AllFreeNovel
Share Us
And I hover.
I’ve done what I came here to do. Investigated the source of the whistling. Rune. Now I can go back upstairs and return to thinking about how to find my sister.
I do none of that. Instead, I drift toward him.
It’s not his apple pie and freshly baked bread scent calling to the omega in me. It’s not even the fact he’s in a white T-shirt that outlines the defined muscles beneath. What pulls at me is the frown between his brow and the need to fix what’s wrong.
“Is something wrong?” I ask, already knowing something is. He wouldn’t be frowning so hard at the piece of paper on the white marble counter if all were well.
He rakes a hand through his thick blond hair. “My étouffée recipe. Something still isn’t right, but I couldn’t tell you what it is.”
“Is there anyone you can ask?”
“I’m the last Fontenot. This recipe lives, or it dies with me.” Rune picks up a pen from the counter. He scratches something out and scrawls a new word instead. If it didn’t look like he’d done the same thing multiple times already, I might just be able to read his handwriting.
The last Fontenot?
I’d ask if he weren’t looking so distracted. A story like that can’t be a happy one.
Whatever change he makes must not be a good one from the deepening line between his brow. I gather he isn’t getting any closer to working out what’s wrong.
As I watch him, I recall picking up a pencil for the first time. It had felt like I hadn’t truly lived until that moment. A pencil in my hand, a piece of paper to draw on, gave me a voice—apurpose—I hadn’t known I needed.
No one taught me. This need to capture the things I saw on a scrap of paper was just there. Waiting for me to uncover it.
It was Della who found my first doodles on receipts, newspapers, menus, anything I could draw on.
She used the money Mom must have given her to buy me my first sketchbook. The paper was scratchy. The pencil kept breaking every few minutes, but I have never loved a gift as much as I did that one.
As Della’s pocket money increased, the paper quality improved and so did the pencils. Mom never gave me money, and she refused to buy me art supplies, even when I begged. So Della did.
I don’t know if she ever bought anything for herself because she was always surprising me with another small item to add to my growing stash of art supplies.
Rune mutters a curse as he scratches something out and scrawls something in its place. His frustration mounts by the minute and it feels like he’s getting farther away from this recipe than closer to it.
I recall Rune’s passion as he told us about his family’s famous recipe, and I think of my love of drawing.
“How did you learn it?” I ask.
He glances at me, distracted. “What was that, cher?”
I lean on the counter beside him, white marble refreshingly cool on my arms and under my bare feet. “I asked how you learned the recipe.”
He stares at me for several seconds without expression. “My great-grandma led me by the arm, made me stand beside her and watch her cook.”
I fight back my fear of alphas and move to stand so close beside him, our elbows nearly touch. “Pretend to be your great-grandma and I’ll pretend to be you.”
He frowns down at me.
I gently pull the barely legible piece of paper from his hand and put it down on the counter. It’s not helping Rune, only making him doubt himself even more. “Everyone learns things in different ways. I didn’t learn to draw. It was just there. Maybe this way isn’t right for you. So pretend you’re teaching the recipe to me. Don’t write it. Show me.”
Rune says nothing for so long that I jump when he grips my hips and lifts me onto the counter. He’s not smiling, but his eyes are soft when he frames my face with his large hands, dips his head, and gently kisses the tip of my nose.
I blink in surprise. “What was that?”
“A kiss.” He grins.
I realize he’s still framing my face. He’s close. Definitely within kissing on the mouth and not just on the nose distance.
