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He shook his head, and I hit play onHocus Pocus.
“This is really good,” I told him, taking another bite.
He snagged a chip and used it to scooppozoleinto his mouth. That seemed like a great idea, so I followed suit. Always eat food like the people who invented it, because they know what the fuck they’re doing.
After dinner, we paused the movie so that Taavi could help me stagger my way into the bathroom—although thank God I didn’t need him to help me with the basics there—and back, and I insisted on sitting the other direction so that I could lean against him.
“You okay?” he asked, his lips close to one of my pointed ears, as I settled against his warmth.
“Perfect.”
“You, Valentine Hart, are a liar,” he accused, although I could tell from the warmth in his voice that he was teasing me.
“Fine,” I conceded. “As perfect as I possibly can be given the broken ribs and battered face.”
He kissed my un-stitched-up cheek. “I like your face, battered or not.”
“It’s going to be all scarred,” I pointed out.
“I don’t care about scars, Val.” Another soft kiss. “I just care that you’re okay.”
“Right now,” I replied, sappy as fuck. “I’m more than okay.”
25
It was pretty earlythe next morning when Taavi disappeared to go fetch a photograph of his parents and a few other things he wanted for theofrenda. He left me still in bed, but I got myself—slowly and painfully, using every ounce of stubborn stupidity I had left—out of bed and into the kitchen.
Because I knew from my research intocapriotadathat there was a special bread forDía de Muertosthat used roughly the same base dough. It didn’t take me long to find a recipe and get the dough started—thanking fucking God for the fact that I owned a stand mixer, because there was no fucking way in hell I would have been able to mix this dough by hand in the shit condition I was in.
Pet was very excited by my presence in the kitchen, meowing and winding her way between my feet. I looked down at her fuzzy black-and-white butt, tail curled around one calf.
“It’s not Sunday, fuzz-butt,” I told her.
“Mrrrreeoow.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m a mean asshole.”
“Mrrow.”
I snorted, then turned off the mixer and dumped the dough out onto the flour-covered counter. This was the part that was really going to suck.
It did.
I groaned and grunted my way through doing a final knead on the dough, then put it in another bowl and set it on the stove over the warming oven to rise.
I’d pay for this later, but it was fucking worth it. Taavi was worth it.
I left the mixing bowl to soak in the sink, knowing that I probably wasn’t going to be the one to wash it, since Taavi would probably get to it before I felt up to it myself. I felt a little guilty about that, but I needed to sit the fuck down.
I was still half-prone on the couch when Taavi got back.
“Val, you should have waited for me to get back,” he chided.
“It’s fine,” I told him.
“You’re exhausted from getting yourself to the couch!”
“I, ah… took a detour first.”
