Better Than People - Roan Parrish Page 0,5

it, batting at it until her claws tangled in the yarn.

“Shit, sorry. Pickles, no!”

Jack moved to stand, forgot about his leg, and groaned, falling back onto the couch.

“Fuuuck my life.”

Pirate slunk single-mindedly from her perch on top of the easy chair, making her way through the room to Simon.

He reached out a hand for her to smell and she gave him a dainty lick on the knuckle. Jack thought he saw a smile behind all that hair, but before he could warn Simon, Pirate pounced on his scarf too, wrestling with Pickles over it and nearly garroting Simon in the process.

“Jesus, it’s pandemonium,” Jack muttered.

A creaky laugh came from the man currently buried under animals on his floor.

Simon unwound his scarf and wrapped it around Pickles and Pirate, hugging the cats to his chest with one arm. Then he got to his knees and slowly stood, patting Bernard and Puddles with his other hand. Jack could hear Pickles and Pirate purring in their swaddle.

“You okay?” he asked Simon.

“Mhmm.”

“Okay, well... Still up for it? I know they’re a lot, but...”

Simon shook his head and Jack’s stomach lurched at the thought of finding someone else who could help. But then Simon said, softly, “It’s fine.”

“Yeah?”

Simon nodded, all shoulders and dark hair and flash of blue eyes and slash of pale jaw.

“Oh, great, amazing, wonderful.” Relief let loose a torrent of words, and Jack hauled himself off the couch to take Simon through whose leash was whose and where they could and couldn’t go, what Puddles was afraid of in addition to puddles (sticks shaped like lightning bolts, grasshoppers, bicycles, plastic bags), which dogs they might meet that Bernard would try to cuddle to death and Rat would try to attack, what intersection to avoid because there was a fire ant hill, and why never, ever to grab Pirate if she tried to climb trees.

Simon nodded and made soft listening sounds, and every once in a while he’d jerk his head up and meet Jack’s eyes for just a moment. When Jack passed the leashes, treats, and plastic bags over to him, Simon paused like he was going to say something. Then he put the treats and bags in his pocket, wrapped his unraveling scarf around his neck, and backed out of the door, head down and dogs in tow. Pirate leapt after them.

“Okay, then,” Jack called from the door as Simon walked away, not wanting the animals out of his sight. “You have my number if you need anything, right?”

Simon held up his phone in answer, but didn’t turn around.

“Okay, bye,” Jack said, but there was no one left to hear him.

Chapter Two

Simon

Simon’s heart fluttered like a wild thing and he sucked in air through his nose and slowly blew it out through his mouth, concentrating on the smells of the autumn morning. Pine and dew and fresh asphalt and the warm, intoxicating scent that seemed to cling to him after only ten minutes spent in Jack Matheson’s chaotic house.

He rounded the corner so he knew he was out of sight, then led the dogs to the tree line and pressed his back to the rough trunk of a silver fir. He squeezed his eyes shut tight to banish the static swimming at the edges of his vision and willed his heart to slow after the encounter with Jack.

Shy. It was the word people had used to describe Simon Burke since he was a child. A tiny, retiring word that was itself little more than a whisper.

But what Simon felt was not a whisper. It was a freight train bearing down on him, whistle blowing and wheels grinding, passengers staring and ground shaking with the ineluctable approach.

It was a swimming head and a pounding heart. A furious heat and a numbness in his fingers. It was sweating and choking and the curiously violent sensation of silence, pulled like a hood over his entire body, but concentrated at the tiny node of his throat.

Shy was the word for a child’s fear, shed like a light spring jacket when summer came.

What Simon had was knitted to his very bones, spliced in his blood, so cleverly prehensile that it clung to every beat of his physical being.

The huge St. Bernard called Bernard—apparently this Jack guy wasn’t exactly the creative type—bumped Simon’s hip and he opened his eyes. The cautious yellow Lab, Puddles, was looking up at him with concern in his warm brown eyes; tiny Rat was scanning the road looking for threats; easygoing