AllFreeNovel
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Jude got a silly grin on his face. “I’m just saying, I saw you and Will Won laughing together the other day…”
“Will Won has aboyfriend.He’s a male model named Brock, and he’s prettier than I am.”
“Nobody could be prettier than you.”
I rolled my eyes at the silly compliment, but it made me grin, too.
The next night, I visited Owen’s condo after work. He told me to let myself in, and sure enough, all the doors opened for me throughout the building until I walked into his living room, making me wonder if he had installed new facial recognition software or merely unlocked everything for me ahead of time. Soft music was playing throughout the home, and I found him chopping carrots in the kitchen.
“What’s all this?” I asked.
He grinned over his shoulder while continuing to chop with the speed and precision of a master. “I’m making chicken soup.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Chicken soup? Is someone sick?”
“It’s my specialty. Trust me, you’ll love this.”
“Okay, I’ll trust you.” I hugged him from behind, taking care not to get sliced by the knife. “Speaking of trust… Do you still trustmeafter everything?”
He put down the knife and enveloped my arms with his. “I do.”
“Are you sure?”
He nodded. “You didn’t do anything to violate my trust. I was the one who insisted we keep things casual. If anything, this is all my fault.”
“Now you sound like Jude.”
“He’s a smart guy. I can see why you like him.”
I hesitated, and then asked the question I had been dreading. “Are you sure you want to do this? Share me with him?”
He twisted in my arms until he was facing me. “If the choice is sharing you, or not having you at all? That’s an easy decision, kid. I’ve never been more certain of anything in the world.”
Owen’s lips pressed against mine, and we kissed for a long time, surrounded by the smell of spices and vegetables and roasting chicken.
“Enough of that,” he said, pulling away. “Go find us a nice bottle of white to go with this. It’ll be ready in ten minutes.”
I selected a bottle of Pinot Grigio and poured two glasses. I sipped mine while gently scratching Tux, the orange tabby that was rubbing his head against my ankles.
“Your cat likes me now,” I said.
Owen brought the soup out in a pair of steaming bowls, which he held in mitted hands. “Enough time has passed that he’s forgotten about the house hack.” He smirked. “Which is fortunate for you. Tux is a good judge of character, and if he continued hating you, then I might have just let Jude have you.”
I stuck my tongue out at him as we sat down to eat. The soup wasn’t what I expected—rather than being thin and brothy like most chicken soups, it was rich and creamy. I blew on my spoon, then swallowed a savory bite.
“Holy fuck,” I said. “That’sgood.”
Owen smiled while stirring his own bowl at the table across from me. “Jude and I survived on this for weeks at a time, back when we were developing PayScale. It was all we could afford back then.”
“Really?Soup?Most people just eat Ramen.”
He gestured at the bowl with a spoon. “This is much healthier, and just as cheap. Two carrots, two sticks of celery, two onions, a few pounds of boneless chicken thighs, chicken stock, and heavy cream. Back when we were pinching pennies, the math came out to be something like eighty cents a bowl.”
“It’s a hell of a lot tastier than Ramen,” I said, hissing as I took a bite before it was cool enough.
Owen smiled across his wine glass. His green eyes seemed to drink the light in and sparkle more than usual. “You should have seen us back then, Amber. We were sharing a tiny studio here in the city. Our beds and computer desks took up all the room, so we couldn’t even fit a kitchen table. We had to eat at our desks. We made this soup every other week while we were forming our first company. Sometimes it would be the only thing in our fridge—a big pot of soup. And it had to last us until the next grocery trip.
“I made this tonight,” he said, “to show you that Jude and I have been sharing things for as long as we’ve known each other. Sometimes we would fight over the last scraps in the pot, but we never let it hurt our relationship. You get what I’m saying?”
