The gray beast came bounding up, all soft meows and loud purrs. “Some prick tossed her in the dumpster. Name stuck.”

Even with the evidence literally standing on me, I couldn’t picture Ward as a cat owner. Maybe a snake or a large, drooling guard dog, but certainly not a kitten. Yet it made sense as his large hand carefully rubbed Dumpster’s tiny head in a room with a pregnant woman and a runaway.

He collected the vulnerable and needy.

I tentatively pet Dumpster, but nothing about the way she flopped down on my stomach and nearly rolled off was tentative. Her purring grew louder and louder.

“How long have you had her?” I asked.

“Three months or so.”

God.

I’m a shitty friend.

No newsflash there…

All that distance I’d claimed to need had prevented me from asking even the most basic questions about his life. I’d wanted to be detached. Isolated.

Alone.

As I’d spent nearly every day with him since moving in next door, I’d clearly failed at that. But I’d also failed at being a good friend since there was so much I didn’t know.

Like that I’d also had a kitten neighbor the entire time.

“Do you leave her here when you go out of town for work?” I asked, thinking about how often—like, creepily often—I’d looked toward Ward’s house to see if he’d returned. Was there a lonely cat in there the whole time?

“Fuck no. She stays at the clubhouse with O if I’m gonna be gone more than a couple of days.”

“I could always—”

“No.”

Hell, that was harsh.

He trusts me with Kat but not a cat?

Before that rejection could fully sink in, he continued. “Pregnant women can’t change litter boxes and need to be extra cautious with cat scratches. Don’t wanna risk it.”

“I can’t change litter?”

“No.”

That was news to me. Of course, I’d never had a cat and had never intended to get one, so I’d likely glazed over that section in my packet of information from the doctor.

“How do you know?”

He gestured toward the side table. “That’s what the book says.”

For a second, I thought that was some colloquial saying I wasn’t familiar with. But when I shifted to look, I saw I was wrong.

He meant a literal book.

Easing the cat off me, I grabbed the book about pregnancy. Pages were tabbed and highlighted—especially the section about food.

“You’re actually reading this?”

“Gotta learn somehow.”

He said it so casually, like it was no big deal.

It was a massive deal.

A massive, thoughtful, sweet deal.

I settled back on the couch, and Dumpster returned to her spot. Absentmindedly petting her, I wondered whether I could convince Ward to rename the poor thing.