Page 37 of Fat Enemy Mate

He puts the coffee on, and I sit down at the island, which dominates the room and has the same dark stone top as the counters, and watch him move around his own kitchen. He's in jeans and a grey sweater, and his hair is still damp. There's something about a big man being domestic in a nice kitchen that does things to my head I'd rather not let myself linger on, so I look at the jars on the shelf instead.

"This is a really nice kitchen," I tell him.

"Thanks," he says.

"I wasn't expecting it," I admit. “I don’t mean…I just thought…”

"Don’t worry," he says, "I know what you mean."

"Did you do it yourself?" I ask.

"Most of it," he replies. "The bones of the place were always here. It's where I grew up. I've changed it a fair bit over the years. Added bits."

"You grew up here?" I ask.

"Yeah," he says. He puts the coffee in front of me. "Just me and my dad mostly. Then just me after he left."

He says it as though that were the most normal thing in the world, and while I grew up with just my dad, I get the feeling his childhood was less filled with love than mine. But I’m in no state to pick that scab.

"Toast?" he asks, and I think he’s trying to move on quickly, too.

I nod and watch as he moves around his kitchen with the ease of a man in his own space, only stopping when his phone beeps with a message. He reads it and seems to hesitate, so I know it’s about me.

"Just say it," I tell him.

"Luna wants to come up later this morning," he says. "With Skylar and Fern. And maybe Dina, who says she didn’t get to meet you properly yesterday. They want to bring you some things. Clothes and that. I told Luna last night you'd come down with nothing. They want to know if you're up for visitors. I can tell them another day if you're not."

I sit with that for a second.

"What things?" I ask.

"Clothes, I think," he tells me. "Just stuff you might need, I guess."

"All four of them?" I ask.

"Yeah," he says, "Dina will have the baby. If it’s too much, just say."

"It's fine," I tell him, before I've really decided.

He looks at me.

"Sure?" he asks.

"I think so," I tell him. "I can’t deny I need to change out of these clothes, and they seem fine."

"Alright,” he says. “I'm going to be in and out anyway. Connor's coming up to look at the wards on this side of the ridge, and I said I'd give him a hand. I won't be far."

"Okay," I say.

He doesn't push it. He texts Luna back, finishes making the toast, and we don’t bring it up again. He heads back outside to finish doing whatever he was doing after breakfast, and I sit at the island in his enormous kitchen, drinking the rest of my coffee and trying to work out what I feel about all this.

I don't actually know.

Yesterday was a lot. The truck, the alpha house, and Luna being kind, and the women all in the kitchen with their tea, and Fiona's children running around the garden, and then I nearly blew it all up by using my voice on them all—I wouldn’t have blamed them for throwing me out of the town after that. Or perhaps they want to use it just like the rogues do, but they’re not giving off the same threatening vibes. In fact, they don’t feel threatening at all, and that is wreaking havoc with a lifetime of fear. I should have wanted them to throw me out of the town, then I could have actually left and gone home. But in the moment, I didn’t want them to turn me away.

And they didn’t. Fiona thanked me. Fiona actually thanked me, and her three-year-old had ended up in my lap withhis fingers tangled in my hair. The rest of the afternoon is a blur, but I didn’t feel threatened.

And now, this morning, the women are coming back and bringing me clothes. I should be escaping; I shouldn’t want to be here. I shouldn’t be drinking coffee with Wilf like it’s the most normal thing in the world. And yet, I’ve slept well in a comfortable bed, he’s made me breakfast, and I don’t know what to do with how all that makes me feel.