ꜱᴏᴍᴇ ʙᴜɴɴʏ ᴛᴏ ʟᴏᴠᴇ| Jikook

1

Jimin

"How did you manage all this?"I asked my grandmother for the thousandth time.

She didn't answer. She would never be able to answer again, slowly slipping from this world a month earlier while she slept. That never stopped me from asking her questions or telling her about my day. This place was her.

When I'd gotten the call from my uncle, telling me her wish was for me to take up residence here, it made sense. I'd been the grandson who spent their summers here, helping with her rescue farm and giving my parents the freedom to pretend they didn't have a son to bog down their fun. I knew the place better than most people.

I just wished she had told me. I hadn't been married to my apartment back in the city. Shit, I didn't even really like it much. But it had been home since I graduated from college, and going from city life to country life had been a challenge I probably could have succeeded better at if I had eased my way into it. Not that I was staying.

Probably.

Most likely.

Maybe.

Shit, I didn't even know.

Giving up the only place that ever felt like home was hard. All of this was hard. Especially the part about my grandmother being gone.

At least my job allowed me to walk away until things with the estate were settled. I worked in real estate. Technically, I was an agent, but my job had morphed into a behind-the-scenes guy, putting up listings and optimizing searches so our company had better sales, that kind of thing. I liked the steady income of that versus the highs and lows of showing and selling homes. Eat what you kill was a hard way to live. For me, anyway.

My boss had been great about letting me work remotely. My work had grown the agency significantly since I first proposed it a couple years ago, sick of the rat race and without a degree that meant anything. Why I thought getting a major in English was a good idea I'd never know.

I stepped out of the house and onto the porch, carrying a bowl of water for the three-legged cat that had taken up roost there. I tried to bring him in at least fifty times since I arrived, but he snuck back there to sit on the porch, watching the driveway when he wasn't sleeping. My gut told me he was waiting for my grams to come home, and I got it. There was a time or two when I looked to the driveway with the same longing.

Here you go, Lux." Grams had named him that, saying that after being found in the blue freestanding mailbox in town, he was now living the life of luxury. "A fresh bowl for you. I'm not even going to pretend to bring you inside." I placed the water on the tray, swapping it out for the bowl I had placed there that morning and dumping its content over the rail and onto the azalea bush.

Lux bounced over, rubbed against my foot, and then began lapping at the water. He was gorgeous, all calico with a tad of white on his nose. I felt bad he was still in mourning, but there was not much I could do about it except love on him and hope he got over it. I already had half a notion he'd be coming back to the city with me. It was selfish. I knew this. He liked the fresh air, not a tiny apartment.

"I'm going to leave the door ajar, just in case you change your mind." I walked back inside with the empty dish, leaving the door cracked open for him.

I had a lot of animals to think about. My grandmother's heart of gold meant she had more rescue animals than she probably should have—not because the farm was too small because it was plenty big enough, but it had taken her all day to mind them. Although, as my uncle reminded me, that was the life she had wanted.

Gods, I missed her.

A knock on the door startled me, especially as the pounding of feet began to accompany it. A young boy, ten possibly twelve, stopped dead in his tracks. "You aren't Miss Angeline." He stood there, his hoodie in a bunch in his arms as if he were carrying something fragile inside it, and Lux was rubbing his leg.