Page 38 of ’Til You Break

Visiting my parents has left me on edge. Seeing another man looking at Hannah pushes me over it.

She’s mine.

Hannah takes her sweet time inside, giving him longer to stare. Eventually he gets back into his car and drives away, blissfully unaware how close he came to having his skull cracked on the pavement.

The sun hangs low in the sky. A glance at my watch tells me I’m running later than I’d like. Time wouldn’t matter if I didn’t have to get Hannah home first, but as it stands, I’m cutting my meeting uncomfortably close.

I look back towards the shop. Hannah’s already outside. But, instead of coming back to the car, she’s heading around the side of the building.

I finish filling the tank just as she disappears behind the wall.

Frustration mounting with every step, I storm after her.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I hiss, rounding the corner to find her hunched over a row of garbage cans.

I wouldn’t have been nearly as irritated if the sun were still high in the sky. But Hannah’s acting like an idiot who’d be shocked if she ended up getting raped behind a gas station.

“I heard something,” she says, glancing up at me. One hand remains buried between the garbage cans, fumbling with whatever she found.

“You wandered off on your own, in an unfamiliar place, because you heard something?” Saying it out loud only makes it sound more ridiculous.

“No, nothing like that.” She rolls her eyes. “I heard a meow.”

“A what?”

Hannah lifts her hands. Curled between them is the tiniest grey kitten.

It looks at me. I look at it.

I instantly know this is going to end badly.

“It’s time to leave, Hannah,” I say, trying to get ahead of the situation.

“Okay, but can we keep him?”

“Absolutely not.”

Hannah keeps me busy enough. The last thing I need is another living creature bringing chaos into my house.

“But he’s so cute.” She lifts the kitten a little higher. The tiny thing looks almost dejected, as though it somehow understands my objection to joining our family.

Instead of putting my foot down and dragging Hannah back to the car, I find myself weighing the pros and cons of bringing it home. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. Against all reason, I actually feel something for the miserable little thing.

In many ways, we’re the same. Abandoned when we needed someone most. Both left to fend for ourselves.

If anything, I admire its tenacity. All alone in the world, but it survived anyway. It found food. It found shelter among the filth. It lived when, by all rights, it should’ve died alone and afraid.

“I’ll take care of him too. You won’t even know he’s there if you don’t want to. He can stay in my room, and I—”

Her words carry very little weight.

The memory of this afternoon does. My obsession with Hannah has its disadvantages. It makes saying no to her far more difficult than it should be. Especially now that we’ve crossed another line.

And I rather like where we are.

“If I let you keep the cat, will you get back in the car?” I tug at the collar of my shirt. Whatever resolve I had slips with every request she makes. And I’m still on a deadline. My meeting is only a couple of hours away, and I’m not going to miss it because of a cat.

“Yes,” she says, clutching the kitten the way a mother cradles a newborn. “Anything at all.”