AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Thank you. So am I. It’s a longer story, but he ended up getting a life sentence,” he said.
“Good,” I said softly, extracting myself from the hug when I realized he was having trouble keeping the post steady. “But it must have put a lot of pressure on you and your mom to hold the family together.”
For a split second, Sam’s face was full of raw emotion. Grief, hurt, anger, resentment, helplessness. It was like a heavy blanket of horrible feelings he usually kept hidden away. The weight of it almost staggered me back, and my heart felt like it was going to burst out of my chest and wing its way over to settle into his chest in case he needed it.
I opened my mouth and stepped forward again, but his face quickly shuttered, and he turned away from me.
“Yeah. So anyway, that’s life, right? You ready to cook? I could use a sous chef in the kitchen.”
I almost continued my way toward him, to slide my arms around him from behind and press my body against his back just to let him know I was there, to pay him back in kind for the comforting embrace he’d given me earlier.
But I wasn’t that brave.
So I did the expected thing instead.
I told him the etymology of the term sous chef and chattered nonstop on our walk back to the house about the history of Escoffier’s kitchen brigade in the London Savoy hotel.
Nothing said “I want to take care of your giant sweet heart and make love to your incredibly sexy body” quite like the French words for fish and fried food.
9
Sam
I wanted to laugh at myself, and I knew for sure Mikey would laugh at me if he heard me chucking my emotional stew all over this poor guy.
What the hell was I thinking? This wasn’t me.
Not only did I not share my personal shitshow with others, I definitely didn’t share it with people who’d also had it bad. Sure, maybe… hopefully… Truman hadn’t had the periodic physical abuse I’d had, but he’d experienced a different kind of trauma by being blamed for something that wasn’t his fault.
I wanted to drive down to Durango and confront his parents, insist they apologize to Truman and confess just how wrong it had been to lay the harsh consequences of a childhood mistake at his feet.
But I wasn’t a superhero. And, as usual, I had enough family drama on my own plate as evidenced by the nonstop buzzing of my phone.
“If you need to take a call,” Truman said politely, “you’re welcome to use the guest bedroom for privacy.”
I shook my head as I followed him into the farmhouse kitchen. “No need. It’s my family. They’ve been trying to reach me all week even after I told them I needed a break.”
Hopefully, Truman didn’t think I was rude for ignoring my own family on the phone. I had to assume he understood about having to set boundaries for the sake of your own mental health.
If only I did, too. Ignoring them was eating me up inside. I’d never been good at setting boundaries.
As he began showing me around, Truman loosened up a little. His slender arms waved around at the various cabinets and drawers as he indicated where certain items could be found, and I quickly realized I was spending more time watching his body than following along with where things were.
That was fine. I would make do once I got started. I wasn’t afraid to poke my head around if I needed something, and watching his attractive form and his lively movements had a calming effect on me.
Truman kept up his endearing chatter as I began preparing the chicken. He told me about each variety of cumin he’d selected and why I might want one over the other. Obviously, I didn’t have a preference since my only goal here was to spend time with him, so I followed his body language cues to select the one he seemed most excited about.
I asked a few leading questions in an attempt to learn more about him. Things like, “Did you always want to take over your aunt’s farm?”
And I loved every minute of hearing his responses. He told me about being shocked by her death. “It was a car accident in Canada. She’d gone up to Calgary for a workshop and… the van she was in was run off the road by a tractor-trailer, I guess. They say she died instantly. There were four people in the car. Another one died at the hospital, and another had serious injuries but survived. The truck driver hit a patch of ice.”
“How old were you?”
He turned to face me, and I saw traces of anguish hidden underneath a forced smile. “Can we not talk about Berry right now, please?”
