Undeniable (Always Book 3)

by Lexxie Couper

  Caden and I had sex, I signed. A lot of sex.

  “On that note,” Brendon said, “I think Tanner and I will go buy what we need for dinner.”

  “Ice cream!” Tanner cried with delight.

  “Boiled chicken and brown rice,” Brendon countered, his face a mask of mock seriousness.

  “Ice cream,” Tanner repeated with a wild shake of his father’s shoulders.

  “Egg-white omelet and buckwheat pancakes!” Brendon replied with equal enthusiasm.

  “Ice cream!” Tanner insisted, wriggling on Brendon’s hip and grinning widely.

  Brendon turned to us both. “We’re going to go buy some ice cream.”

  “Ice cream!” Tanner cried victorious.

  I smiled. I couldn’t help it. In the face of such joy, the woes of my stupid, conflicted heart were no match. “Make sure you get peanut butter chocolate chip,” I told Tanner.

  Of course, that reminded me of the last time I’d eaten that particular flavor of ice cream, and who I’d been with, and what we’d done shortly after, and my smile crumbled. Amanda slipped her arm around my shoulders.

  Sympathy and understanding filled Brendon’s smile. He knew what it felt like. Although I don’t think he ever got dumped by one of his professors. To the best of my knowledge, the only person to ever dump him was my sister. And now look at them: married and trying their hardest to get pregnant again.

  Hitching Tanner farther up his hip, Brendon stepped closer and bent to drop a kiss on my forehead. “It’s going to work out,” he said when he straightened. “Trust me.”

  I blinked at the tears threatening to overwhelm me, and rolled my eyes. “You’re a born optimist. Of course you would say that.”

  His smile turned to a grin. “Yes. Yes, I am. Isn’t it wonderful?”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. It was a wobbly laugh, to be sure, but a laugh.

  “We’re outta here,” he declared, turning to Tanner, who was watching us all with the kind of contemplative frown little children wear when exposed to the pathetic-ness of the adults in their life. “Let’s go get a wheatgrass and kale smoothie!”

  “Ice cream, Daddy,” Tanner corrected.

  “Wheatgrass and kale ice cream?” Brendon suggested.

  Tanner’s giggle was answer enough.

  “We’ll be back in fifteen, twenty minutes,” Brendon said to Amanda.

  She smiled up at him, a smile Brendon bent down and kissed.

  “Love you, both,” my sister said.

  “Love you back, Mommy,” Tanner declared. “C’mon, Daddy. Ice cream!”

  “Ice cream,” Brendon laughed.

  I watched them go, my heart clenching. In case you haven’t picked up on the clues yet, I love my family. They are amazing and supportive and real. I don’t know what I would do without them.

  At the feel of a gentle finger tucking behind my ear, I returned my attention to Amanda.

  “Okay,” she said, taking my hand, her smile soft. “Talk to me for real. What’s going on?”

  My throat grew thick. She was right. It was time for real talk. It was time for me to tell her everything. She was my sister, after all. She’d had my back from the day I was born.

  Letting my gaze jump around the room, I settled on one of Tanner’s Transformer toys lying on the floor. “I was in a relationship with my art history professor early last year.”

  Silence greeted my confession.

  I looked back at her, flinching in advance at the censure I knew was going to be on her face.

  Yep. There it was. Ouch.

  “Professor Perry?” Amanda asked.

  I nodded.

  “The one who wears suits made out of hemp, has all those books published, and walks around the place like he’s the proverbial Second Coming?”

  Okay, so Amanda didn’t like Donald. I didn’t either. One problem down, a gazillion to go . . .

  “Yes. That art history professor,” I confirmed in a wry tone. “Donald Perry.”

  Amanda studied me like I’d suddenly grown an extra head. “He’s like, a hundred and fifty-seven years old.”

  “He’s forty-seven,” I corrected.

  “Oh, hell, what was I thinking?” she said, smacking her palm to her forehead.

  “Amanda,” I growled.

  She let out a sigh. “Sorry. Sorry. You just . . . Professor Perry? Really, Chase? Professor Perry?”

  I shrugged. “He gave me some of the best sex of my life.”

  “Holy fuck, sis.” Confusion filled Amanda’s face. “Why?”

  “Why was I in a relationship with him? Because . . . because I was in awe of him, of his intelligence. His knowledge about art. His charisma. He’s very charismatic.”

  Amanda didn’t look convinced. “He’s being investigated by SDSU. Did you know that?”

  I frowned, the information unsettling me. “I didn’t. Do you know why?”

  “I don’t. Dad mentioned it in passing to Mom the other day. Apparently he’s on extended leave at the moment.” She shook her head, studying me like I’d grown an extra head. “He might be charismatic, Chase, but still . . . Professor Perry? You’re so much better than that. I don’t understand why you’d be with him. I just don’t.”

  I sighed, slumping deeper into the sofa. “He paid attention to me,” I said finally. “He treated me like I was a grown-up. Like I wasn’t . . . wasn’t defective. One lesson, he asked me to stay back, complimented me on my essay on Dali, and the next thing I know, we’re swapping saliva and his hand is up my shirt.”

  Amanda stared at me. “Was it just that one time? You used the word relationship.”

  “It lasted a whole semester.”

  She pressed her palm to her mouth. I waited for her to digest my revelation.

  It took her a while.

  “Okay,” she said eventually. “So it’s over. So explain to me why you’re—”

  Before she could finish, Pink started singing from my cell.

  Without making eye contact with Amanda, I dug my phone out of my pocket and held it to my working ear. “Can I assume you’re not at my parents’ house any more?” I said.

  “No,” he answered. “I’m not. I’m at my place. The question I have is, when are you going to be at my place?”

  Two firm fingers pinched my thigh, hard enough to hurt. Mouthing a silent oww, I glared at Amanda.

  She glared back at me. Tell him you don’t want to talk to him, she signed.

  I frowned at her.

  “I can’t stop thinking about you, Chase,” Donald continued. I had to give it to him, he was determined. And adamant we were meant to be together. Where was that determination when he was with the grad student in his office?

  “Every breath I take, I’m convinced I’m breathing in your scent,” he went on. “Every woman’s voice I hear, I think it’s yours.”

  Tell him you’re not interested, Amanda signed, her sharp motions the equivalent of shouting. Tell him you’re seeing someone else.

  “So every woman sounds like me?” I asked into the phone.

  Amanda pulled a face and made a gagging action with her finger and mouth.

  “Complete with missing consonants and slurring?” I added before Donald could respond.

  “That’s not what I mean, babe,” he reproached, like I was a petulant child. “And you know it.”

  Amanda’s fingers and hands moved, an evil grin curling her lips. Tell him you just had the best sex of your life with another guy. In fact, tell him you’re in the middle of it now and you need to get back to it.

  I waved a shushing hand at her.

  “What I know,” I said, my heart racing, “is that you told me that I was defective and you couldn’t be in a serious relationship with someone with a disability.”

  Amanda’s mouth fell open. She gaped at me. And then pure, concentrated rage flooded her face. He did what? she signed.

  “He did what?” she said aloud, fury turning the words to a snarl. Obviously she was too angry
for just one form of communication.

  “Is someone there with you?” Donald asked.

  “I’m with my sister,” I answered, dropping my forehead into my hand.

  “And the hottest guy on the planet,” Amanda said loudly.

  “What?” Confusion and alarm filled Donald’s voice.

  “Donald,” I said, eyes closed, head in my hand, “why are you so adamant you want us to be a thing again? Why? Is it because you saw me at LAX? Or is it because you saw me with another man?”

  He didn’t answer that. Instead, he said, “Be at my place in fifteen minutes, babe. I know you want to see me. I need to show you how sorry I am.”

  There was no missing the emphasis on the word show. Nor the implication behind it.

  My stomach tightened. The trouble was, I really didn’t know if it was from disgust, rage or, God help me, an idiotic, pitiful need for his approval.

  And if it was the latter, what the hell did I do to stop it?

  Eight

  “The average dog is a nicer person than the average person.”

  ~ Andy Rooney

  Caden

  Walking into the hospital as Chase drove away was an exercise in mental torture. It took all my willpower not to look back to see if she’d stopped. To see if she’d changed her mind. By the time I got into the reception area I felt like I was about to splinter into a million pieces. So much for not being ruffled. What I needed right there and then was some good news about Doofus. And maybe an excuse to make a joke about something.

  The temp – whose real name was Timpani but who I could only think of as Little Miss Regrowth – smiled at me when I entered.

  “Is your girlfriend okay?” she asked.

  Girlfriend. Huh. It would take forever to explain the complexities of our relationship, so instead I nodded. “She’s tough.”

  An unconvinced frown pulled at her forehead. “I guess she has to be, being disabled and all.”

  Thankfully an elderly woman with pale pink hair and a pinker Shih Tzu under her arm hurried into the hospital and approached the counter, saving me from responding. It’s probably not a good move to call someone an insensitive, ignorant twat when you’re a visitor in their country, right?

  “Caden?” Dr. Adams poked his head through the door behind the counter as Timpani turned to the stressed pet owner. “Come through.”

  “Thanks, Dr. Adams,” I said.

  He waved a hand at me with a smile. “Dean will do.”

  I followed him to the recovery room where Doofus had been the day before. When I saw the dog, my heart dropped.

  It’s an odd term of phrase heart dropped, but it’s so accurate. Physically, my heart didn’t shift its position in my chest cavity at all, but at the sight of Doofus, the place in my chest where my heart sat suddenly felt empty, a pounding weight taking up residence in my gut in its place.

  Doofus, for his part, wagged his tail weakly at my presence.

  “Chase tells me he’s got a post-op infection,” I said, concern eating at me.

  “He’s a fighter,” Dean said at my side, “but for some reason he’s not responding to the antibiotics.”

  I crossed to Doofus’s cage, opened it, and placed my hand on his side. My throat wasn’t letting me breathe. I ran an inspection over the dog, trying to engage my vet’s eyes and brain.

  “And you don’t know why?” I asked. Dean had done an amazing job on the dog’s dislocated back knee, and the sutures on his wounds were impressive.

  “Not at this stage. Randolf – the vet on duty last night – suspects complication from his perforated bowel,” Dean answered. “It was a mess in there when you brought him in. Randolf put him onto antibiotics straight away, but they should be having an effect by now. I’m going to run some blood tests and do a CT scan, see if there’s something we’ve missed. Would you like to watch?”

  I nodded.

  He clamped a firm hand on my shoulder. “This is not how you saw your third day in California going, is it?”

  A dry laugh scratched at my tight throat. “Not really. I’m not really being a great guest for Chase and her family.”

  “Is she in the waiting room? Doofus’s condition shook her up pretty bad.”

  “She’s gone back to San Diego,” I said, stroking my hand over Doofus’s head. His tail thumped faster, but nowhere near as fast as it should. “She’s got things to take care of.”

  Holy crap, did those words tear at my heart.

  How exactly was she going to take care of Donald the Dude? And how was I going to convince her that she was meant to be with me, when I was staying put here in LA? I couldn’t leave Doofus. He wasn’t mine, but he wasn’t anyone else’s either, and the thought of abandoning him to whatever fate lay ahead of him just didn’t sit right with me.

  Dean let out a grunt before giving my shoulder another squeeze. “Go dump your bag in the staffroom, Caden, and then come to Consult Room 2. It’ll be good to have another pair of eyes in there.”

  He turned and left, leaving me with Doofus. Lowering my head, I gently rubbed my forehead against his. “We’re going to fix this,” I murmured.

  He twisted his head a little, his movement shaky and fragile, and then a dry warm tongue flicked at my chin, rasping against my beard.

  It was at that point I accepted I might not be returning to Australia with Chase as my girlfriend, but I would do everything legally possible to make sure I could return with Doofus. If he lived, I wanted him to come back home with me. It meant a likely six-month stint in quarantine for him, and a hefty bloody bill for me, but I didn’t care.

  This dog was now mine.

  This dog, which, as it turned out, had a delayed response to antibiotics.

  It took Dean almost twenty minutes to get into Consult Room 2, thanks to an emergency involving a cat, a plastic slinky and a little girl who thought the slinky would make a perfect collar for the cat.

  By the time Dean arrived, with a few scratch marks on his wrists and forearms he hadn’t sported before, Doofus’s tongue color had began to return to a normal, healthy pink.

  “Hey,” he said, closing the door, “he’s looking a bit better.”

  He was correct. Doofus was looking a little better. If nothing else, he was wagging his tail with more gusto and was holding his head up for longer stretches of time. Both good signs.

  “Hand me the thermometer,” Dean instructed, watching Doofus try to get me to pat his head.

  I did so, my heart quick. I don’t think I can fully articulate how deeply I wanted Doofus to improve on his own, without the need for further surgery.

  Observing Dr. Adams take Doofus’s temp, run blood tests on him, and perform more than one scan of his bowel area was an unusual way to decompress after the last forty-eight hours, I’ll give you that, but I forgot about the shattered state of my heart. I was a twenty-three-year-old guy with a crush on a girl so powerful I didn’t know what I was going to do if she rejected me. So I functioned as a veterinarian, doing everything he could to save the life of an animal.

  Although to be honest, it seemed to me Doofus was pretty much saving his own life by this stage. “It’s like we have a different dog on our hands,” Dean commented, as Doofus tried to lick his face during the last scan of his bowel.

  “Maybe he’s just got a flair for the dramatics?” I said, trying not to get my hopes up. There was still a long way to go, but if Doofus was finally responding to the antibiotics, that long way had become a little shorter. And less traumatic for him. The last thing I wanted to see was him opened up again on the operating table.

  Dean chuckled as he took Doofus’s temperature again. “Maybe. Definitely a drop in temperature.” He scratched at the back of Doofus’s ear. “Let’s get you back in your cage, boy. Don’t want to tire you out.” He gave me a quick look. “Think we might increase his dose by a quarter, just to give it an extra kick.”

  I nodded. It was a sound plan. One I would have suggested myself if I was in his shoes.
/>   I took Doofus back to his cage, my heart – so recently heavy with grief and dismay – feeling far more buoyant.

  It was ridiculous to think of Doofus’s condition as symbolic of my relationship with Chase, but a part of me was doing so. I walked out of the recovering area strangely calm. I washed up, asked Paul if he minded if I charged my phone in the lunchroom, and then spent the rest of the morning helping out in the clinic.

  I met the other vets who worked with Dr. Adams. We talked shop, comparing Australian practices with American. I talked to pet owners dropping off their beloved animals for treatment. I held the hand of the elderly woman as she said goodbye to her Shih Tzu that, I discovered, had inoperable brain cancer and was being euthanized that afternoon.

  I ate lunch with Little Miss Regrowth, who asked me to say things like crikey, and fair dinkum and struth over and over, and told me how much she’d loved watching Bindi Irwin on Dancing with the Stars.

  I went back into the clinic after lunch, doing all the things a volunteer at an animal hospital does. I was Caden O’Dae, vet-in-training. I didn’t look at my mobile phone once, and refused to let myself think about Chase.

  I was standing beside Doofus’s cage, absently giving his ear a scratch through the bars as I read through his chart for the twentieth time, when Little Miss Regrowth – Timpani – tapped on my shoulder.

  “Someone’s been texting you, Cade.”

  I’m not sure when she decided she could call me Cade. Probably after the fifth time she asked me to say g’day, mate.

  She handed me my mobile. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the fact she’d taken it upon herself to retrieve it from the lunch room where I’d left it charging next to my bag.

  “Thanks,” I said with a tired smile.

  She slipped her fingers down my arm. “Dr. Adams says you’re staying at a motel while the dog is recovering. That your deaf friend went back to San Diego.”

  I nodded, my gut churning. There was no way I could miss the emphasis she’d put on the word “friend”. “Yeah. I’ll find one closer after I leave today. It took me longer to get here in a taxi this morning from the motel than it did to get from Australia.”