Like Cats and Dogs by Kate McMurray (scary books to read TXT) 📗

other. Lauren was talking about some customer at the Cat Café, and Caleb wasn’t really listening, but he was satisfied when she faltered in her speech as he put his arm around her.

“I thought we weren’t a couple.”

“Let’s pretend for a few hours.”

She looked at him with a furrowed brow as if this confused her, but then she shrugged and said, “Okay.”

Chapter 21

Caleb liked to sleep late on his days off. Often he felt like he needed it, especially after an overnight shift. The last overnight had been particularly harrowing. A dog had been hit by a car. The dog, miraculously, hadn’t sustained any life-threatening injuries, just a broken leg, but the stress of having to test for internal bleeding coupled with the frantic owner who blamed herself for the dog bolting out into the street had left Caleb feeling wrecked when he finally got home.

So the doorbell pulled him out of a deep sleep. He was a little startled to see it was nearly noon. He hastily threw on a robe and went to the door, expecting it to be a package, probably some clothes he’d ordered a few days before.

But, no, it was Lauren.

Caleb rubbed his eyes. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m sorry. I’m on a Diane-mandated day off and I got bored so I thought I’d come over to say hi. So, hi.”

“Hi. Um. Come in?”

Caleb stepped out of the way to let her in. As wakefulness came over him in waves, he realized he was somewhat uncomfortable to have her here. They weren’t the sort of couple who just popped over to each other’s apartments. They weren’t even really a couple. Well, okay, they were, it was hard to deny that now, but he did not like her showing up unannounced.

“I brought lunch,” she said. “Sandwiches from that Italian deli on Joralemon.”

“Oh. Um. Let me just put on a pot of coffee.”

He went to the kitchen and tried to shake off the sleepiness as he got the coffee maker going, mostly through muscle memory. He was curious what Lauren had brought, mostly because he was hungry, but he wondered how she knew what to get him.

Well, they had eaten a lot of meals together, hadn’t they?

When he returned to the table, there were two heroes wrapped in white deli paper. “Meatball parm,” Lauren said pointing to one, “and prosciutto, mozzarella, and roasted red peppers. Pick one, or we can each have half of each.”

Both sounded good. But Caleb was still uncomfortable with Lauren in his space. He decided to keep the peace while he got some food and caffeine into his bloodstream. They wound up sharing both sandwiches, and the meatball was particularly delicious. Lauren pulled some of the prosciutto off her half of the other sub, declaring it too salty.

He liked this woman. A lot. But this was not the sort of relationship they had.

As if reading his thoughts, Lauren said, “What is it?”

“What?”

“Something is clearly bothering you. You’ve been fidgety and looked uncomfortable since you sat down.”

He should really just tell her. No sense in putting himself through this anytime she got a notion to see him. “You’re gonna think I’m a dick.”

“Just tell me.”

He sighed. “Okay, I don’t love that you just showed up without calling or texting first.”

“Oh. All right. I’ll text next time.”

“Well, no, that’s not precisely the issue. It’s just that… This is not the relationship we have.”

She sat back in her chair. “Oh.”

“We had fun the other night, but nothing has really changed for me. I don’t want to get married again, not that we’re anywhere near that, but still, I wouldn’t want to mislead you. Nothing has changed.”

Lauren swallowed and nodded slowly. “I’m not… I’m not asking you to marry me. I don’t even need some big commitment. But I like you. I just want a chance to see where this goes, and I feel like you’ve basically made a fort out of your baggage and you will not be budged.”

Caleb put a hand over his mouth so as not to laugh at the image, which was apt. “I do have some baggage. My divorce was… Well, if not traumatic, it was awful, all the way through. Not just the fact that Kara cheated on me and left me, but the fact that this thing I had put so much faith and work into turned out to be flimsy instead of solid. And it’s not that I don’t trust you, but I don’t trust…life.”

And that was basically true. He wasn’t sure what he’d done to piss off the universe, but this whole year had been shitty. And the worst of it had been, when he’d been fighting with Kara over every last penny in their clinic, he’d felt like the biggest idiot. Why hadn’t he seen how doomed their relationship was? Why hadn’t he seen Kara was unhappy? Had he really been so committed to his life plan that he hadn’t seen the ways it could be turned upside down?

It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Lauren. He did. But he didn’t trust himself. He didn’t trust his own judgment.

“That’s kind of fucked up,” Lauren said softly. “How do you even function if you don’t trust life?”

Caleb looked away because his chest hurt with…weakness? Embarrassment? He wasn’t really sure, but he didn’t like it. He didn’t want to feel this way in front of Lauren. He wanted to live in the magical bubble where he was just ill-tempered and they had good sex and talked about TV over takeout food and took long walks where she pointed out interesting things about the city. He didn’t want her to know how deeply fucked up he was, how he felt.

“It’s a challenge,” he said.

“Right. So this is your nice way of saying, ‘It’s not you, it’s me.’”

“I don’t…this isn’t a breakup. I don’t want to stop seeing you.”

Lauren frowned. “But you also don’t want anything to change.”

“I’m sorry. I like you, too, but this…” He gestured between them. “Some of