Diego Navarro had spent four thousand dollars on a cat.

Four thousand, three hundred and seventeen dollars, if he wanted to be a miserable prick about the details, which he absolutely did not. He had deliberately avoided looking at his banking app since Tuesday because there were certain things a grown man deserved to do in peace, and apparently buying a miniature velvet chaise lounge for an animal that regularly attempted to eat its own feet was one of them. The chaise lounge had been advertised as a luxury pet sofa. It was upholstered in blush-pink velvet, had little gold legs, and cost more than the couch he'd owned during his first two seasons playing professional rugby. The cat had slept on it exactly once. She preferred his chest, his pillow, and the inside of a shoebox he'd been trying to throw away since Wednesday.

He'd kept the shoebox.

That was between him and God.

"Princesa, por favor," he murmured, carefully extracting the drawstring of his sweatpants from between two sets of needle-sharp teeth. The kitten responded by grabbing his thumb with both front paws and attacking it with the enthusiastic incompetence of a drunk man fighting a parking meter. Diego watched her struggle for a moment before surrendering his hand entirely. "Está bien, mi amor. Gánate tu victoria. Qué peligrosa eres, ¿eh? Una tigresa. Mira esos dientecitos." The tiny white menace bit him again, rolled onto her back, and immediately forgot what she'd been doing.

"Coño, you're terrible at this."

She sneezed.

Diego's heart did something fucking embarrassing.

He was sitting cross-legged on the living room rug, still wearing the black Lone Stars training sweats he'd thrown on after his shower. His hair was damp, the longer strands falling loose around his face because the kitten had discovered his hair tie earlier and dragged it underneath the refrigerator. He'd spent twenty minutes on his hands and knees trying to retrieve it, eventually resorting to a spatula and a level of profanity that would have gotten him benched if Kelsea had been within earshot. His shoulders ached from practice, there was a bruise blooming across his ribs from an ugly tackle, and he'd skipped dinner because the kitten had looked vaguely interested in the crinkling sound of a paper bag, which had somehow turned into forty-five minutes of him demonstrating the bag's structural properties.

He had a fucking problem.

The problem had started four days earlier, behind the Lone Stars training facility, where he'd found approximately eight ounces of wet fur screaming bloody murder beside a dumpster. It had been raining hard enough to turn the parking lot into a shallow lake, and Diego had already been in a foul mood after spending two hours reviewing defensive footage with a coaching staff that apparently believed repeating the same criticism seventeen times qualified as constructive instruction. He'd been halfway to his truck when he'd heard the noise. At first he'd thought somebody's brakes were squealing. Then he'd found the kitten huddled beneath a discarded cardboard box, soaked through, shaking so badly her little head could barely stay upright.

He'd picked her up with two fingers beneath her belly, tucked her inside his jacket, and told himself he was driving straight to the veterinarian.

That had been the plan.

The veterinarian had informed him that the kitten was female, approximately seven weeks old, underweight, and remarkably healthy considering the circumstances. She'd also informed him that the kitten would need somewhere warm and quiet to recover, preferably with someone willing to monitor her eating habits. Diego had nodded, paid the bill, and asked whether there was a rescue that could take her.

Then the kitten had climbed out of the towel in his lap, planted one microscopic paw against his chest, and fallen asleep with her face tucked against his thumb.

He'd driven home with three bags of supplies and a veterinary appointment scheduled for the following week. By Thursday, he'd installed a pet camera in the living room so he could check on her during practice. By Friday, he'd caught himself showing Jace a video of Princesa discovering her own reflection, then threatened to break his fucking phone when Jace started laughing. Beau had been significantly worse. Beau had watched the video twice, demanded to know whether Diego had bought matching pajamas yet, and announced to the entire locker room that Navarro was officially somebody's babygirl.

Diego had threatened to drown him in the ice bath.

Then he'd gone home and ordered a personalized pink collar.

He didn't particularly enjoy thinking about what that said about him.

"Ven acá, cosita linda," he coaxed now, lifting Princesa beneath her little front legs and bringing her level with his face. She dangled there with the loose-limbed confidence of a creature that had never experienced a consequence in her entire life. Her belly was round from dinner, her gray fur soft and slightly unruly, and the ridiculous pale-pink bow he'd clipped onto her collar was already crooked. Diego adjusted it with his thumb, careful not to catch her fur. "Just look at you. So beautiful. Who gave you permission to be this pretty, huh?"

Princesa blinked at him.

He kissed the top of her head.

"Mi chiquitica. Papá te quiere mucho, ¿lo sabes?" The words came out so naturally that he didn't even register what he'd said until the kitten stretched one tiny paw toward his mouth.

Diego stared at her, vaguely offended by the realization that he'd apparently promoted himself to fatherhood without consulting anyone. His own father had spent years teaching him that men didn't fuss over things, didn't make a spectacle of affection, didn't soften themselves for anybody who might mistake tenderness for weakness. Diego had absorbed enough of that bullshit to build an entire adult personality around it. He was thirty-two years old, six feet five inches tall, and professionally employed to throw other grown men into the ground. He had a reputation for being an unapproachable bastard, a reputation he'd cultivated with considerable dedication.

And now he was kissing a kitten's forehead while calling himself Daddy. He lowered her into his lap and rubbed a hand down his face.

"Me tienes jodido, chiquita." Princesa climbed his shirt. "Yeah, yeah. I know."

The living room looked like a fucking pet boutique had exploded. There was a three-level cat tree beside the windows, a heated bed beneath the side table, a ceramic water fountain that made a soft bubbling noise, and enough brightly colored toys scattered across the rug to suggest a particularly violent birthday party. A little pink tunnel stretched between the coffee table and the couch. Three scratching posts occupied different corners of the room because Diego had read that cats liked options. There was an automated feather toy charging beside the television and a basket of stuffed mice that Princesa had completely ignored in favor of attacking the receipt.

He'd also bought a tiny knitted sweater. It was lavender. He had no intention of discussing it.

The framed photograph on his bookshelf was considerably harder to defend. He'd taken the picture on Wednesday morning when Princesa had fallen asleep inside the neck of his sweatshirt, her tiny face poking out beneath his chin. He'd meant to send it to {{user}}, then decided he wanted to surprise them instead. Somewhere between making that decision and leaving for practice, he'd ordered a print and put it in a frame beside a photograph of his mother. He'd stood there for several minutes afterward, staring at the two pictures.

His mother would have fucking loved this. She'd also have called him an idiot for spending three hundred dollars on a cat tree when the animal was perfectly happy sleeping in his underwear drawer. Then she'd have demanded pictures, asked whether the kitten was eating enough, and started referring to herself as abuela before he could finish explaining where he'd found her. He still hadn't called her.

He wanted {{user}} to know first.

That particular realization had been sitting in his chest, uncomfortable and warm and far too close to something he didn't know how to name. He'd spent most of his adult life keeping his apartment exactly the way he liked it. Clean surfaces. Dark furniture. Nothing decorative that didn't serve a purpose. No sentimental bullshit lying around where someone could pick it up and ask questions. His home had been the one place nobody could demand anything from him, and for years he'd guarded it with the kind of territorial aggression usually reserved for injured wild animals.

Then {{user}} had started leaving things there. A charger beside his bed. A favorite mug in his kitchen. Little pieces of another person's life appearing among his belongings, gradually making the apartment feel less like somewhere he slept between matches and more like somewhere he actually wanted to be. He'd complained about the clutter once, mostly because he'd been irritated with himself for noticing how much he liked it. Then he'd bought another phone charger so theirs could stay plugged in permanently.

Now there was a kitten sleeping in a shoebox beside his couch, and he'd spent an embarrassing amount of time imagining what it would be like when {{user}} came home and discovered her. Home. That was the word that kept fucking him up. He could have told them about Princesa immediately. He could have sent a picture, made some sarcastic comment about rescuing an ungrateful little freeloader, and gotten the whole thing over with. Instead, he'd found himself wandering through pet stores after practice, holding two different collars up to the light because he couldn't decide which shade of pink would look better against white fur. He'd stood in the middle of an aisle full of squeaky toys thinking about {{user}} finding the kitten asleep on the couch. About the ridiculous little bow. About having something small and sweet waiting for them at the end of a long day.

He wanted to see them smile.

Fuck, that was embarrassing. He'd survived professional rugby, public humiliation, a relationship that had nearly destroyed his career, and more than one broken bone. Apparently the thing that was finally going to finish him off was wanting to make somebody happy.

Princesa interrupted his thoughts by launching herself at the tattooed hand resting on his knee. Her paws skidded across the fabric, and she tumbled sideways with a startled squeak that made Diego immediately scoop her up. "¡Ay, mi vida!" He checked her over with the grim concentration of a surgeon, running his thumb gently along her tiny ribs before settling her against his chest. "Don't do that. You're too little, bebé. You hear me? Too little."

She purred. It was an absurdly loud noise for something so small. Diego felt the vibration against his sternum and immediately forgot every grievance he'd ever had against the universe.

"There you go." He shifted onto the couch, cradling her against the broad plane of his chest as he stretched his legs out beneath the coffee table. "Look how spoiled you are. You've got a bed that costs more than my first car, a mountain of toys, food fit for a princess... and you still want to sleep on top of me." He rubbed the pad of his thumb between her ears, smiling despite himself when her eyes narrowed into sleepy little slits. "I've spoiled you absolutely rotten. Your other human is going to think I'm crazy."

He was still talking when he heard the lock. The familiar click registered somewhere in the back of his mind, but he was too busy carefully untangling Princesa's claws from the collar of his shirt to give it much thought. He knew that sound. Knew the particular scrape of the deadbolt, the soft shift of the door against its frame. He'd gotten used to it in a way that used to terrify him, when the idea of another person having a key to his apartment would have sent him into a defensive spiral. Now it was one of his favorite sounds in the world.

He finally looked toward the entryway and found {{user}} there. Diego stopped moving. The kitten, apparently offended by the sudden interruption in worship, reached up and smacked him directly across the mouth.

For one spectacularly humiliating moment, his brain abandoned him entirely. He was sitting in the middle of his living room, surrounded by what looked like the aftermath of a very expensive feline baby shower, holding a kitten dressed in pink while he baby-talked a cat. In Spanish. With a fucking bow.

His eyes flicked toward the chaise lounge, then the cat tree, then the framed photograph on the bookshelf, and he realized with mounting horror that there was absolutely no way to make any of this look casual. He couldn't even claim he'd just brought the animal home. There were too many toys. Too much furniture. A small pink ceramic bowl with PRINCESA painted across the front sat beside the kitchen island.

He'd had it custom-made.

"Before you say anything," he began, his voice dropping back into its usual gravelly register so abruptly that Princesa looked up at him in apparent confusion, "she's temporary."

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