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For now, though, I’m just so excited to have even this one. I mean, does he think he can buy my affection with a kitten?

Shit.

He’s not wrong.

I’ve always wanted a cat. It just never was the time. Once I didn’t have a roommate anymore, I lived alone, and while Ididn’t have to go into the office daily back then, it was still away enough that it wouldn’t have been fair for a companion animal.

But I don’t go in to the office anymore. I’m home every day, and if I have a kitten of mine… maybe I won’t be as lonely as I have been.

Maybe—

Wait.

What was it Adrian said?

For the last week…

“Are you saying that you were always planning on getting me a kitten?”

“You’ve always wanted one.” He pets the baby cat, then strokes my jaw. “I didn’t bring her home yesterday because the shelter was closed and I thought… fuck it, Loni. No excuses. I don’t know what I thought. I should’ve gone on the 23rd, but I didn’t. I made the appointment for the 25th instead because I’m a fucking idiot when it comes to you. I thought… I thought one day wouldn’t matter.”

Normally, it wouldn’t.

But, normally, I’m not in a forced marriage with a husband who is trying to do everything he can to prove himself while I do everything I can to push back against it.

His brows draw together, a hint of vulnerability on a man who is so rarely vulnerable. “Do you like her? They told me that it’s not so usual for an orange cat to be a girl. I liked her, though. The orange fur reminded me of your strawberry blonde hair. You kinda match.”

I glance at the kitten, then up at Adrian. “She has your eyes, too.”

He chuckles. ‘Yeah. I guess she does.”

So maybe weren’t having kids just yet. But it looks like we’re the proud parents of a four-month-old kitten just waiting for us to name her.

Because Adrian adopted her for me.

Because he knew I wanted a kitten.

Because he knows me better than I thought.

Yeah. I’m in big, big trouble, aren’t I?

TWENTY

SOPHIE VALE

LONI

Turns out, an adorable orange kitten wasn’t the only way Adrian decided to make up for totally screwing up my birthday.

I love her to death already. It’s only been about two weeks since Adrian placed the fluffball into my palms, but if anything happened to her, I don’t know what I would do. And maybe I went a little overboard. When Adrian adopted her from the Harmony Heights shelter, he came home with everything the man at the shelter told him a first-time cat adopter would need: litter, a litter box, a breakaway collar with a little, jingling bell, wet food, dry food, and food bowls.

Since then, I’ve added a cat bed, a cat tower with a scratching post, toys for fun, toys for her enrichment, and a small carrier so that, if we need to leave with her, it’ll be easier than holding her in our arms. The shelter did give the kitten to Adrian in a cardboard box, but she’d shredded a small hole in it during the car ride home which is why he had to hold her in his palms. I guess I should just be lucky the little diva didn’t jump from the car before he was able to snare her again.

She’s so soft and fuzzy, I decide to name her Peaches. I don’t let her free roam. When she’s bigger, I will, but for now, I keep her in whatever room I’m in as long as the door can close. That means she spends most of her time in my upstairs office and my private bedroom, and since I spend my time off of work—when I’m not with Adrian—playing with her, some of my loneliness has finally subsided.

It’s the best birthday present he could’ve given me, though his second idea? Yeah… that one’s not so much fun.

For me, at least. For Adrian, I understand why he did it.