“Survival isn’t the same as flavor.”
I remember her saying it on the beach, toes in wet sand.
“I’m starting to understand that,” I say.
Something shifts in her facial expression. Am I mistaking it for attraction. Whatever that look was, it’s small and fast, gone almost immediately. But I see it.
My job is to keep her safe, not flirt over shrimp and greens in a beach cottage while someone out there has her knife and her phone number.
I step back from the counter. Distance is useful.
Kara plates the food, two servings without asking if I want one. She sets mine in front of me with toasted bread angled against the shrimp like she can’t help making things beautiful.
“Eat,” she says.
I do. The first bite shuts me up.
Lemon, garlic, herbs, heat, sweetness from the shrimp, bite from the greens, bread crisp enough to catch the sauce. I’ve eaten in embassies, on yachts, in private clubs with menus designed by men who used tweezers like weapons. This is better.
Kara watches my face with more vulnerability than she probably knows.
“Well?”
I swallow. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“I understand the difference now.”
Her expression softens so suddenly I want to take the words back, not because they’re false, but because I don’t know what to do with that softness when it’s aimed at me.
“Good,” she says softly.
We eat standing at the island because neither of us suggests sitting. Outside, night presses against the covered windows. The ocean keeps moving beyond the glass, steady and indifferent. Inside, the cottage holds the smell of food and something new I don’t trust yet.
When she reaches for my empty plate, I catch myself wanting to stop her. Not because of the plate. Because I want her hand near mine. That is a problem. I let her take the plate.
After we clean up, she looks smaller somehow, energy spent, adrenaline gone. “I think I can sleep now.”
“I’ll be awake for a while.”
“You don’t have to …”
“I do.”
Her protest dies before it forms.
She nods and starts toward the bedroom, then pauses near the hall. “Cole?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you for not treating me like I’m fragile.”
I think of the way she steadied herself with a pan in her hand, the way fear trembled through her and still didn’t stop her from feeding both of us.
“You’re not fragile,” I say.
Her throat moves.
