How did I get here?
Returning to my phone, I swipe along to my brother’s number and send him a quick text asking where he is. No response leads me to send a string of texts telling him I’m worried, I’m hurt, and that I really need to know if he’s okay.
There’s no answer.
Not even the read notification pops up.
Defeat draws me down prone onto the bed and I clutch the towel to my throat, staring up at an off-white ceiling and mapping out every single bump with my eyes.
Peter’s missing, again.
I’m here, though I have no idea where here is.
A criminal organization wants to hang and quarter me for thefts I barely took part in.
And Bradley… confusing, hot Bradley. He rejected me, but from the way he was kissing me, he definitely wanted it. There’s no way he didn’t want it, but something made him stop. That’s never happened to me before. Ever.
Thoughts of Bradley and the mindless tracing of the ceiling above me eventually lull me into a sense of calm, and I’m fast asleep before I know it, only to be woken a couple of hours later by Bradley knocking on the door to inform me that he’s back with dinner.
I wake, groggily, and rub my eyes as I sit up. My hair’s long dried, but given how I was lying on it, my usually poker-straight strands have dried kinked and messy, so I resort to a ponytail to keep it all out of my face. After dressing in the fresh clothes at the end of the bed, I check my phone.
Still no answer.
Shit.
Does that mean something happened to him? Or is he just asleep?
Stifling a yawn, I trudge out of the room and in the direction of the noise radiating from the kitchen. Inside, Bradley stands at the table he dumped me on earlier and unloads multiple cartons of food out of a brown paper bag. The scent of take-out hits me like a truck, and before I can announce myself, my stomach rolls with an obnoxiously loud gurgle.
Bradley doesn’t look up but he does smile. “I didn’t know what you like to eat so I got everything. We have fried rice, egg noodles, rice noodles, chicken, beef, prawn, veg, sweet and sour, spicy, Szechuan, egg rolls, veg rolls, dumplings, sesame chicken and…” Pointing at each carton in turn, he pauses over the last one in his hands and examines it. “Black bean. Are you allergic to anything?” He looks up at me with those gray, moonlight eyes and smiles again. “If you are, then tell me.”
My heart skips a beat, and my stomach gurgles again, sending a flush of embarrassment to warm my cheeks, and I press both hands over my abdomen.
“No, I’m not allergic.” If he’s not going to mention what happened between us, then I won’t either.
“Good. Dig in. You must be starving.”
Part of me wants to be stubbornly polite and refuse because eating in front of a man I barely know, who drugged me earlier with water, feels risky.
My hunger wins out and before I know it, I’m in the chair shoveling egg noodles into my face as fast as I can scoop them up with the chopsticks. All decorum goes out the window as my stress, exhaustion, and upset manifest in an insane appetite that gradually gets soothed as together, we make our way through every carton one by one.
“This one’s mine,” Bradley says, removing one last package of prawn toast from the bag. “I don’t share this.”
I gaze over a mound of chicken and pineapple balanced precariously between my chopsticks and smirk. “Not even if I bat my eyes?”
Bradley takes a firm, no-nonsense bite of his prawn toast. “No.”
“I’d argue with you just on principle but… whatever.” The food is far too good and I’m too hungry to care. Shoveling my next mouthful in, I groan deeply. “So good.”
“You look like you haven’t eaten this well in weeks.”
“I’ve never eaten this well,” I correct with a full mouth. “Y’think I can afford more than cup noodles from the store?” A bite of veg follows my next mouthful of prawns. “And after—” In my haste, food catches at the back of my throat, so I chew quickly and prevent a choke. “Sorry. After everything that went down with you, I couldn’t eat, couldn’t keep anything down, and then everything became so…” Both my hands lift in the air, then I spear a dumpling and pop it in my mouth. “It’s fine. Whatever, right? I mean if everything goes to shit, at least my last meal is amazing.”
Bradley eats more slowly than I do, but as he watches me, I get the distinct impression that I’m being analyzed. I can’t imagine what kind of test might be running based on how I eat, but I can’t bring myself to care.
It’s just too damn good.
As my hunger gradually fades, my pace slows and I lean back in my seat with a long, low groan, and the prospect of poking Bradley for a better reason about why he rejected me earlierrises. Meeting his gaze, I’m all poised to answer but suddenly, a loud vibration cuts through the meal. Bradley’s eyes snap down as if he can see my waist through the table, and my cheeks warm.
