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I wanted to reach across the booth and smack her hand away for even having negative thoughts about herself. “Babe, knock it off. You are gorgeous and don’t need to worry about weight. But even if you did, you survived a plot by the Grandmaster. You deserve cake. Get two slices.”
“Oh no, I couldn’t eat two,” she argued.
I thought we were past the phase where she questioned everything I said, but apparently we had more work to do.
“One is for me.” The last time I stole a cookie from her plate, I thought she’d murder me. I wouldn’t survive if I took an entire piece of cake.
She nodded and raised her hand, waiting for Trish the waitress to come take the order.
As the two women chatted for a moment, I stared at Hazel, trying to memorize the gorgeous lines of her curves. The way her hand raised in a polite gesture and the way she laughed at something Trish said. Her delicate throat and the curve of her shoulder. I wanted to suck on it and kiss it all night.
The two finished talking and then, rather than look back at me, Hazel’s gaze went everywhere else in the diner. She stared at the black-and-white tiles on the floor as if she was silently counting them. Then she memorized the stools set up against the bar. Finally, she glanced out the window, watching people walk by as if she was waiting for a friend to come and rescue her.
“What’s on your mind?” I asked.
The real question was whether she’d listen to me this time and tell me what was on her mind or make me drag it from her.
Hazel turned her attention to me, but she didn’t meet my eyes. “Where are we going to live? Do I go back to Bangor and then you visit or… or,” she searched for another option, not coming up with one. “Or… what?”
That’s what she worried about? Of course, my woman would have her boss get killed, go on the run, face a mobster, and come out the other side concerned about living arraignments. Did she doubt I wanted this to continue?
“You’re going to live with me.”
Her eyes widened as if she found the idea crazy. But what else did she expect? There were no other options. I guess if she wanted to return to Bangor and live in the tiny studio apartment she talked about, I could make sacrifices. But she didn’t fully understand the wealth and options available to her now. She had the world at her fingertips.
“Really? But where do you live? You don’t talk about it,” she asked and her gaze never left mine as she waited for an answer even as Trish returned with the plates of chocolate cake and sat one in front of each of us.
Shit.
Where did I live? I never talked about my home because I didn’t really have one. Cyrus and I liked to stay on the move a lot. We jumped around from country to country at different rental places—a yacht here or rental there. Multiple properties were in my name or a shell company throughout the world, but I never lived at one of them.
Not long term.
How long did you have to stay at a place to count it as living there? Did it have to be consecutive time? These were questions Hazel never considered, and neither had I until right then.
I lived everywhere yet nowhere. Until that moment, I never felt lacking, but now a huge void opened in my life. I couldn’t wait to fill it.
I needed to live somewhere.
Somewhere to live with Hazel.
It wouldn’t be Hazel who went with me or me with Hazel, but the two of us together.
“Where do you want to live?” I asked her, hoping it would be a better way to come to an agreement. “Would you prefer to stay in Pelican Bay?”
She commented multiple times about how quaint she found the town. I was more prone to city spaces where I could get a taxi and delivery from more than two places, but it really didn’t matter. As long as I had her with me, it was the perfect place to live.
“I don’t know. Bangor has always been my home.” She looked thoughtful as she jabbed the fork into the cake, pulling off a piece and putting it in her mouth.
So it appeared we reached our first impasse as a couple, but rather than argue about where we wanted to eat with neither of us having an idea, we would have trouble deciding where to live. It seemed like a Kensington problem. Any problem always became a hundred times bigger than it should be in our family.
“We can stay in Bangor if you like the area. Or would you prefer to go someplace warm?” I asked, giving her another option and then crossing my fingers under the table she said some place warm. I had nothing against Maine personally, but I definitely had a problem with Bangor.
“I’m not really attached to Bangor. Plus, it’s cold most of the time. Although my family is there.”
“We could visit often,” I said, giving her a plausible opportunity to return whenever she felt the need.
Hazel nodded, hopefully finding it an acceptable compromise. “It’s not like I have a job there anymore. Who knows what will happen to the company once the FBI raids their offices next week.
