He came downstairs a minute later, shirtless and glorious.
“I was going to bring this to you in bed.”
“No.” He sat at the dining table again. “I’m not eating in your bed.”
“I don’t care. I do it all the time.”
“Beds are for fucking and sleeping.”
“And snacking.”
He smirked. “I don’t consider myself a stubborn man—but not gonna happen.”
I took the hot food out of the microwave and brought it to him at the table.
He immediately grabbed his fork and dug into the pasta.
I sat across from him. “How do you stay in such great shape, eating pasta and stuff all the time?”
“Because I need like four thousand calories a day,” he said. “I lift every day.”
“How do you find the time?”
“I make time because I have to. You won’t always have a gun or a knife in your possession. Your size might be all you have against an opponent, so you’d better be the stronger one.” He sat with his elbows on the table, eating like a hungry bear that had just come out of hibernation.
“You do a lot of hand-to-hand combat?”
“Some,” he said between bites. “Not a lot.”
“Leo said you killed Luigi and the others with your knife.”
“I don’t hide behind a gun if I don’t have to.”
My eyes became glued to his face, hanging on his words.
“It’s cheap, in my opinion. Shooting someone from a distance and relying on a scope to hit your mark… I prefer to fight like a man. Just two men with beating hearts and their knives tearing each other apart. It’s primal…intimate…animalistic.”
“You sound like a samurai with a sword.”
“Same idea,” he said as he continued to eat, staring at me across the table. “Know how to use a knife?”
“Probably not in the way you do.”
“Would you like me to teach you?”
“I know how to load and fire a gun.”
“Not what I asked you.” His plate was nearly clean at this point because every one of his bites was the equivalent to three of mine.
“You think I need to learn?”
“I’d prefer it if my woman was prepared for anything.”
“Alright.”
He gave a slight nod.
“Maybe we’ve just been lucky, but life has been pretty quiet for us.”
