Best Laid Plans (Garnet Run 2)

Rye nodded.

“Where are you from, anyway?” Charlie asked.

“Seattle.”

“Hear it’s nice there. Temperate.”

Rye nodded. So much for conversation, then. Charlie got back to his inspection. When he began to tug a piece of fabric out of the wall, Rye stopped him.

“Oh, wait. Leave that. It’s...there’s a squirrel...situation. I don’t want it to get stuck again. It screamed.”

Rye shuddered and a tiny warmth bloomed in Charlie’s gut, imagining scrappy, tattooed Rye rescuing a squirrel.

“Okay, let’s go.”

“You’re done?” Rye asked.

“I’ve seen all I can see without tools. Let’s take care of your leg.”

“But—”

“There’s nothing more we can do here today. So let’s see to your leg and talk this over,” Charlie said firmly.

Rye frowned. He took the stairs slowly, as if now that their business was done he could let himself acknowledge that he was in pain.

On the ground floor, Rye made a kissing sound and the hell beast that had attacked Charlie came prancing in.

“Can I bring Marmot?” Rye asked.

Charlie frowned. “Why?”

Rye’s eyes flashed. “Because.”

Well that explained that.

Charlie ran a hand through his hair.

“I have a cat. Not sure they’ll get along.” He eyed the tiny cat suspiciously, imagining it hurting Jane.

“Oh.” Rye chewed his lip mercilessly. Marmot sprang into his arms and then his shoulder, purring audibly. Rye pressed his cheek into the cat’s fur. “She could—” he started to offer, then shook his head. “Never mind. It’s fine.”

“Does she just stay with you? She doesn’t run away?”

“She always comes back,” Rye said. Marmot curled her tail around Rye’s neck like a scarf, tip twitching against his throat.

Charlie reminded himself that although Rye was a little snarly, he was in a brand new place, clearly roughing it in a house he was now responsible for, with no idea how to take care of it. The cat seemed to relax Rye, so if that’s what it took to keep him calm enough to care for his leg, Charlie could make it work. Jane would probably be curled up on his bed, happy to snooze through the whole incident anyway.

“She can come,” Charlie said, mentally rolling his eyes at himself for being such a sucker for Rye that he was letting a hell beast come to his house.

“Yeah?” Rye’s face lit up and he quickly looked down. “Okay, thanks. C’mon, Marmot.”

“Why don’t I drive. I’ll drop you back after.”

“Do you have a phone charger thingie?”

“I have a USB adapter.”

Rye nodded and grabbed a cord from his car. “You mind?”

Charlie plugged the cord in and handed Rye the end. He put his phone to charge.

Marmot sat on Rye’s lap as they drove, occasionally putting her front paws up on the dashboard to peer out the window. It was a little bit cute, Charlie decided.

“She’s pretty fierce for a tiny little thing.”

“Yeah, she can take care of herself.”

“Why’d you name her Marmot?”

“Oh, uh. I found her stuck in an oil can outside where I used to work. And when I pulled her out she was all sticky and covered in oil. I thought she looked like one of those little seals—the kind that get stuck in oil spills. And I kept calling her a little marmot because I thought it was a kind of seal, cuz there’s the outdoor company Marmot, right, and that’s where I got my sleeping bag and it’s called something like a seal sleeping bag. I don’t know. I googled marmot later and realized it’s not a seal—it’s like a big squirrel, but whatever.”

Charlie found that utterly adorable.

It was about a twenty-minute drive to his house. Rye fiddled with his hair, untangling the long, dark strands, and Charlie forced himself not to look at him. When he finally allowed himself to glance over at a stoplight, Rye was asleep, head resting against the back of the seat, Marmot curled up in his lap.

In sleep, Rye’s face was lovely. The angles of his cheekbones and jaw, his expressive eyebrows, and delicately pointed chin. The curve of his lips and the long line of his throat. Inky barbs clawed their way out of his collar, but Charlie couldn’t tell what the tattoos were of.

He must have been exhausted to fall asleep so quickly. Charlie drove carefully, avoiding any bumps that might wake him.

He turned off the truck in the driveway and had the strangest sensation of something momentous occurring.

Even after they stopped moving, Rye didn’t wake. Charlie kept expecting him to, but one minute turned into five, and five turned into ten, and Charlie realized he was watching Rye sleep as if he had any right to such intimacy. Marmot yawned, blinked her eyes open, and stared at him from Rye’s lap.

“We’re here,” Charlie forced himself to say, under the cat’s scrutiny.

Rye blinked awake and as the second consciousness returned so did his furrowed brow.

“Did I fall asleep? Jeez, sorry.”

“It’s fine. Come on in.”