Page 81 of Free Fall

He grins against my lips and kisses me again.

I can’t end things with Sejin. No matter if I should, I just can’t.

But Idoset him up with Peggy Jo to go look at her place and meet her cats. If all goes well there, he’ll move into her house by the end of the month, much to Jeremiah’s chagrin. The kid glares at me the entire conversation, and when his mother isn’t looking, he sneaks over and opens his mouth to expose his baby canines my way in a wordless threat.

I nod at him solemnly. Threat received, buddy, and entirely understood. I’d bite someone if they tried to take Sejin away from me too. With that thought, when no one’s looking, I surreptitiously press my own forearm against my teeth and bite myself hard enough to leave a mark. A reminder not to be a fool.

What had I been thinking? I almost lost him. I almost ruined everything. I take a deep, determined breath. I can do this. I can send Heart Routeandbe with Sejin. I’d be an idiot not to find a way to do both.

I run my fingers over the teeth marks on my arm.

An absolute idiot.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Sejin

“The cats aregreat,” I say, curling up at Dan’s side and listening to the rain pound the top of the van. Another day lost for his training schedule, and this time I can see that it bothers him.

“Time is getting short,” he’d said earlier as he glared ominously out the open van door at the gray sky. “This weather is bullshit.”

I agreed, but hadn’t known how to soothe him other than by taking his pants off and sucking his cock. So, I did that and some of his tension melted away as he wrapped his hands into my hair, fucked into my throat, and then come with a hard grunt.

Afterward, he’d licked my hole and fingered me while watching me jerk myself off. Pretty low-key for us, but it was relaxing as the rain had dumped against the metal roof.

Now we’re naked and cuddling, discussing my visit to Peggy Jo’s house yesterday and whether I plan to take her up on the offer to housesit for a month while she goes to be with her daughter during and post-delivery of her grandbaby.

“Be careful. Those cats are assholes.”

I raise a brow. I’m in pretty far with Dan to be discovering this red flag now, but it’s a big one. “You don’t like animals?”

“Love animals. Hate cats.”

“Cats are animals.”

He looks skeptical. “Okay, I don’t hate cats. Cats hate me.” His expression shifts to embarrassment. “Probably because I’m scared of them.”

“Why? They’re so adorable.”

“Exactly. My fourth foster mother’s cat was very cute. She liked to lie on her back and show off her fluffy tummy.”

“Oh, no.”

“I reached out to pet it—” He shows me a scar on his arm, one I’d assumed was from a fall while climbing, like most of his others. “It was a trap. One of many of that fiend’s tricks.”

I laugh.

“Cats aren’t trustworthy,” he says like it’s an indisputable fact. “So be careful. Don’t let Peggy Jo’s lure you in with their cuteness. It’s all a front. They’ll bite if you give them a chance.”

I blink at him. He’s so earnest and strangely vulnerable and so, so wrong.

“Are you going to take the job?”

“Obviously,” I say, rolling over to grab my phone so I can check the notification that dinged a few seconds ago. I’m relieved that he has a decent, if sad and distorted, reason for disliking cats.

“Is Astro live?”

“Nah. Just BTS Official making another announcement,” I say, putting the phone aside for now. I can always see what the members of the most famous KPop group in the world are up to later.