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See, this was why you couldn’t get too invested in the rosy start of a relationship, she thought.
There were always layers to people—and some of them went so deep, they created fault lines that couldn’t be repaired.
Twenty minutes of hot water drilling on his skull later, Nate stepped out onto his bath mat and toweled himself off. Leaning over his sink, he cleaned the condensation off the mirror with a swipe and stared at himself. He looked like shit, his face pale, the whites of his eyes bloodshot, his lips pursed.
A ghost haunting himself. Oh, wait, his past was the specter stalking him.
He should have known that he’d have one of his really bad nightmares again. He’d never had a female he’d cared about in his bed before, he’d been kicked out of the Brotherhood’s fighting protocol, and the best friend he hadn’t had for thirty years had broken things off with him. Oh, and then there were his parents, and the fact that he was coming to understand what an absolute shithead he’d been to them. And Rahvyn.
And everything else.
Jesus, why couldn’t he just dream about wasps under his pillow? And why did he have to fall asleep in the first place—
“Because you didn’t sleep all day,” he muttered as he looped the towel around his hips. “You were too busy thinking about her.”
Over at the door, he braced himself. Nalla had to have questions, and all the answers he didn’t want to give her were going to be a wedge between them. She deserved some kind of explanation, but he knew, by the look in her eyes, the conclusions she’d come to were the accurate ones, even if she didn’t have all the details.
So did he really need to get personal about things…?
Yes, he fucking did. Because he cared about her more than he cared about himself, and his father was right. That transformed a person… and was the kind of self-improvement that made all the difference.
But God, he just couldn’t find the words.
Opening the door, he stepped out into the much cooler and drier open space, and looked to the bed.
She wasn’t in the messy sheets—
How could he have missed the smell of bacon, he wondered as his head snapped over toward his hot plate.
Nalla was standing with her back to him, the Oscar Mayer package open on the counter, along with the eggs and the loaf of bread that had yet to be called into service. She was in her turtleneck and jeans, but her feet were still bare and her hair was still loose down her back.
But she hadn’t left him. Yet.
Glancing toward the steps up to the cabin, he told himself not todwell on the fact that she’d hung her parka off of the end of the railing, and positioned her snow boots right under all that Patagonia.
He went over and took out a fresh pair of jeans from his dresser. After pulling them on, he grabbed a t-shirt to cover up his torso.
“Can you set out plates?” she asked without looking back at him.
“Sure.” He rubbed his palms on his thighs and headed for his shelf. “Thanks for cooking.”
Shit, he only had the one place setting. And no table to set any places on. He always just ate standing up at the stove when he was here.
“How do you like your eggs?” she asked.
“Any way you make ’em.”
“Scrambled it is.”
They didn’t talk again until she was passing him a plateful. Or trying to.
“You keep that, I’m eating out of the pan.” He nodded across the way. “And you can have my chair and the fork. I’ll use the spoon.”
“I’ll accept the fork, but I’ll trade you the chair. I’m used to eating at the counter at Luchas House.”
Fine, he’d take the chair.
As they assumed their positions and ate in silence, he realized how the clinking of forks and spoons (or rather, fork and spoon) on plates (or rather, plate and pan) was lonely when there was someone else with you. When it was just yourself? Well, you were watching something stupid on your phone, or it was like the sound of your own breathing—the kind of thing you didn’t notice.
