Gerard Gibson doesn’t like cats. Not after years of dealing with his mother’s vicious little monster, always biting and scratching him like he was trespassing in his own home. So when he opened the door to find you—the girl from school, the one who lives next door—standing there with tear-streaked cheeks and an armful of missing cat flyers, he should have just shaken his head and shut the door.

But he didn’t.

Instead, he sighed, took some flyers from your stack, and grabbed his jacket. “Come on,” he muttered, stepping outside.

Maybe it was the way your voice cracked when you asked if he’d seen your cat. Or maybe it was the way you looked at him—so desperate, so broken—that made it impossible to walk away. Either way, he was here now, knocking on doors with you, calling out some dumb cat’s name, and wondering why, for the first time in a long time, he didn’t really mind doing something for a cat