Page 6 of Striking the Match (Redwood Bay Fire #3)

He’s just…sitting cross-legged on the floor, holing his fingers out for a miniature lion on a leash to sniff.

I freeze. It isn’t even a conscious decision. My feet and everything above them just quit working without handing in notice or anything. The electrons in my brain all fizzle out. There’s nothing but sand where my tongue should be and my bones are suddenly and inexplicably made of Jell-O.

Then he looks from the cat directly at me with his warm, hazel eyes, and I think time itself comes screeching to a halt.

“You must be Theodore,” he says with that dazzling smile I’ve been mesmerized by for over a decade. I know every line of his perfect face. Hell, it’s plastered all over my locker at work. The guys give me crap about it constantly.

Am I even going to be able to tell them this happened?

“T-Teddy,” I manage to stutter. “Everyone calls me…um…”

In a flash, I’m wondering if I should have just stuck with Theodore. No one calls me that, not even when I was little. I was named after my great grandfather, but my mom said as soon as I was born, it was clear I was a Teddy.

But Theodore is so much more sophisticated. Everyone in my whole damn life treats me like a kid, and now Cassius Garda is going to as well.

Shit.

“Hi, Teddy,” he says without missing a beat. “Paisley’s been showing me the videos of how you saved little Flow here. It’s an honor to meet you.”

The words simply don’t make sense. Did I eat too much sugar at Lili’s and fall asleep? This has to be a glucose-induced hallucination. Because Cassius Garda did not just say that it was an honor to meet me.

That would be ridiculous.

“Uhh…hi,” I finally manage to croak.

“You’re a real-life superhero!” the young blonde girl cries. I remember her from when I brought Miss Kitty in.

“Oh, it was a team effort,” I say lamely, thinking about how the One-Two-Two is going to hold that incident over the One-Thirteen for the rest of time, I’m sure.

She waves her phone in my direction. “Nuh-uh. You were the one who jumped in first. If you hadn’t seen Flow, who knows what would have happened.”

My stomach tightens as I look at the freshly shaved cat—now apparently called Flow. I have a very good idea of what would have happened, and I don’t want to dwell on it.

“I’m just glad she’s safe now and, um, someone wants to adopt her.”

It’s almost comical how I try and avoid making eye contact with Cassius Garda. But it’s as if when his eyes meet mine, they find the off switch to my brain. I’d rather come across as rude or shy than a drooling idiot.

Except he’s unfazed by my awkwardness and just keeps trying to pull me in with the warmth that feels like it’s radiating from him.

“You’re a part of her origin story,” he says reverently. It breaks through my fog of embarrassment, and I gape slightly at him.

“See…superhero,” Paisley whispers loudly.

Why…why is Cassius Garda talking to me this way?

I know for a fact that there are plenty of fanfictions about celebrities all over the internet that sound like this, and they get slammed as cringy self-insert fantasies.

But judging from the fact I’m still not waking up despite subtly pinching my thigh several times… this is actually real life.

“Is that from the rescue?” Cassius asks. It takes me a second to realize he’s pointing at my bandaged hand. “One of the videos mentioned it looked like you got injured.”

Embarrassment makes my cheeks heat up. I’m so ashamed that I couldn’t even rescue one damn cat without needing help, but I hurt myself doing so. “Oh, it’s nothing,” I mumble. “There was an old bike in the river and, um, anyway, I’m fine now.”

“Are you sure? Does it hurt?”

The way he asks…it’s like he actually cares and isn’t just trying to be polite.

Obviously, my captain and the rest of the team care that I can still do my job, but I’d never admit to any of them that it still stings, because that would make me look weak.

And my mom fussed because that’s what mom’s do, but all my dad cared about was that my insurance covered the hospital bill.

It would be really weird if Cassius Garda was the most concerned of them all about how I was feeling, right?

“Um, yeah, it hurts a little,” I find myself admitting. “But?—”

“Sorry about that!” the shelter’s manager, Gus, interrupts as he comes ambling over to us, a docile fluffy white and gray cat lying belly up in his arms. “I wanted to start letting our residents out to roam free for a while, seeing as we won’t have any more guests after you guys. How is Flow getting along?”

I grimace internally. Miss Kitty wasn’t the best name, I know.

And Flow is clever, seeing as she was plucked from a river.

But I’m not sure it suits the tiny terror currently flicking her tail dangerously, looking like she wants to maul a man who’s literally made lists titled ‘The World’s Top One Hundred Sexiest Men. ’

“She’s doing recon on me,” Cassius quips. “Initial reports are sketchy at best.”

I bark out a laugh before I know what’s happening. But he always seemed like he had a goofy sense of humor in his interviews. I can’t believe I just witnessed it for myself.

No one else heard that silly joke, though. There are no cameras here. It was just for the people in this room.

I feel like I’ve been given a precious gift that I’m going to treasure forever.

The shelter staff are smiling, and Bryan is engrossed in his phone, so I’m the only dork acting like a hyena at the idea of a shaved orange cat with binoculars. Heat flames across my cheeks, but when Cassius grins at me, my mouth seems to operate of its own accord.

“She’s not a very stealthy scout. She needs some camo gear.”

That’s when Cassius Garda laughs at my lame joke, and I realize this isn’t a dream.

It’s a whole parallel universe.

I don’t know if it’s because the thought is so ridiculous that it unlocks something inside me. But in that moment, I don’t tear my gaze away from my teenage hero’s, and I keep talking. Like we know each other. Like we’re friends.

“Are you really going to adopt her?” He nods, and so do I. “Good. That’s good. She deserves to be spoiled. I wish I could have given her a home, but it’s just not possible. Thank you for making sure I knew she got a happily ever after.”

“Of course,” he murmurs, hazel eyes still blazing into mine. “You can come visit her any time you like, though. I could get your number.”

Get my…what? He didn’t seriously just ask for my number, did he?

Whoever’s writing this fanfic needs to calm the fuck down.

“Oh! Jesus!”

I spin around to see that Bryan’s frozen as if he’s been caught in the sights of a T-rex. His eyes are bugging from his skull, his back is hunched over, and his arms are up like he’s about to start flapping them any second now. Except what’s pinned him to the spot isn’t a prehistoric predator.

It’s a tiny black cat.

This creature is half the size of Miss Kitty-Flow, even after she’s been shaved.

I’m not sure if they jumped on Bryan from above our heads or scaled him like King Kong on the Empire State Building.

However they managed it, they’re now perched across the fussy assistant’s shoulders, their claws extended enough into his well-tailored navy blazer to keep them steady but not to scratch him, or so it looks.

“It’s…vibrating…” Bryan whispers, as if they’re secretly a bomb that will detonate if he speaks above a certain decibel.

“Aww, that means she likes you,” Paisley says, clasping her hands in front of her chest.

Gus sighs. “Come on, Twelve. Get down from there.”

“Twelve?” I question. That’s an even worse name than Flow.

But Gus just shrugs apologetically at me. “We get so many black cats through here, we gave up naming them. Now we just number them.”

“So…you have twelve black cats alone?” Cassius asks, looking crestfallen.

“Oh no,” Paisley scoffs. “If one gets adopted, that number is up for grabs again. This is probably our third Twelve, right, Gus?”

A lump forms in my throat. All these cats who need homes, and I can’t adopt any of them.

It’s as if the crazy bubble with Cassius pops. I’ve just stepped into his world for a brief moment. This isn’t real life. I don’t belong here. It was a nice fantasy while it lasted, but I have to pull the plug on this fanfic before I do something mortifying that I’ll regret for the rest of my life.

“Uh, thank you so much for, uh, but I have to go. Yeah. Things to, um…thanks…”

“Hold on a second,” Cassius says from where he’s still sitting on the floor, his eyebrows shooting up. But I just smile and nod at everyone—even the cat on Bryan’s shoulders—and hurry out the door so fast, I’m practically running.

When I get outside, I really do run. All the way to my car, turning the ignition as fast as I can before peeling it back onto the street, leaving a cloud of churned up gravel in my wake.

Luckily, home isn’t far. Because I’m hardly watching the road at all as I replay every excruciating detail of what just happened on repeat in my mind.

Yeah, it was all pretty awkward. But I don’t think I said anything truly offensive or dumb.

And I did make my celebrity crush laugh. Once. It was most likely out of pity, but I’ll take it.

I think it’s best for all concerned if nobody ever finds out about this. Maybe with time and some rose-tinted glasses, I’ll be able to laugh about such a bizarre encounter one day.

But for now, I’m going to pretend like it never happened.

Fanfiction deleted.