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I feel like a complete asshole for putting my hands and my mouth on her yesterday, with her being so recently broken up or whatever else may have happened that night she had to leave so quickly.
I’m nearly elbow deep in soap suds, washing dishes at the sink, wondering what my next move should be.
I don’t exactly have a ton of choices. I can either ignore what happened yesterday or bring it up.
I know she gets off at three, but it’s already past five now.
I consider maybe she went grocery shopping even though the fridge and pantry are fully stocked. Maybe she had an appointment. Maybe one of the calls she got yesterday that she bolted in order to have privacy to take was her ex begging for her to come back. Maybe she’s avoiding me after yesterday. Hell, maybe she quit because I couldn’t keep my hands to myself.
The kitchen smells of sauce and that weird scent boiling pasta has, but it’s no longer making me hungry. It’s having the opposite effect actually. My stomach is rolling with all the possibilities.
The front door opens, and it takes everything in me not to leave the kitchen to see her.
“Hey,” she says only a few seconds later.
Her empty hands prove that I was wrong about the shopping I considered.
“Hey.”
Before turning around to face her, I splash water against the suds still in the draining sink.
“I made dinner,” I tell her, rinsing my hands and turning off the water.
She isn’t smiling when I turn to face her.
“I’m supposed to cook for you,” she mutters.
“You are?”
I honestly don’t know what her agreement with Kincaid entails, but I’m certain it doesn’t include being subjected to my wandering hands and lips.
She shrugs, looks utterly exhausted. “Maybe? I mean, I’m supposed to be helping you, not the other way around.”
“I like to cook,” I tell her.
“Really?”
“Maybe?” I answer, responding the same way she just did.
She gives me a weak smile as she drops her phone to the table. I don’t miss the fact that she places it face down. It makes me feel like she has even more secrets, more lies to protect, but at the same time, what fucking right do I have to this woman?
None.
“Do you like spaghetti?”
“I like all food, but I like food I didn’t have to make even better.”
I pull two plates from the cabinet and hand her one.
“It’s not gourmet or anything. The sauce is from a jar.”
“It smells delicious,” she says, taking a plate from my hand and walking toward the stove.
I laugh. “How long has it been since someone else cooked for you?”
She doesn’t face me as she answers. “Not counting the kitchen at the care facility, so long that I can’t even remember.”
Either her ex was an asshole or I’ve jumped to the wrong conclusion.
“Want me to serve you?”
I swallow, my mind jumping to things I have no business imagining. She’s holding her hand out for my plate when I look at her.
“Oh, yeah, sure.”
She rolls her eyes as if she’s well versed enough in perverted thoughts to know exactly where my mind just went.
The storm I noticed in her eyes when she first came into the kitchen seems lighter when she turns back around to give me the pasta-filled plate.
I follow her lead when she carries her plate to the small kitchen table rather than out to the living room where we ate yesterday.
“How was work?” I ask as I take a seat across from her.
“Mostly uneventful, shorthanded though.”
“Shorthanded?” I ask, twirling pasta on my fork.
“Had three people call in sick. Seems everyone is ill right after you left. I don’t doubt they’re all heartbroken.”
I scoff, wiping my cheek after slurping my spaghetti and a rogue noodle smacked the side of my face.
The look she gives me is more endearing than disgusted, and I have to give her a pasta-coated smile.
“Legacy told me the other day that everyone hangs out at a bar in town. Why don’t those ladies try to grab a Cerberus guy there?”
She shrugs. “I don’t think they’ve been going that much since the last murder.”
“She was a bartender there, wasn’t she?”
Rivet filled me in the other day about everything that happened that led up to me getting injected. Although I’d hoped that it would bring my memories back, it felt more like someone just telling me about a news story they watched. It wasn’t familiar at all.
“Yeah. I didn’t know her well, but she was always kind to me when I’d go there.”
I give her a sly grin. “You hung out at the bar?”
“Hardly,” she says. “I like their burgers.”
Her face transforms as if bad memories are forcing their way into her head.
I change the subject as best I can, but we both really suck at small talk. She never offers to tell me where she was after work, and I know better than to ask.
