Even the good ones.
Ha.
“You’re only saying that so I let you do that to me again,” I whisper, needing to play off my own tension. The push and pull between where I am right now and where I should be. “You’re a sex fiend.”
“You think?” He sounds so introspective, I half wish I could see his face.
“Mmhm. You’re already addicted. You’d say anything.”
He’s still tracing circles on me. I’ve lost count of the laps. “Maybe I would,” he says softly, more to himself than me. “Maybe I would.”
That voice does it. How, for a brief moment, he does sound like he would say whatever he had to in order to feel me again. I lean back, my shoulder swooping into the mattress, and Faust is already here, meeting my eyes. So close that I can see the darkest patches in his twin brown irises. The ghost of stubble across his face. I kiss him, or he kisses me, and it quiets me down again, that momentary panic hushed by his long fingers and tight grip. When we’re kissing, I don’t think about how much I wish we were and all the reasons we shouldn’t. I don’t think at all.
Faust
Monday, April 28
I love her.
Chapter 23DISCOVERED ATTACK
When I wake up, alonein bed, my stomach flops out of my body and drops to the floor.
I scramble, sitting up, looking around, panicked. My adrenaline only marginally resides once I remember where I am, and hear what sounds to be a large man trying to be quiet in a very small kitchen. Utensils clinking, a faucet running.
Trying to be quiet myself, I twist off the bed and slink toward the noise, peering around a corner at the alleyway of a kitchenette. Faust is standing in front of a toaster oven, diligently watching tofu crisp and drinking what appears to be an entire jug of Pedialyte. He’s in the black sweatpants and white T-shirt he fell asleep in, though there’s a kitchen towel hanging from his pocket, and his hair is more pushed-back than usual. Like he’s been running his hand through it so many times, it’s now momentarily trained to defy gravity.
I only have a second to take in how he looks when he cooks—concentrated, absorbed, in control—before he notices me, eyes flicking over, then widening.
I talk first. “Hey.”
“Hi.”
“What are you doing?”
“Cooking.”
“Nice.” I take a step. Now I’m basically in the kitchenette; one giant leap for mankind. “Do you usually do protein and carbs before a race week?”
Momentarily, his expression is a bit caught, like he’s not going to let me question-ask my way into smoothing over how inherently strange this is. Me in his morning, us after last night.
Then he points at a plate I hadn’t noticed, with the metal spatula he’s holding. “I do. You don’t have to.”
On the plate, there’s glossy strawberries, the tops already cut off. A banana, expertly divided into neat, even slices. And three pieces of crispy brown toast; one with only butter, one with almond butter and salt, and another with emerald-green avocado triangles and a chef’s flick of vinaigrette. I exhale, surprise making it a bit hard to think. “Did you make all of this?”
I catch Faust’s half smile before he turns back to the toaster oven. “The fruit?”
Smart-ass. “Okay, did youcutall of this?”
“Mm.”
He’s been awake, grocery shopping, and cooking without waking me up. I spent years not looking at screens or eating chocolate after ten p.m., counting sheep—and this is what works on my Greyhound brain. Faust’s patented sternness, a fuzzy weighted blanket draped over my shoulders.
Pressure. Structure.
I think back to last night and feel myself turning pink.
His smile widens when I go for a strawberry. “Is this a part of your thing? Feeding me?”
