“Desperately.”
He gets up, and I watch him pull on a t-shirt and sweats, and honestly it should be illegal how good he looks first thing in the morning with his hair like that, all pushed to one side, jaw scruffy, moving around his bedroom like he has no idea what he does to a person.
I follow him out to the kitchen, climbing onto one of the barstools at the island while he opens the fridge and stares into it with the gravity of a man making very important decisions.
“I have eggs,” he says. “And I think there’s bread.”
“Eggs and toast,” I say. “I can help—”
“Sit.”
I sit. He pulls out a carton of eggs, butter, the bread, and a block of cheese, setting everything on the counter with the same focused energy he brings to most things. I rest my chin in my hand and watch him crack eggs into a bowl, and it’s—honestly, it’s almost absurd how domestic this is. Banks Callahan, making me eggs at seven AM.
He whisks the eggs, adds a splash of something, then looks over his shoulder at me. “Cheese?”
“Obviously.”
He almost smiles. I catch the edge of it before he turns back around.
The kitchen fills with the sound of butter hitting a warm pan, and I sit there in his shirt on his barstool in his apartment and feel, with a claritythat’s a little startling, that I am exactly where I’m supposed to be.
He slides a plate in front of me ten minutes later. Scrambled eggs, perfectly done, cheese melted through, toast on the side. He leans against the opposite counter with his own plate and eats standing up, watching me take the first bite.
“Good?” he asks.
“Really good.” I point my fork at him. “See, this is information I needed earlier. The eggs change things.”
“What things?”
“My overall assessment of you as a life partner.”
He goes very still. Then, carefully says, “Is that right.”
“I’m just saying, a man who makes good eggs at seven a.m. without being asked is—that’s a green flag, Banks. A significant one.”
He’s quiet for a second, looking down at his plate. “Life partner,” he repeats, like he’s turning the words over.
“I was mostly joking,” I say, backpedaling slightly, because I suddenly can’t read his expression and I don’t want to—
“I wasn’t,” he says.
The fork stops halfway to my mouth.
He looks up. Meets my eyes. His expression is steady, unhurried, the same way he looks when he’s made up his mind about something and the rest of the world can catch up at its own pace.
“Oh,” I say.
“Yeah.”
I set my fork down. He’s still watching me with that look—the soft, sweet one that’s just for me.
“Banks.”
“Win.”
“You can’t just say things like that while I’m eating eggs.”
“Why not?”
