I tipped my head to the side. “Sorry?”
“I moved in.”
“I knew you were bringing stuff over,” I pointed out.
“Yeah. And I shifted your stuff so I could put my stuff away and not live out of a suitcase.”
My skin started crawling at this information, and I realized, too late, I should have told him it would be me wedging his stuff with my stuff.
“What did you shift?” I asked cautiously.
“Clothes in the closet.” He was watching me closely. “And the drawers. Shit in the bathroom.”
Was I feeling pressure in my head?
Yes.
Yes, I was.
“I wish you’d have waited for me,” I pushed out.
“I figured that when I saw your closet was organized by color, season and occasion. Short sleeves. Long sleeves. Fancy or casual. And the state of your drawers made me understand we need to have a conversation about seeing someone to discuss symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder.”
“It’s just my clothes,” I assured him. “And my makeup,” I added. “And anything to do with body and skincare,” I finished, deciding not to tell him (now) how I felt about my spice drawer in the kitchen.
“I don’t give a shit where my stuff is, just that it’s put away. Growing up, after Mom left, our house was always a mess. Gypsy and I would try, but Dad, Crew and Poe cottoned on we liked order, and just to fuck with us, they did everything in their power to give us anything but. Since they had a posse who were as big of assholes as they are, it was easy for them to do it, and for the most part, the place was a filthy pit. So we eventually gave up.”
And now I knew why he always went to bed with a sparkling-clean kitchen.
At that, I moved to him and curled up next to him, pressing my hand into his abs.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
He curved an arm around my shoulders. “Just an added layer of their shit. Heads up, there are a fuck ton of them.”
“I’ll have a look at what you’ve done later. We need to go to the grocery store. Do you still want to go? Or did you and Cap take care of it?”
At that, his eyes lit. “Fuck yeah. Cap and I just swung through a Walgreens. I haven’t been to the store since before I got shot.”
He seriously got off on grocery shopping, and now I worried that was some residual damage from his growing-up years too.
“Yes,” Knox said.
I focused on him to see him focused on me. “Yes, what?”
“Mom always used to take Gypsy and me to the store with her. It probably won’t surprise you, Dad wasn’t real hip on keeping food in the house for his kids. It was mostly pizza deliveries, or Chinese or Mexican takeout. Cereal for breakfast and sometimes lunch too. When I could drive, I took Gypsy to the store. We’d cook together and pretend we were an actual family, not a fucked-up disaster.”
I wondered if this shit would keep gutting me as bad as I was bleeding for him right then.
It probably would.
“Baby,” I said softly.
“Always liked the store. The endless possibilities. What you could cook. What you could eat. What to always have around because it made home feel like home.”
“Apple butter,” I deduced.
“Yeah,” he replied then dipped his head to the coffee table. “And ranch dip and Ruffles.”
