Catching to Win (Over the Fence #3) (2 page)

T
here are ecologists
, zoologists, and other people who work with nature or animals that try to reduce their carbon footprint. Eat better. Plant Better. Recycle better.

Those people are not me. I work on reservations, with animals, simply because I love them. Sure, I'm a vegetarian mostly because I wouldn't dream of putting a poor, defenseless animal down my gullet. But, I'm not out to save our Ozone layer or stop global warming. If I see poachers or hunters, I'll cut a bitch. But harvesting garbage and banana peels to make my own gas to run my smart car? Yeah, that's not me.

I know, call me a hypocrite.

Which is why, I have absolutely no problem pouring myself a ginormous bowl of sugary, processed Reese's Puffs to cure my hangover. And adding a cigarette.

After puffing in my morning fill of nicotine, I walk back into the boy's house. It’s my temporary base camp for now, until I get the urge to up and move again. That's me, the group nomad.

"You know I can still smell the stench of smoke even when you try to disguise it with perfume."

Clint's gravely, deep voice surprises me so much that I spill a puddle of milk on the counter as I fill my bowl. "Jesus, Clint. You scared the crap out of me."

What I see when I turn around sends all sorts of wetness pooling in my girly parts. It doesn't even matter that he's just a friend, or that I should fight the urge to drag him back to whoever's bed is closest. He stands in the middle of the kitchen, barefoot and shirtless with only a pair of Grover basketball shorts hung low, exposing his red checkered boxers. I’m a small lady, so his 6-foot-2 frame makes him look like those giants in Jack and the Beanstalk. His face is covered in a thick mask of beard despite the fact that only 12 hours ago, pre-party, I know he was clean shaven. The closely cropped hair on his head is the same hue as the hair covering the rest of his body, jet black. Only I’d like to run my hands all over him to feel the difference. The hair on his head is straight, while his abs are smattered with tiny curls. And it's not like he's hairy, but he’s manly. It highlights the way his steel cut torso, calves and thighs ripple and bulge with his catcher's muscles.

Clint Bellows looks like he should be one of those sexy lumberjacks, holed up in a cabin in the wood, naked on a bear skin rug Burt Reynolds-style. He looks like he could throw you over his shoulder, or slam you up against a wall like you weighed nothing at all. Match his newly-muscled body with his piercing blue eyes and sweet-as-sugar personality and he was every girl's shy dreamboat.

Everyone except this girl. Who didn't do dreamboats, or romantic cabins, or sugary sweet. I did do throwing up against a wall though. With anyone but the guy who had become my closest male friend. No matter how hot he'd gotten over the past year.

"Just giving you your morning D.A.R.E education. Those cancer sticks will kill you."

He crosses the kitchen, a typical college craphole kitchen, and starts his breakfast routine. Two scoops of protein powder with ice and soy milk in the blender, scrambled egg whites in a pan with hot sauce. And why do I know his fucking breakfast order?

"What, did you and Minka take up a campaign? Help Kelsey Quit Smoking. Good luck with that." I knew I had to quit. Minka and Chloe had been on my ass ever since I'd picked up the habit from an ex-fling of mine two years ago.

"It’s your body..." Clint looked at me over his shoulder as he poured his egg whites on a plate. Why did his eyes flash such a heated blue when he said that? It sent shivers down my spine, the really good kind of shivers.

I'd felt my body's response to him more and more often over the past few weeks. Ever since I'd unofficially moved in with the boys, Owen, Clint and Parker, I'd noticed a change in our relationship. When I was in Africa, our Skype sessions are what got me through. Clint's laughter, his jokes and storytelling are what kept me company on those lonely nights. I had to shut down the feelings which had taken up residence in my chest and those parts south of my waist, and quick. I could feel my entire being urging me to flee even as I sat inhaling my cereal.

"So...last night. What happened after I passed out? I don't remember a thing. Did you find a hot baseball groupie?"

It was true, I didn't remember much about last night. I had a flash of a memory, a sliver of a scene. Clint holding my face and whispering to me. It made my heart swell and warm, and it was the first time that organ had done that in what felt like my entire life. But maybe it was only a dream. I could hope it was only a dream.

He makes his way to the table, carrying his healthy and wholesome breakfast. His body is a slab of marble, massive and toned, as he folds into the chair and tucks under the table, the toes on his big feet brushing against my ankles as he scooted in. Again, the shivers reigned down from my scalp and straight to my core. Traitorous body.

"You don't remember last night?" His baby blues level me, and I feel like he can see my entire soul the way he's looking into me.

"Um...not really...it was a crazy night." I laugh it off, tucking back into my cereal and chewing a big bite loudly to drown out the silence shouting back at me from the other side of the breakfast table. When I look up, Clint is still pinning me with his gorgeous stare.

"I took you to bed."

He says the words quietly, almost whispering them in his husky, deep voice. On a side note, for someone so against smoking, his gravelly tone mixed with that slight southern drawl makes him sound like he's smoked dark Cuban cigars for the last 20 years. And all I want to do is get lost in him talking like that.

It feels like I've been dunked in one of those ice baths athletes are always taking Instagram pictures in, and then set on fire. My body goes into complete shock, my thoughts coming in half sentences. He did? Did we? Why don't I remember? I slept with Clint?

"I...you..we. Did we..."

My thoughts come out of my mouth just as jumbled as they are in my head. Clint's expression is all stone, his disheveled beard and the way his big hands form around his fork distracting me from the shocking truth he just laid down next to his protein shake.

He takes a bite, slowly chewing the hunk of egg whites in his mouth while my stomach plummets to my feet and my throat goes dry as the friggin’ Sahara desert.

Finally he swallows, his large Adam's apple bobbing and again distracting me from what might be the biggest anxiety attack of my life. "I took you to your bed. You were so drunk that the guy you were sucking face with dropped you on the deck. So I took you inside, tucked you in."

Warmth and relief coat my body, leaving me slick with sweat and my heart hammering with the unneeded adrenaline it had been pumping. Asshole. He played me by twisting his words. Fucker wanted me to think that we hooked up. But why?

My cereal was too soggy to eat now, and I wasn't hungry anyway. I stared at the lumps forming in the bowl as I addressed Clint. "Why would you say it like that?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean."

He sighed gruffly across the table. I couldn't even look up at him. I was feeling a myriad of emotions…relief, confusion, even embarrassment. Was I ashamed that we could have hooked up and I didn't remember it? Was I disappointed that we didn't? Or was I embarrassed because once again, Clint was putting me to bed on a night where I couldn't remember my own name? Probably all of the above.

"Maybe because at some point, you're going to have a major screw up one of these nights. One day, you're going to wake up in the morning and regret what you do when you decide drinking half a handle of vodka is a good idea."

Even though his voice is barely above a whisper, Clint's voice is so sharp and scolding, it’s like he's broadcasting his disappointment to the world. Tears pool in the corners of my eyes, that itchy hot feeling burns its way down the back of my throat. He's never spoken to me like this. In our almost two years of friendship, he's never once gotten mad at me. Never once spoken to me like Minka and Chloe sometimes do. Like I'm a wild child, out to do damage to myself. I'm not even sure what to say back to him.

Have I been contemplating my partying ways? Only every other day. Do I wish I could stop myself? All the time. But it’s like I'm on a path that I can't back down. That feeling of uninhibited bliss is just too good, just a little too carefree. It’s like my own personal addiction.

I don't have to answer before Clint is scraping his chair back and throwing his dishes in the sink with a bang. "Whatever Kels. Forget I mentioned it. I'll see ya later."

And with that he's gone, a couple of seconds ticking by before I hear the click of the lock on his door. I sit at the table, stunned into silence on what I thought would be a great morning. Hurt and confusion suffuse their way into my blood stream, making my body feel even more lethargic than this hangover. I didn't know whether to cry, or knock on Clint's door and verbally assault him in my usual way. Which was a new feeling. I'd never not responded to a jab with an equally sassy remark.

I had to get out of here. My flight response was tearing me apart, the need to run so strong that I could practically smell my soles burning rubber. And there was one place I fled to when I needed it all to melt away.

D
orothy laid
her head in the crook of my neck and nuzzled, her bristly whiskers tickling the soft skin underneath my ears. Her tail wagged in that slow, gentle motion it had when she was completely content. It hit the tops of my knees through my skirt as I walked with her, rocking her like a baby. In essence, she was a baby. Just a 36 pound baby with claws the size of my face that could rip out your jugular.

"You know in another week or so you're not going to be able to do that. You can barely do it now."

I turned with the female baby tiger cub in my arms and smiled. Jackson Nole's grey mop of curls stuck out of his Aussie hat, his green khaki uniform spotted with sweat.

"Yes I know, but she loves it so much. And I'll be so sad when I can't anymore. So I have to get all the time in that I can." I juggle Dorothy up and down like a colicky baby, her orange and white fur brushing against my arms.

She lets out a soft purr when Jackson noogies the top of her head. "You are such a softy, Mother Nature."

He's been calling me that for years, ever since I started coming with my father to this preservation at the age of five. He loves to recount the story of me climbing into the bear cub den and laying down with them. Says I nearly gave him a heart attack until he saw me rolling a ball with one of the baby black bears. Jackson has been one of the closest people to me in my life, and has seen me through some of my toughest times.

Come to think of it, he's been one of the only people in my life who I can count on and open up to.

"Will you put that Amur down? Her mother will not sniff anywhere near her with your stench on her."

I turn away from the detached tone, taking Dorothy with me as I stalk away from the spot.

"Kelsey Elizabeth!"

I stop dead in my tracks. Dorothy protests, squirming around me in my arms from the lack of motion. I set her down and nuzzle her head before she runs off to attack dirt balls.

They can't both be here, right?

My body moves in slow-motion as I come face-to-face with Hugo and Madeline. Otherwise known as my parents.

"How did you find me?"

My mother purses her nude lips, adjusting the simple white button down and standing the appropriate two feet away from her husband. A title that they only respected by its legal terms.

"Really, Kelsey? You're a state away from home, on our preservation. You didn't think one of the staff would have informed us of that?"

My father's hands clenched and unclenched, his eyes roaming over every inch of the preserve. Every inch which he owned. Landing everywhere except on me. I knew he couldn't be more bothered to be here, addressing me right now. He didn't give two shits about what I'd seen, what I could never unknow. His typical uniform of slacks and utility polo were crisply ironed, his graying hair slicked back out of the way of the oblong frames sitting upon his nose. Everything about him was cold and scientific. As it had always been.

My mother, however? At least she put up the appearance of caring. If it was only that, an appearance. She was the puppet master of the two, the media darling. See, Hugo and Madeline O’Brien were the Bill Masters and Virginia Johnson of zoology and ecology. They were scientific geniuses. The couple who put animal behavioral sciences on the map. They had a Nobel Prize to prove it. And a marriage they cared nothing about and a child they wanted nothing to do with.

Sometimes I wondered if my parents only decided to give birth to me because it was another experiment, another study to undertake.

"What do you want?"

Jackson stood in the background, changing the water in the lion's den. I knew he was trying hard to bite his tongue. The color in his cheeks gave him away. I hadn't told him explicitly what I'd witnessed in Tanzania, but he'd been around my family long enough to know that Hugo and Madeline were not what they presented themselves as.

"We need to speak about what happened in Africa." A lock of red fell out of Madeline's perfectly slicked back bun. My mother was nothing if not efficient. Her usual uniform of white button down and khaki utility pencil skirt were more perfectly steamed than my father's outfit. I'd gotten her auburn hair and hazel eyes, but that's about where it stopped.

"It would behoove you not to take this to the media, Kelsey. This is also your future we are talking about here." She flicks a nonexistent piece of dirt off of her skirt.

A chuckle exploded out of my throat. "You actually think I would talk to the press? Jesus, you're fucking delusional."

"Language, Kelsey Elizabeth. Please. Why can't you just act properly for once in your life?" Madeline scolds me, looking around to see if anyone heard me curse.

I wasn't getting into this fight again. Because I had spirit? Passion? Because I loved animals and the earth instead of treating them like science experiments? I'd tried to explain too many times.