jasper
Day 15
“Sammy? It’s Jasper.”
“I gathered that from the word ‘Jasper’ flashing across my screen.” He yawned. “What’s wrong?” His voice was thick with sleep.
I glanced at the clock.
Shit, 2.00am.
“I’ve kinda got a situation over here.”
“What kind of situation, has the property been breached?” His tone was serious in an instant.
I glanced at the set of green eyes looking back at me. “I guess you could say that.”
“You could say that? What the fuck? It’s a simple yes or no question, Jasper, are you high?”
I could hear him dressing in the background.
Good. This is good. He can come over here and take care of this for me.
“Jasper?!” he snapped. “What the hell is going on?”
I ran my hand through my hair. “There’s a cat, man, the damn thing just strolled in from the balcony.”
“A cat,” he repeated back to me. “You’re shittin’ me, right?”
I held my hand out cautiously to the thing and it bumped its head against my fingers.
“I don’t know where the hell it came from but it’s a god damn cat, Sammy.”
“I’m gonna ask you this again, are you high?”
“Not even a little bit. I don’t know what to do with it.”
The cat in question meowed.
“It meowed,” I relayed in a hushed tone to our head of security.
“That’s great, Jasper.”
“Are you here yet? I need you to sort this out.”
“It’s a fucking cat, Jasper, feed it… chuck it out… I don’t give a shit… but don’t ring me at two o’clock in the morning again unless someone is threatening to slit your throat.”
“You never know, it’s probably got sharp claws,” I argued as the line went dead. “Head of security my ass,” I grumbled as I threw the phone onto the bed.
Clearly, I was going to have to sort this out myself.
I sized up the intruder, trying to plot my next move.
“You’re pretty little, huh?” I asked it.
It meowed again.
“Where’d you come from?”
I held my hand out again and it smooched not just its head this time but all the way down its back.
“Huh,” I mused. “What am I meant to do with you?”
The small grey animal looked up at me with its big green eyes.
I was no cat expert, but it looked skinny. It was obviously only young, but even so, it looked under-fed.
“You need a pie.”
It tilted its head to the side and studied me again before trotting off across the carpet of my bedroom and jumping up onto my bed where it proceeded to prod at the blanket with its feet before curling up.
“Hey!”
It ignored me.
Damn cat.
“Look, cat, if we’re gonna do this, I think I better find you some tuna or something, alright?”
I approached it slowly and patted its back softly. It purred.
I smiled.
It’s actually pretty cute.
“And we’ll have to find out if you’re a dude or a chick… can’t go calling you ‘it’ forever.”
It lifted its chin and I scratched under its neck.
“You like that, cat?”
It purred louder.
God, I’m a sucker.
“Fine. You can stay… but let’s make a deal, if you need to take a shit, meow or something, okay? I’m not cleaning that off my floor.”
I paused for a moment, taking stock of the current state of my life. Hannah wasn’t here, a stray cat appeared to have taken up residence on my bed and for the first time in two weeks I didn’t feel so alone.
Odd.
I went downstairs to find it something to eat.
Damn cat.
* * *
“Jasper?” Lotte called from the entryway.
“In here,” I called back from where me and Cat were watching the baseball game. I hated baseball, but Cat seemed to like it, so I’d left it on.
“Guess the rumours were true.”
“What rumours are they?”
“Word on the street was you got yourself a cat.”
She came around to get a better look.
“Oh, it’s so little,” she cried in that voice that people got when they were talking to cute animals or babies.
“She,” I corrected her.
“How do you know?” she raised her brow at me.
“Took her to the vet this morning.”
“It’s a Sunday.” She furrowed her brow in confusion.
“Yeah, they weren’t too keen, but I tell ya, Little Red, you throw enough money at something and anything is possible.”
She snorted a laugh. “What’s her name?”
“Cat.” I rubbed her behind the ears – it was her favourite spot.
“Seriously? Cat? That’s the best you could come up with?”
I smirked. “I was going to go with ‘pussy’ but it seemed a little bit inappropriate.
“Cat it is,” Lotte replied quickly.
“Did you hear back from the PI?”
I grunted. “Waste of fucking time that was.”
When Tyler had decided to be a difficult little prick, I’d hired a private investigator.
He’d come back with nothing.
The only thing he’d told me that I didn’t already know was that Hannah had cashed up some of the money she’d previously had invested.
She’d moved just under eight hundred thousand and nobody seemed to be able to tell me where she’d put it.
Apparently, her investments were doing incredibly well.
Money was something we rarely talked about, we both knew the other had no shortage of it and we’d left it at that. We each put money into an account that we shared, and we both knew each other’s passwords, but I’d never even thought for a second about checking her account. I trusted Hannah and she trusted me.
But desperate times call for desperate measures.
I now knew the exact balance of her account, and holy shit, my future wife was nearly as loaded as I was.
When I found her, I was going to have to have a serious talk to her about the charities she approved of, because there was no way in hell we could spend all this money in a lifetime even if we tried.
“All he found was that she’d transferred some money. He doesn’t know where she put it.”
“When the hell did she turn into such a sneak?” Charlotte groaned.
“She’s just trying to protect herself, Lotte, she’s scared.”
“I know.”
“I just wish she’d talked to me before she made this decision, I doubt there was anything I could have said, but who knows... she’s been let down a lot in her life, I know her parents didn’t support her leaving school early, they didn’t think she could make it as a hairdresser. It’s not that they’re bad people, I just don’t think they realise the power of their words.”
“You know her so well.”
“I know her better than I know myself.”
She reached over and squeezed my hand. “That’s how I know you’ll find her, J. You’re probably the only person in the world that can.”
I swallowed deeply. I was feeling the pressure something chronic. I had so much to prove and so much to lose here.
“I hope so, Little Red, this house is empty without her.”
“I miss her too.”
I squeezed her hand back.
“I’ll get her back,” I assured her.
“Can you promise me one thing?”
I nodded.
“I just want to be there when you tell her you got a cat.” She giggled.
“Deal.” I chuckled as I stroked Cat’s back.
“You might have to put this search on hold for a bit.”
I sighed. “I know. These next two weeks are crazy busy. It’s like she’s tipping salt in the wound.”
“Classic Hannah, causing a ruckus.” She smiled sadly.
“I’ll call Ty again and see if he can work on anything else, and I promise we’ll get back into it right after the show, okay?”
I nodded.
“If we could cancel it, I would, J.”
“I don’t want to disappoint the fans.”
She lightly nudged my arm. “I know… and that’s why they all love you so much.”