Chapter 27
Twenty-Seven
Emory
I hadn’t realized how much I’d been starved for affection in the last three years until I packed a bag and moved in, temporarily, with Enoch and Jae.
Everything was so domestic. Falling asleep in his arms, greeting each other with goofy ‘honey, I’m home’ every night, eating dinner together and talking about how our days were. It was perfect.
Which was why I was preparing a meal, or as Jae had coined when he walked in, a feast. I wanted to give him something back. I wanted to do something for him; show him I loved him even if I wasn’t able to say the words.
I watched Jae dice an onion across the kitchen from me as I finished washing the potatoes in the sink.
“I didn’t realize you were so into cooking,” Jae said over his shoulder.
I shrugged. “I’d always been the chef in the family. My brother wasn’t home enough to cook much, and he never took the time to learn to make anything more than boxed macaroni and cheese.”
“So, where did you learn?”
“There was this older woman who ran a daycare out of her home. I have no idea if it was legal or accredited in any way, but it’s where all the neighborhood kids went when they weren’t in school and parents were working. I was kind of a loner and so I spent most of my time with her, in her kitchen.”
“Well, it’s a necessary skill to have, so kudos to her. Wait, that's the same woman that Sebastian had said you guys were cared for?"
I smiled to myself and nodded, “Yeah.”
“Is this a new recipe or have you made this before?”
“No, I’ve made this before.” My stomach tensed at the thought that I was making the same meal I had once made for my husband. A meal I’d been taught to make during RLS. “It’s honestly not that impressive. It’s, like, the easiest thing to make. The oven does all of the work for you.”
“Mmhmm,” Jae drawls sarcastically. “Tell that to my crying eyeballs.”
I chuckled and chucked the tie from the potato sack at the back of his head.
“Hey!” He whined, turning to give me a glare.
I laughed and turned off the sink, moving to an empty space of countertop.
“I don’t think I’ve said thank you.”
“I was just teasing,” he said. “It’s really not a big deal to cut this onion. I’m happy to help.”
I shook my head with a soft laugh as I turned to face Jae.
“No, I mean for everything you’ve done for Enoch.
I…you were right. I shouldn’t have left those voicemails.
I shouldn’t have asked you to do what I did, that was…
well, it was unfair, even if you would have done it of your own accord, I shouldn’t have asked that of you. ”
Jae turned with a sigh, “No, Shy. I was wrong. I don’t think things would have turned out much differently. In fact, I think it would have made things worse if you hadn’t said goodbye. I think-I think we would’ve held onto a lot more guilt if you hadn’t taken the chance to say goodbye.”
I chewed my lip, studying his red, watery eyes for anything but his sincerity.
“Well, in any case, thank you.”
Jae smiled, using the back of his hands to wipe at his eyes.
“Where do you want these onions?”
“Uh,” I blinked glancing at the whole chicken sitting in the baking dish on the stove. “Inside the bird.”
“Great,” he muttered with a grimace. “Because everyone wants to stick their hands up a dead chicken’s ass.”
I snorted and shook my head at him. “Well, next time don’t offer to help, dipshit.”
Jae rolled his eyes, carrying the cutting board to the stove. He gingerly placed the sliced onion inside the chicken with an exaggerated look of disgust.
“So, did you open a gym in Florida too?”
Jae tilted his head to look at me. I must have surprised him by the change of subject because he took a second to respond.
“No. I wasn’t working actually. Nox was pretty much my only priority.”
“Oh,” I mumbled.
“But, when he got his next assignment, I had to make a choice: follow or return home.”
“And you chose to follow.”
He nodded. “Yeah, it didn’t feel right to leave him. And maybe it was selfish, but we were finally close again and I was scared to lose that if I moved back home.”
“Is this the first gym you’ve opened, or had you opened one when you moved back east?”
“I helped my dad set up his gym when we moved to Harrisburg. But this is my first time doing it completely on my own.”
“That’s really big, Jae. I wish I could be there for your opening.”
Jae smiled at the praise and nodded. “Yeah, me too.”
Jae moved to the sink to wash his hands, and I quickly finished what I was doing with the potatoes to finish prepping the chicken.
“What else have you been up to the last five years?”
Jae blew out a breath, leaning back against the sink to watch me.
“Honestly, not much. Just…life.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Really? What about any relationships?”
Jae chuckled and nodded. “Okay. Yeah. I did have a couple relationships.”
“Anything recent or ongoing?” I asked with interest.
“Nah. The last relationship I had was a little over a year ago now.”
I nodded, cocked my head to study him. “Wait, so right before you moved to Florida?”
Jae’s nose scrunched as if he wasn’t happy about it.
“Yeah. We’d been dating for about six months when I got the call from Nox.
It was a no-brainer that I was going to go down and help him, and I didn’t think it was fair to Alana to keep up the pretense of a long-distance relationship that I wouldn’t really have the time for. ”
“Does Enoch know?”
Jae’s mouth flattened to a tight line as he shook his head.
I hummed and gestured for him to move aside so I could wash my hands.
“What about you?”
“What about me?” I asked with a raised brow, taking the towel Jae held out to me to dry my hands.
“Have you dated anyone?”
My brows rose, studying his face. Did he really not know? Or was he playing coy, trying to fish out the details so he didn’t have to admit that Enoch had told him?
When his brows furrowed with confusion I asked, “He didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?” he asked slowly.
I blinked, turning back to the stove to put the bird in the oven.
“I was in a relationship before I moved to Anchorage.”
I straightened and turned back to face Jae who had crossed his arms over his chest. “Was he a Ghost?”
My lips quirked at his use of the slang term, and I shook my head. For a moment, I had forgotten just how much he knew.
“Oh,” he said with surprise. “So, he was just someone you met wherever you were living?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“And I take it he was an asshole?”
Was he? Obsessive, a little controlling…but an asshole? No.
I blew out a breath and shrugged. “Just, um, a little unstable.”
Jae frowned, staring at me. “Unstable?”
I cleared my throat and grabbed a baking tray, lining it with foil.
“Shiloh?”
I clenched my jaw, letting out a silent growl. “What?”
“What do you mean, unstable?”
“He was too in love with me.”
I could feel Jae’s stare on my back, and I dumped the potatoes onto the tray.
“What did he do?” Jae asked after a moment of silence.
I pulled the sleeve to my shirt over my shoulder and Jae stepped closer. He leaned over, eyes scanning my tattoos, lingering for a moment on the healing red marks, before looking up to my face.
“He made you get tattoos?” he asked with confusion.
I chuckled and rolled my eyes. “No, dipshit.”
I grabbed his hand, and he looked at me a little panicked like I was about to make him touch my boobs or something. I placed his fingers over the scar that ran diagonally from my shoulder to my bicep.
Jae sucked in a breath, running his finger over the mark a few times before dropping his hand.
“That’s not love, Shiloh,” he said, chinned dipped as he looked up at me with intensity.
I pursed my lips and turned back to finish the potatoes with fresh herbs and oil.
“Not the way that Enoch loves me, but…I don’t expect you to understand.”
“Then explain it to me.”
I sighed with an internal groan.
Theo did love me. He showed it in the ways that he cared for me, in the ways that he wanted me to be blessed, wanted me to be his partner and not just his submissive wife.
He would help me in the kitchen without my asking.
He would ask me my opinion on things. He would offer soft touches and gentle kisses, make sure that I was comfortable after a lashing, or healing after a miscarriage.
And maybe it was Stockholm Syndrome, but after eighteen months together I started to believe that I loved him too.
It wasn’t all bad. If it had been, I wouldn’t have survived as long as I did. Or maybe I was just unwilling to admit that I let myself believe that was the only kind of love I deserved. The kind that hurt. The kind that punished.
“Nox knows about this?” he said when I didn’t respond, gesturing towards the scar.
I nodded and he took a step back.
“Well, I’m glad you’re here now. And we get to enjoy the culinary expertise of Shi—sorry, Emory Crawford.”
I chuckled, grateful for the subject change. “You haven’t even tasted anything yet.”
He shrugged with an easy smile. “It looks good, and the chicken has been in there all of five minutes and it’s already smelling amazing.”
I rolled my eyes and placed the potatoes on the rack below the chicken in the oven.
There was a long pause of silence, and I realized that Jae was staring at me. I ground my teeth together, flicking my gaze to him with a raised brow.
“Yes?”
Jae cracked his knuckles. “We’re good, yeah?”
“What?” My eyes narrowed.
“Like…do you trust me?”
I took a breath to try to level my growing frustration. “Yeah. I do. I just don’t feel like explaining myself when I know you won’t understand.”
He chewed his lip, studying a spot on the counter for a moment.