Page 48 of The Catch

“Well, the social worker, Ms. Kocak, did. I asked her to. My parents died a couple of weeks after it happened, before I could get in to see him. She said she would take me to the appointment herself before I moved in with my grandfather, but my busted mouth was the last big memory I had of my dad, and I guess I didn’t want it erased. She wasn’t sold on it. Like my mother, she thought I’d regret it, but she let me decide in the end. I appreciated that about her. Anyway, that’s why it’s all jagged like it is, instead of a neat little line.”

Cat stroked her fingers along his arm, churning over Josh’s tumultuous childhood in her mind. She’d only just heard the details, but it felt familiar at the same time—like maybe it was part of his whole being without him even realizing it. She supposed everyone was just a mosaic of the most important pieces of their lives. Scraps of experience twisted and turned until they fit a whole, then set in mortar to become our face in the world. She knew what had happened with Micah was suffused in her every expression, every decision. Including the way she’d been treating Josh.

She moved her fingers to his scalp, brushing through his hair, and he sighed heavily, peacefully. “I think it’s perfect,” she whispered. “Straight lines are boring. Your face wouldn’t be the same without it.”

“I think you’re perfect,” he said.

“How did your parents die?”

There was more silence, but this time she didn’t worry. She was beginning to realize that Josh simply thought through everything that came out of his mouth, so she waited patiently for him to decide the tone of his words.

“They were in a car accident,” he said, matter-of-factly. “Late at night. I was at a friend’s house.”

“I’m sorry.” She held him closer, but she could tell he was telling a version of the story that didn’t require her support. Something he’d memorized to recite without actually reliving the moment. But then he sighed and kept going.

“They were never sure what caused it. They went out for dinner and a movie, then somehow their car ended up upside down in the marsh on a long stretch of road that led onto the peninsula. There was no long drawn out investigation, no sensational story of a drunk driver or an animal in the road. They were just alive, and then they weren’t. There were three of us; then there was me. Then there were two of us—me and an old man I barely knew.”

Cat’s eyes began to well and she wished she could crane her neck enough to see Josh’s expression, but it was dark, and he was resting comfortably, his cheek smooshed against her shoulder.

“He was a nice old man, though,” he finally said, causing her to laugh plaintively.

“So, you got along?”

“He wasn’t much for words,” Josh explained. “He was kind of gruff and… different from my parents in a lot of ways. I figured that was why he and my dad didn’t get along, but he tried his best.”

“How so?”

“He didn’t ask me about my day at school, or how baseball practice went, but he spent hours sitting out on a little rowboat with me, teaching me how to fish, then pretending not to notice when I spent the whole time wiping at my eyes. He just didn’t know what to say is all.”

She thought about that. Josh seemed older than his years. To have come to a conclusion like that at such a young age, he must have always been that way. When she was twelve, she was readingTeen Beatand worrying about what kind of milkshake to get after school. Certainly not trying to understand the emotional responses of the adults in her life.

Josh’s head was getting heavier, his words crushed between his lips and her skin in a drowsy slur. His thumb stopped moving against her hip. Finally, his breathing turned to a faint snore that made her smile. The sound traveled from her brain down to her limbs, and soon she was cuddling into him, letting herself enjoy the heaviness of his arm on her waist and the warmth of his breath on her skin. She drifted off feeling spent and utterly content.

Eighteen

When Cat’s eyes fluttered openagain, it was in that milky half-light of early morning. She’d shifted sometime in the few hours she’d been asleep, her cheek now cradled in the crease between Josh’s shoulder and bicep, her stomach pressed against his in a sticky sweat where the humidity of the room settled on their skin. His other arm draped over her shoulder, his heavy thigh resting between hers. It was a stifling tangle of limbs, and her neck was quirked at an awkward angle, but moving was the furthest thing from her mind.

They’d talked into the thickest part of the night, and she knew she’d be useless on such little sleep, but she found herself shunning another go at rest in favor of soaking Josh up through her pores. She listened to him breathe, trying to figure out when everything had changed. Minnie had flipped the entire script on her at the party, giving her a friendly but firm warning to be careful with him, and when she looked again, she saw exposure in Josh’s eyes that she hadn’t recognized before. She had this strange new need to be a good steward of it.

She slid even closer, until her nose was pressed into his neck, and took a deep breath, savoring the entirely masculine scent that emanated from him. She hoped she smelled as good, as hot as she was. She tried to lift her arm from under the weight of his and take a quick sniff, but he stirred, breathing in deeply, and tightened his grip, trapping her. Josh’s eyes were still closed when the fingers he had tangled in her hair began to curl, pulling gently until her face was tipped toward his. He brushed his lips over hers, so softly, so lazily, that she thought he might still be asleep until his mouth curved into a wide grin.

“Hey,” he whispered, against her lips, sending a flutter through her body.

“Hi.”

“I thought maybe last night was a dream.” He pressed again, this time finding her tongue. “But you really are in my bed.”

Cat smiled into his kiss, opening wider. “It wasn’t a dream.”

With one hand still cradling her head, Josh ran his other from her back to her front, pausing every few inches to squeeze wherever it landed. His fingers splayed over her rib cage, then higher, palming the swell of her breast. She could feel him pressed into her tummy, solid and ready.

She peered up at him, taking in the way his vivid features popped on his face in the dim light. His cobalt eyes, the dark day-old stubble peppering the rose-colored flush that painted his neck—the hues all seemed intensified, like she was suddenly seeing him in Technicolor.

“You’re not going to stop again, are you?” she asked, only half in jest. “I couldn’t take it.”

Josh made a little growl sound and squeezed harder. “Not unless you tell me to.”

Well, that wasn’t happening.

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