. Jingles was standing there in the middle of the kitchen, lapping up my soup, ignoring Jet as if he wasn’t even there. “Goodness.”

I hopped off the table, but before I could take a step closer, Jet’s voice snapped, rough and demanding, “Stay put.”

The force of the words made me stumble backward, my butt hitting the chair before I fumbled with it, pulling it out and taking a seat. Jet tried to shoo Mr. Jingles away, but of course, the cat refused to do what she always did when anyone other than my dad was around.

“I can’t believe it,” I mumbled, more to myself than anything. “Mr. Jingles runs away from everyone. But not you.”

“Might have more to do with the food than with me. He won’t stop eating,” Jet said, trying once again to shoo the cat away.

“She,” I corrected.

Jet came to me with a bowl in his hand and one eyebrow raised. “She?”

Nodding, I watched as Jet took my hand from where I held it at my chest and spread my fingers, dipping them into the cool water in the bowl. “There’s a story behind it. That’s not very cold.”

“Cool water is better than cold for burns.” His silver eyes rose like mercury, and my temperature went right with it. As if he was heating me with just a look, baking me, readying to dive in and devour me until there was nothing left. “Let your hand soak.”

Jet returned to the kitchen, and I deflated as the heat left me like steam. This time, Mr. Jingles scattered, feet slipping on the soup as she spun away and ran for cover. Jet grabbed the roll of paper towels off the counter and squatted down, wiping up the mess.

Memories swarmed me. Happy memories, ones that hurt less because of their distance. “When I was a kid, my mother found a little kitten outside the shelter she worked at. It was winter, and she was worried he wouldn’t survive the night, so she brought him home. Even though she intended to bring him to an animal shelter, we fell in love with him before she could.”

Jet didn’t pause in his cleaning, but I could feel his gaze upon me even as I averted my own.

I swallowed hard, forcing myself over the painful part of the story, on to the part Jet surely would rather hear. “Mr. Jingles passed away not long after my mom died. And my dad, well… he was pretty heartbroken. We both were. So, when he found a box of kittens for sale on the street one day, he didn’t think twice about bringing one home. He’d already bought him a collar and a bed with his name on it, and then.” Laughter, something that had been so rare in recent years, flittered out of me. “Then he took Mr. Jingles the Second to the vet and found out he was a she.”

“The name stuck.” His voice sounded distant, and when I looked up, I found him on his knees on the other side of the island, the paper towels discarded on the floor and the cat cradled in his arms.

“The name stuck,” I confirmed. “How did you do that?”

“Do what?”

“The cat, she… She’s the most skittish thing. My dad is the only one she ever let get close.”

Jet’s lip quirked up as he rubbed the cat’s chin. Suddenly, she scrambled out of his grip, scampering back under the loveseat where she always hid. He rose in one fluid movement, swiping the towels from the floor as he went. And everything inside of me shivered and shook as he crossed the room, his darkened gaze on me as he stopped at the table, then knelt before me.

He gripped my right foot, finger brushing near the broken skin at my ankle. “Do you have a first aid kit?”

Through a tightened throat, I forced out a quiet response. “In the bathroom.”

He didn’t leave me quickly. Instead, he looked me over once more, every burn and scratch, every blotch of soup that stained my skin and my clothes. He lingered over my face, my right cheek, before he rose from the floor and moved through my apartment as if it were his own.