Page 78 of The Catch

“Josh, please.” This felt too final. She couldn’t let him leave. “You’re not feeling well,” she said, grasping. Her voice became frantic, heightening in pitch as she rambled. “Don’t drive home. Just come back to my place and get some sleep. We can talk this all out tomorrow when you’re feeling better. You’ll see how this was just a big misunderstanding. I love you, Josh. We can talk this out. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. Please.”

He reached for her hand, slowly uncurling her fingers from the fabric of his jacket, then slid behind the wheel. “I love you too, Catia.” His brow pinched as if saying it was suddenly too much to bear. “I love you more than I should have let myself, but this isn’t what I thought it was.”

“No,” she cried, tears spilling freely now, blurring all of the lights into a weeping watercolor.How the hell did we get here?“Don’t say that, Josh. It’s not true.”

“Go back to the restaurant, Cat,” he said as he pushed the ignition, and his Jeep rumbled to life. “I need to go. I want to see that you’re back inside first.”

“No,” she said, digging her boots into the gravel like a child. “Josh. Please.”

“Cat… ” His face fell to a neutral, exhausted expression, and he pressed his fingers into his eyes. “Please go back inside.”

“I’m not going. If you’re going to leave me, then you’ll have to leave me here.”

“Please?”

“No. Josh—”

“Catia!” He slammed his palm against the steering wheel, and her whole body flinched. He’d never raised his voice before, definitely not at her. She stood frozen, gaping at this new version of him, the one she’d created.

Josh pulled his phone out of his pocket and started typing furiously. A second later, his phone lit up in reply, and he shut the door and backed his Jeep out of the spot. His brake lights glowed an angry red as he idled in place.

She held her breath waiting for him to put the car in park and get out. He would pull her into his arms, and they would apologize to each other and end this whole ridiculous misunderstanding. But a moment later, Adam appeared across the street, waving with his phone in his hand. Josh’s brake lights dimmed, and he pulled away.

Thirty-one

Josh turned the shower offand leaned against the tile, letting the steam that lingered in the stall fill his lungs. His head pounded as he swallowed, thick and painful. Standing outside in an ice storm fighting with Catia was probably a shit idea when he knew he was coming down with something.

He was full of shit ideas lately. Like letting himself do this again, falling for someone who couldn’t love him back. His stomach contracted painfully as he thought of the tears streaming down her face, mixing with the sleet and ice as he drove away from what he’d thought was his future.

So he was wrong. There were no guarantees in life. He understood that better than most people. He’d gone from a normal, happy childhood with two parents who loved him, to living with a man who barely knew he existed. Then, he’d bet his future on a woman who took a vow with him but would later tell him she’d never been sure in the first place. Fine. Things change, people leave. He thought he knew how to handle it by now. But damn it if he couldn’t just build one thing on concrete instead of sand. If for nothing else other than to keep from being blindsided again.

He ran a hand through his hair, gathering up the strength to get himself dried off and back into bed. The window in his bathroom was open because he’d been in a full flop sweat when he’d decided he needed a shower. Now he shivered violently, but he needed another minute before he could cross the room to close it.

A gust of snowy, salty air rattled the blinds, and the scent of the estuaries on the peninsula hit him in the chest. He had a sudden, fever-blurred vision of that rowboat. The one he’d told Cat about where he’d spent hours silently drowning while sitting on top of the water. He could feel his grandfather’s stoic presence behind him, waiting for him to pull himself out his self-pity. He could hear the intermittent throat-clearing meant to remind him that the old man was there, but he wasn’t going to give him anything.

It was because of those fishing trips that he had pulled himself together. He’d learned how to be with people but not need anything from them. Not to ask too much. He’d momentarily forgotten that lesson. He’d needed something from Cat. He’d wanted her too much. He’d learned the lesson his grandfather was trying to teach him, but he still had a little too much of his parents in him. He could still never resist when his gut and that lonely place in his chest conspired and told him to do something. He was a fucking dog who couldn’t stop dreaming about catching cars, and he’d finally ended up under the front tires of one.

Now he was shivering so hard his teeth were chattering. He wrapped the towel around his hips and went to slam the window shut, then he walked back to his bedroom and crawled under his duvet. He immediately regretted getting his sheets wet, knowing he didn’t have the strength to put new ones on. He dragged himself back out of bed, tossing the wet towel on a chair in the corner of his room, and dug through his dresser drawers for a pair of pajama pants and a hooded sweatshirt. He bundled up and dragged the top blanket behind him into the living room, settling for the couch. Maybe if he was lucky, whatever he’d caught would give him the punch in the face he needed to pass out and forget about Cat for a while. He curled up into a ball beneath the blanket and tried to think warm thoughts. Hot soup. The desert. The beach. The way the summer sweat made Cat’s skin glow the first night they’d met, holding her after they’d made love, sticky and sweltering but unable to stop touching.

He threw the blanket off and let himself shiver. He didn’t want to think about summer nights right now. It was December, and it was cold, and all of that was gone.

Josh dozed off after a while, his body finally accepting defeat, and it was mid-day when a faint buzzing sound pulled him out of his fever sleep. Without opening his eyes, he reached around under the blanket for his phone, coming up short. The buzzing continued while he rolled to his side and parted his lids just enough to scan the coffee table. His phone was traveling toward the edge on the wave of vibration, and he grabbed it just before it plunged over the side.

Shawn. He hadn’t had a chance to fill him or Dylan in on the previous night and the thought of doing it now, when his throat was on fire, and his tongue was parched from breathing through his mouth, exhausted him. He let it go to voicemail, then pressed the little mail icon and listened. Shawn said something about Christmas day dinner, (a tradition he shared with them last Christmas after his divorce), an offer to come with him and Minnie to Midnight Mass, (the same offer he always declined), then a tacked-on addendum from Mattie’s voice reminding him that Uncle Josh had promised him a transforming car with chrome wheels, (Cat had wrapped it last week and put it in his closet). He ended the message and ran a hand over his face. His skin was hot even to his own fingers, and he groaned as he tossed the phone back on the table.

He was supposed to go to Cat’s family’s house for Christmas. He probably would have ended up at Mass after all, sitting in the pew next to a hundred of her family members. He hadn’t told Minnie that yet, so he guessed he’d found his backup plan. He was thankful to have one, even though he’d been looking forward to not being a third wheel this year. Minnie and Shawn never made him feel that way, though. Minnie had moved to a different country for Shawn, and she knew what it was like being a singular member of your family. Ever since he and Sarah had split up, Minnie had gone out of her way to make sure he didn’t feel that way on the important days. She was going to hate to hear about him and Cat. It would break her heart.

Thirty-two

Christmas Eve was a blurry,red and white streaked dream. At least that’s the way Cat remembered it. She’d floated through the formal, candle-lit dinner, then Midnight Mass, faking just enough cheer to keep from breaking down in front of her sisters, though she doubted her thin smile and festive attire was fooling anyone. Now she was putting the finishing touches on her costume for act two: a cozy red sweater and leggings, Ugg boots, and pearl earrings. The goal was to look like her heart was still beating, and she’d pulled it off by the skin of her teeth. It was a Christmas miracle.

She’d just finished her makeup when her phone buzzed on the bathroom counter beside her.

“Merry Christmas!” Emma’s voice filled the little bathroom when Cat answered the call on speaker.

“You too.”

She could practically hear Emma’s face fall from across the line. “Still no word from Josh?”

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