Until the World Stops - L.A. Witt Page 0,14

wasn’t anything to argue about.

But holy quiet resentment, Batman. It had been brewing for I didn’t know how long. Months, at least. And I was pretty sure I wasn’t imagining how much colder he’d gotten toward me since work had started cutting my hours. Or how little time he’d been spending at home.

Unaware of—and probably not caring about—everything going on in my brain, Tilly stomped across my stomach, squashing a few organs under her huge paws before she came up onto my chest and butted her head against my face.

“All right, all right.” I spat out a few cat hairs and brushed the rest away from my nose, then tousled Tilly’s fluff. “I’ll fill your food dish. Just…get out of the way.” The instant I started lifting myself up, she jumped off me, thumped onto the floor, and thundered down the stairs. Chuckling, I got up and reached for a pair of sweats. Ten to one odds, she had plenty of food in her dish, but the bottom was probably visible, and anyway, that wasn’t the food she wanted. Damn the vet for convincing Casey that Tilly needed wet food. Wasn’t like either of them had to deal with the litter box. Ugh.

I shuffled downstairs toward the kitchen. Our place was pretty big for a couple of single guys—err, a married couple—but it was probably just as well. More elbow room for two roommates who really didn’t like each other.

Getting kicked out of the Navy had sucked, and this thing I had with Casey meant nonstop quiet tension, but the duplex we’d scored wasn’t half bad. Housing in Maine was cheap as hell, and lucky us, someone had been putting in a development of duplexes when some high-tech company was supposed to move to town. The company had pulled out of the move, but the duplexes were already built, so we were renting this place for a song. Three-bedroom, full basement, two-story, and we even had a back deck with a view of a field and some woods, plus room for a barbecue. As far as places I could end up after the Navy fucked me, I could’ve done a lot worse. I considered it a nice consolation prize.

When I walked into the kitchen, Tilly was waiting for me, sitting primly beside the woefully bare plate where her breakfast needed to be.

“You know you have crunchies, right?” I picked up the plate. “You’re not going to starve while you’re waiting for the mushy stuff.” She swished her tail, which I took to mean I could go fuck myself.

I opened a new can of the foul-smelling crap the vet insisted Tilly’s delicate innards required, and after I’d served Her Highness, I put away the can and started the coffee. The clock on the microwave said it was a little before ten. I had to say—a year and some change after getting booted out of the Navy, I didn’t mind the part where I wasn’t getting up at 0400 anymore like Casey still had to do. Even on days when I worked, I never had to be there until noon at the earliest. Guess it’s true what they say—every cloud has a silver lining.

Of course, it had still been a hell of a cloud, and finding my footing again had been a shitshow. Getting a job without “honorably discharged” on my DD214 had been predictably hard, though I’d finally landed the security gig. It was boring, but it paid decently, even part-time (well, when my hours weren’t getting cut to almost nothing), so I didn’t feel like I was freeloading off Casey, and I had the time and energy to focus on my schoolwork.

Today was yet another day off, so…schoolwork.

After I’d made myself some breakfast and a second cup of coffee, I went into the living room to get started on homework. The online classes weren’t so bad, though Statistics had made me want to stab myself in the eyeballs. Now I was on to Developmental Psychology, and today was easy—read a chapter, post on the discussion board, make progress on the paper that was due in three weeks, call it a day.

As I logged in, I did my usual side-eye at my name. A year into this, it was still weird to be Tristan Parker. I hadn’t taken his name to cement the romantic charade. We’d both heard for years that it was infinitely easier to deal with the military and the VA if spouses had the same name. So I’d