Page 9 of Absolutely Pucked (Punk as Puck #3)

CHAPTER

SIX

FORD

“Please eat the food. It’s tuna flavor. It’s basically the same thing as salmon.”

Nugget stared at me like I was asking her to eat a pile of dog shit.

She leaned over the plate, then did that creepy cat-gag face and turned, leaving it entirely untouched.

It wasn’t like I could blame her. All wet cat food smelled like it had been canned in the bowels of the worst ring of hell, but they all smelled the same.

Apparently, I was not as sophisticated as she was.

Taking the plate, I dumped it into the trash and stared at my car keys. There were only two pet stores that sold the brand she liked, and the one within reasonable driving distance from me was no longer carrying the fucking salmon flavor.

“You know you aren’t the boss of me, right?”

“Are you talking to me?” A moment later, Jonah appeared in the kitchen archway, one hand on the wall, the other holding Nugget, who had leapt into his arms and was now purring. He wasn’t wearing his prosthetics, so his eyelids were squinted shut, his long, dark lashes fanning downward.

“No. I was talking to the picky-as-fuck asshole you’re cuddling,” I said. “She won’t eat the goddamn tuna flavor, and the store that carries salmon is like an hour away.”

“So be a good little butler and go fetch,” he said, leaning down to nose along the top of her head. She was purring so loudly I could hear it from where I was standing. “You can’t tell this face no.”

He wasn’t wrong. From the moment I saw her, wet and filthy with her eyes gummed shut, shivering under a stack of wooden shipping crates, I hadn’t been able to do anything except spoil her. But God, how quickly she forgot what it was like to live on the streets.

The little shit.

“Do you want to come with me?” I asked, grabbing my keys off the counter.

Jonah sighed and let Nugget slide out of his arms. “Yeah, but can we stop by that one place with all the cheap-as-fuck home décor?”

“You taking up decorating in your spare time?” I asked him. Grabbing my walking cane off the wall, I tucked it under my arm before grabbing his.

He flipped me off as he felt around the counter for his phone and house keys. “First of all, fuck you. It’s ableist to think I couldn’t be a badass home designer. Secondly, no. But I’m tired of people complaining that my place looks boring.”

I rolled my eyes as I tapped the back of his hand with the ball of his cane. He snatched it off me and shoved it into his back pocket before reaching for my arm. “Why do you give a shit what people think?”

He huffed a sigh. “I don’t know. I’m a delicate soul.”

I shoved him into the wall as we headed for the door, and he burst into laughter, clipping me behind the knee as I attempted to step over the threshold. It took everything in my balance and his not to tumble into the grass, but it felt good to be outside and acting normal for a bit.

Shit was changing left and right, and I was feeling a little off-center. The only good man in my life had been in it less than a few hours, and I’d woken up alone on a strange sofa with congealed fried food on the table and the ghost of Ian’s kisses on my lips.

I hadn’t told anyone about him. I’d nearly gotten the courage to do it, but before I could come clean, Boden had a goddamn breakdown over Hugo, and it was easier to pin my problems to the wall. Mostly because they weren’t problems at all.

“I’m actually being serious,” Jonah said as we righted ourselves and headed for my car. “I need to spruce up my place. I can’t expect to get into a serious relationship while living like a bachelor.”

I glanced at him after sliding into the driver’s seat. “So what? You want some fuckin’ tea towels or something?”

“I don’t know. I had Chelsea over at my place the other day?—”

“Which one is Chelsea?”

“The hot one,” he said with a sniff.

I scoffed. “A, I’m gay as fuck, so my idea of hot one isn’t the same as yours. ”

“Well, dude, in case you forgot, I’m literally totally blind, so I don’t actually know what she looks like. And I never gave a shit, so I never asked. She works concessions on Thursday nights if you’ve seen her there.”

“Do you think I actually drink that piss beer and eat those nachos?” I asked him. I didn’t go to a lot of his games either. It wasn’t personal, but they shared an arena with the Boston NHL team, so it was always full, and I was not a fan of crowds.

Or people.

Or places.

Or things.

“Well, whatever. The point is she’s hot, and she was over at my place the last few nights and was complaining that it looked like her old dorm room.”

I grimaced as I hit the road. I never went to college, of course.

The moment my life fell apart when I learned my dad wasn’t actually my dad and I was the unwanted child, they quit paying for things.

College was off the table. Hell, I didn’t even graduate since they kicked my ass out at sixteen.

I took my GED six weeks after I turned eighteen, got in the shitty car my grandpa left me after he died, and slept at the shelter across from the Y until Boden realized where I was staying and moved me in with him.

But I still knew what a dorm room looked like. My first blowjob had been at a frat party I’d snuck into my sophomore year of high school. Not my finest moment, but a memorable one. The guy invited me back to his dorm, and it smelled like ball sweat and Doritos.

I would not be surprised if Jonah’s place smelled the same way .

“So you and Chelsea are getting serious, or…”

Being blind from birth, Jonah had never really developed a poker face. His expressions were entirely instinctual and showed every emotion. He shot me a disgusted face. “God, no. And not because she works concessions. She just…”

I waited for a beat. “What?”

“She smells a little bit like those rye chips from the party mix at the bar.”

“Yeasty?”

He grimaced. “No. Just…salty. And savory. I don’t know. It’s fucking weird, okay? Also, she likes to pinch my balls with her toes, and I’m so not into that.”

“Where the fuck do you meet these people?”

He burst into laughter. “Work, obviously. And judgy much? Where was your last fuck from?”

I wasn’t about to tell Jonah he was probably homeless—I didn’t have proof, but it was implied.

Or that we fucked in the storeroom of a club outside of town, and he was gone before I woke up.

“My last hookup was the Zamboni guy that I met when you made me drive your ass back to Turenne after that one game where Micah almost got his finger cut off.”

Jonah frowned. “That was a year ago.”

“Yep. Now that we’ve established my life is pathetic, can we talk about your apartment?”

He sighed. “I’d rather talk about your neglected dick.”

“If you’re offering?—”

He flipped me off again. “I mean, if it was the right dick, I wouldn’t say no. But I’ve heard the stories about your penis, and it’s a no from me, dawg. ”

Reaching out, I thwapped him upside the head before putting my hand back on the brake and coasting to a stop at the red light. “My dick is amazing, so your loss. But honestly, I just haven’t really been in the headspace. I think seeing Tucker and Deo has fucked me up.”

Jonah looked surprised. “What? Why? They’re so fucking cute together it’s almost nauseating.”

“Exactly.” I took a breath. I hadn’t said this to anyone.

Not Boden, because he had his own shit going on.

Not Tucker, because the last thing he needed me to do was storm cloud on his joy parade.

“Whatever it is they have? I haven’t come close to that, you know?

Like, I didn’t know that kind of shit existed outside of rom-coms or those historical romances your brother loves so much. ”

Jonah grimaced, but he nodded because he understood it. He was in constant competition with his brother’s bullshit reputation, and while it was nonsense, Micah had no intentions of correcting what people thought about him.

Jonah was the odd man out most of the time.

Just like me.

Sometimes it felt like I was the only one who wanted romance, but I couldn’t seem to muster up the desire to go out and get it, even when it fell in my lap. Well, Ian was the exception to that rule, but he and I had an understanding, and he’d stuck to it.

“You’re quiet,” Jonah said softly.

“It’s been a weird couple of months. Hugo shook everything up, Boden’s beside himself with his self- righteous anger, Tucker’s moving on to bigger and better things…”

“I’m still the same me,” Jonah pointed out.

“Yeah, but you’ve got a life outside of this place.” I settled back a bit further into the seat of the car and glanced along the horizon. The place used to seem so alien from where I’d grown up—the arid West Coast desert was nothing like this.

Now, this place was home.

And that wasn’t as comforting as I expected it to be right then.

“This’ll pass. It has to, right?” Jonah asked.

I felt like the world’s worst friend when I couldn’t give him an answer to that. I wanted to say yes, but considering the way things had gone since I was a kid, fuck only knew if it would ever be better than what I had right now.

“I want to pet the kittens,” Jonah said, bouncing on his heels and tugging at my arm.

“If you pet kittens, you’ll adopt one, and then Micah will murder you in your bed,” I reminded him. Micah had a slight but annoying allergy to cats, which often kept him out of my house. Everyone loved Nugget, including Micah, but he was not about to suffer in his own home.

“That’ll be a great excuse to move out,” Jonah said, tugging my arm in the entirely wrong direction of the little glass area they kept all the foster cats. I almost let him lead us across the store, but it felt mean.

“Wrong way, babe.” I adjusted his hand on my arm, then turned and waited for him to find the path with his cane. “And fine. We can see the cats, but only for a few minutes.”