He barked out a loud laugh, then, shaking his head again. “Jesus…yeah, Ethan would’ve howled at that.”
"He sounds like he was a good person," I said.
Wyatt's smile faded, but not in a bad way. "Yeah. He was a good person." He glanced at the oven. "Obnoxious. Never shut up. But good."
"Would've been fun at a party."
"He was fun everywhere." He pulled out a chair across from me and sat down for the first time since we'd gotten back. "Grew up in Dearborn. Michigan. His dad came over in the eighties, met his mom at a university there—she was American, from Ohio, which Ethan said explained a lot about her." A pause. "He used to say he got the best of both of them and none of the sense."
I smiled. "How old was he?"
"Twenty-two." Wyatt looked at his hands on the table. "Same as me."
Twenty-two years old, and he'd been carrying it for eighteen years.
I didn't say that. I just sat there across from him in his kitchen, in his t-shirt, and let it be what it was.
"He'd written the recipes on the last few pages of this paperback I had," Wyatt said. "No measurements. Just ingredients and method, the way his mom taught him. I had to figure out the amounts myself." A beat. "Took me about ten tries to get the chicken right."
"Ten tries."
"Maybe twelve."
"That's dedication."
He looked up at me. "It's chicken."
"Wyatt."
"Haven."
"You spent a year learning to cook your dead best friend's mother's recipe."
He held my gaze for a second. Then he looked away, jaw working. "He would've hated that I made it sound like something."
"I think," I said carefully, "that he would've loved that you kept making it."
Wyatt didn't answer. But he didn't look away either, and after a moment he reached across the table and tucked a piece of hair behind my ear, almost like he didn't mean to. His thumb dragged across my cheekbone.
Then the oven timer went off.
He dropped his hand and stood up. Back to business, back to moving, like the last thirty seconds hadn't happened.
"Eat," he said, pulling the oven open. "Then you can say whatever you're working up to say."
"I wasn't working up to anything."
"You've been working up to something since the shower." He set the pan on the stovetop. The smell hit immediately—lemon and herbs and something warm underneath. "Just let me feed you first."
ELEVEN
Wyatt
This wasn't just sex.
It had only been all of two days, and that was already abundantly clear to me. Haven had never wanted it to be casual…and now I was realizing, neither did I.
I wanted her in my bed. Riding my cock, saying my name, begging me for more.
