Page 39 of Fearless
“Is that the call you got the other day?”
“Nah, love. Last call was for a little bloke who lived a little too close to a daycare playground.”
“Did you shoot him?”
“For warming himself in the sandbox?” Noah tsked. “I fixed the hole in the fence. Then I tagged him and let him go again. I only shoot the ones the authorities label a menace. It’s not good policy killing them. Crocs have a place in the world, and the world’s a better place for it.”
“Says the man with a closet full of alligator boots.”
“Croc boots,” Noah corrected, his smile saying he didn’t take her criticism seriously. “Plus, I didn’t make all of those. Some were given to me in trade.”
“Trade for what?” she asked, her curiosity reluctantly pricked.
“When I have to relocate an animal, it goes either deeper into the wild or to a farm, where it then becomes a fashion accessory or part of the breeding stock. Shooting them is a last resort. I only do that when the authorities give the leave because they have no other choice. Shooting them’s not good policy.”
Kitty didn’t care about policy, good or not. She cared about being stuck in a boat with a carnivorous reptile that was bigger than she was. Having already made four attempts on her life, she wasn’t about to give Australia another chance.
After dinner, she cleaned up the kitchen while Noah enjoyed his evening tea at the table and finished reading the morning’s paper. Or at least, that was what she thought he was doing right up until the little red dot flashed into appearance on the cupboard door about head level in front of her.
Kitty jumped, nearly dropping the plate she’d been drying, but it was there and gone again faster than she could blink. In the dead silence of the house that followed, she stood, stunned, the dish in her hand forgotten. She’d almost convinced herself she hadn’t really seen it at all when, clear as a little red dot could be, it popped into existence again, smack on the flat brown cupboard door in front of her, tiny and quivering, and one hundred percent identifiable.
Laser pointer, her brain supplied at the same exact moment that Kitty triggered. She dropped the plate and pounced, her hands slapping one on top of the other over the vanished dot. The dish clattering to the counter top, before sliding off onto the floor. She grabbed after it, fumbled and it fell. It was a miracle it didn’t shatter. Instead, the plate made the most God-awful racket and Kitty jumped all over again.
“I’m sorry!” She dropped to her knees, scrambling after it. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”
“It’s just a plate,” Noah said from the table. That tiny, quivering dot appeared on the floor almost directly in front of her, freezing Kitty where she knelt. She hugged the dish reflexively and looked up. No longer pretending to be interested in his newspaper, Noah sat with a pen-sized laser pointer not quite concealed in his hand.
A corner of his mouth curled. He wiggled the pointer to make the dot dance off the end of her knee, teasing her with its close proximity, and the long-subdued kitten inside her triggered hard all over again.
She all but flung the plate in her haste to pounce, but missed. The dot zipped to her right, and then zipped again, out of the kitchen and into the hallway with her chasing on all fours after it. Barely aware of Noah following behind her, she scrambled and pounced, jumping from floor to wall in wild pursuit of the uncatchable. Flicking from wall to wall, that dot bounced her like a pinball all the way down the hallway and through her open bedroom door.
Caught up in the silliness, Kitty forgot herself. She actually laughed. For the first time in a long time, honestly, freely laughed, as she leapt to clap her hands over the laser dot, catching it against the edge of her mattress. Except she knew she hadn’t. In some distant recess of her mind, she knew he’d only taken his thumb off the button, and still, Kitty couldn’t resist the impulse to peel her fingers back for a quick peek beneath her palms. Tiny and quivering, there it was, captured in the cup of her hands against the blankets.
It had been a very long time.
She wanted to cry, but it came out like laughter again. Right up until she spotted the kitten costume lying in four neat piles across her bed.
“I reckon maybe it’s not as ‘used to’ as you thought,” Noah said from the doorway.
Kitty said nothing, she just stared at the tail—soft and fluffy, jet black with a stark white tip. It was nicer than her pink set. The fur, when she touched it, lacked that synthetic feel. Trimmed in black tufts, she petted the knee pads, her fingers beginning to shake as she crawled up on all fours to sit on her bed. She pulled the paws into her lap, touched them to her cheek. The ears made her eyes tear, black and white, like the tail, but gently rounded like a real cat’s. Reverently, she stroked the tufts. Nestled underneath, where she hadn’t noticed it until she picked the ears up, was a pink leather collar, studded all the way around with silver bells.
She looked to Noah in wonder, hardly able to keep the tears back. “Y-you’ve had a kitten before.”
His smile softened. He shook his head. “Nah.”
The bells on the collar jingled as she traced them. He’d made these things for her. He’d made them. Dropping everything, she hugged her hands to her chest. They were too precious to touch.
“You can wear as much or as little as you like,” Noah said, retreating from the room. “Or even not at all.”
He walked out, not quite closing the bedroom door behind him to give her privacy.
Did he mean now? Did he mean only in this room, or any time? Or, did he mean—
He’d meant, she suddenly realized, exactly what he’d said. Just like he always did. He meant that with him she would always be safe. That she would always have a choice and the freedom to be herself. He meant she would never have to live in dread that every word he said had an ulterior meaning or motive hidden behind it.
Pulling her new tail into her lap, Kitty pet the softness. The silliness of only a few seconds before was gone. In its place, was a strange mixture of awkwardness, hyper-awareness, and budding excitement. She picked up the ears and clutched them too. Dare she put them on? Dare she strip down to what had once been her most comfortable and, in front of Noah, try for a little while to truly be herself? Where someone else could see it?
If not here and now, then when?
