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I pour us each more wine, and we sip slowly as we start the next course. Bolognese and holy shit, my lips actually tingle at the rich flavors. She watches me as I eat, and I try not to moan like a creep but Jesus. I forgot food is also enjoyable, not just to ease the growling.
As if attuned to me, her voice is quiet when she asks, “What do you normally eat?”
I finish my bite, and drink from my wine, calculating my response. “Soup or a sandwich for lunch, from the deli down the street from Crave.”
“What about dinner?” she asks, twirling her fork in the noodles.
I stare at the unmoving surface of wine in my cup and look over at her. “A protein bar. Sometimes another sandwich.”
She blinks a few times, confused by my answer. Probably confused as to why I eat the same thing every day, or sometimes hardly eat at all. “Do you ever go out to eat?”
“Only with Crave,” I admit.
“Do you love sandwiches and soup?” she asks, eyes flitting between mine, her focus unspooling all of my tightly wound secrets. I want to spill, to tell her every fucking thing kept locked deep inside me, but I know that’s the wine, so I stick the simple truths instead of the entire saga.
“No.”
She nods, trying to make all of the complicated pieces of Cohen fit into place. “You’re fit; are the sandwiches and soup part of a health regime or something?” She asks like she already knows the answer, but I respond anyway.
“No.”
Holding my eyes, she leans over me, bringing her fork spun full of pasta to my mouth. “Open,” she whispers the command, and I obey easily. She slips the loaded fork into my mouth and I close my lips around it. “You deserve good food,” she says plainly, completely unaware that she’s nailed the trauma right on the fucking head.
Deserving.
I’ve not felt deserving of anything for so long.
She slowly pulls the fork from lips then presses her mouth to mine in a short but sweet kiss. I chew and swallow the bolognese, my heartbeat going a million miles a minute, and lean down, taking her mouth with mine. We taste like wine and pasta, sadness and hope. I like the way we taste, I love how her lips fit against mine.
“Tell me more about you, Cohen Steele,” she breathes, her sweet breath flanking my senses, causing another stirring below the waist.
“I’m thirty,” I tell her. “I’m from Michigan, which you already know. And I like baseball, documentaries, and swimming.”
She glances over to the counter when I left my baseball cap when I returned. “Big Tigers fan?”
I follow her gaze to the faded cap. A momento from another life; I kept it to remind me that at one time in my life, I really lived. Even though it ended in flames licking at every ounce of happiness I had left, burning me down, leaving me a pile of ash, I did live. And love. In a different life.
“Not really,” I admit. “But it meant something to me before, when I lived in Michigan.”
She sighs. “I know what that’s like. That’s how I felt about my music box, the one Pete destroyed. It was the only thing I carried from my past, when my parents still loved me and I didn’t know what true darkness was like.” She smiles sadly at me, her blonde hair glowing from the bright light overhead.
“You’re so beautiful, Scarlett.”
Her lips part, and she leans in, but stops herself. “When you’re ready, I’m here,” she says, sending a shiver down my spine at how aware she is of my wounds. How I’ve spent so many years hiding them, hiding myself—yet in just a couple of hours with her, she sees through the veil. She knows pain when she sees it.
I nod, but say nothing. She reaches for the wine and refills our cups. We pass the other dish back and forth, taking small bites, when she lets out a sigh. “We need furniture.”
I know what she means. She means both of us, independently, need to furnish our places. But for a split second, I envision us picking couches and lamps for a home we share together. Forourplace.
Another first poured into my lap courtesy of Scarlett.
“We do.”
She pulls her hair into a messy bun, securing it with an elastic from her wrist. The soft slope of her neck calls to me, making my lips tingle and again, my cock thick with need. My mind whirrs from booze and excitement, and it’s almost too much to handle.
Right when panic is clutching at my throat, and all of this is about to become too overwhelming, and I start to question why I thought I could protect and take care of her when I’m so fucked up, she tips to the side, resting her head on my thigh.
“Stroke your hand through my hair, Cohen,” she says softly, her eyes closed. “When you touch me, my world feels safe and right. And you’re the first to make me feel that,” she says, her words slurring softly.
