Stray for You: A Second-Chance Small Town MM Romance (Rainbow Rescue Cat Café Book 3) by F.A. Ray

Author:F.A. Ray [Ray, F.A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-11-12T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

Julian

LIFE SETTLES BACK INTO a familiar rhythm. Routine asserts itself, demanding I return to work in Manhattan. When it’s time to report to Garret about the conference, I tease Cameron carefully out of the story, but it’s like plucking the color out of a box of crayons and leaving behind only gray, white and black. Regardless, Garret accepts my report, just as my co-workers accept my little hints that I, as usual, had a good time racking up escapades and salacious stories. I feed them the tidbits I know they want, leaving the end of those stories open-ended so they can fill in the blanks themselves. I don’t tell them the truth, of course. The time I spent with Cameron is not for their dissection.

Somehow, I maintain the facade until the weekend, when I thankfully have plans to head to my mom’s house for dinner.

We try to get together at least once a month. It can be hard with the amount I travel for work, but she lives right across the water in New Jersey, so I really don’t have an excuse not to see her.

I don’t bother knocking before entering the home I grew up in. Whistles and football announcers greet me before my mother or her boyfriend realize I’ve arrived. I pry off my shoes and head down the hall to the living room at the back of the house, where Mom sits cuddled up with Dave on the same sagging tan couch that was here when I was kid.

For some reason, the sight makes my chest feel too tight, like someone is squeezing the air out of my lungs. Mom reclines against her boyfriend. He has an arm around her, and it’s so casual, so easy, that they barely seem to notice they’re touching each other. I can’t fathom Cameron ever letting me touch him that way, but when I enter the living room, that image flashes in my mind before I can banish it, burned there like a brand. Even as the ache fades, the mark remains.

Mom sits up when she notices me. “Julian, you’re here.”

She gets up to fuss over me, and Dave follows her off the couch, leaving the football game droning on the television. I know enough about the sport to know we’re rooting for the guys in green and not the guys in red, but that’s about where my knowledge of football ends. My mom has always been a big fan, however. Today, she’s got her Sunday spread all laid out; enough chips and dip and beer sits on the coffee table to supply the whole neighborhood.

Mom wraps me up in a hug. “It’s been too long. How was your trip? This was Nashville? No, this was Seattle, right?”

She’s going rapid-fire, but I know it’s just excitement. In the meantime, Dave offers his hand. I shake it. I don’t know the guy well, but he seems nice enough. Him and Mom have been dating for a few months, and she seems happy.

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