Chapter 7 Anna
ANNA
I stepped out of the way just as the stampede hit the kitchen. I stood by the fridge, opening it up every time someone came over for a drink.
And the entire time, I kept stealing glances at Brutus.
My cheek still burned from where his thumb slid across my skin. I didn’t even realize that something splattered onto my face. Usually, I was painfully aware of grease popping and the places that it bounced off my skin.
Christ, that thumb.
“Hey, hey!” Jasmine chirped.
I swung the fridge door open and put on a smile. “Pick your poison, beautiful.”
“This smells so. Fucking. Good,” she said as she dipped in and grabbed a bottle of water. “Did you help Brutus cook this?”
“I made the noodles.”
Jasmine whipped up, her eyes wide. “You made the noodles? From scratch!?”
I giggled as I closed the fridge. “It’s not that hard. I hope you guys—”
“Holy fuck, guys!” Jasmine exclaimed as she rushed away with her food and drink. “The noodles are homemade!”
“The hell?” Scout asked as he charged in, beelining for a plate. “I didn’t know you could make noodles, Big Guy.”
“Anna made them,” Brutus said from the other side of the kitchen.
Scout about broke his goddamn neck snapping it toward me. “You made the noodles?”
I opened the fridge for Ariel as she dipped inside for drinks for her and Cap. “Guilty as charged.”
“Hey guys!” Scout exclaimed as he came over to the fridge as well. “Anna made the noodles fresh! Come get you some!”
“Wait, what?” Ghost asked as he dipped his head in. “Someone helped Brutus cook?”
I rolled my eyes as I closed the fridge. “You guys act like I don’t do shit around here.”
My brother eventually came through, plucking a large bowl for himself and a smaller bowl that he practically palmed in his hand. It didn’t take a genius to know who he also grabbed food for, and I stood there and watched as he scooped up the alfredo.
“What does she want to drink?” I asked as I opened the fridge for my brother.
He just stared at me, though. “Did you really help Brutus cook tonight?”
I just shrugged. “We figured you needed to be elsewhere. I think he exchanged his name with yours on the dinner schedule, so make sure to check it when you can.”
He didn’t budge, though. “Did you help him cook, Anna?”
I furrowed my brow as I stared up at him. “Yeah, I did. The fuck’s with the third degree?”
He peered over his shoulder, and I followed his line of sight. Brutus stared us down from across the kitchen, those arms of his folded over his chest and that heavy brow of his settled over stoic brown eyes.
“What?” I asked.
My brother’s stare ripped back to me. “Be careful.”
I blinked. “Uhhh… what?”
He finally reached into the fridge and pulled out two cans of soda with one of his hands. “Be. Careful. Anna. You know what you’re doing.”
But for the first time in a very long time, I didn’t have a fucking clue what he was talking about. “King, what—”
He just turned and walked off with the two plates of food and two drinks.
Not before he shot Brutus a look, though.
“The fuck?” I asked as I watched him walk out of the kitchen.
My gaze returned to Brutus and I already found him staring at me. I just pointed in the direction that my brother stormed off to and shrugged. I expected some sort of a response. Maybe a shrug as well. Maybe a little head nod. Maybe even a small grin, since my brother was being fucking ridiculous.
But he just stared.
He was such a dichotomy, that man. I lifted my hand mindlessly to my cheek, feeling where his calloused thumb had slid across my skin.
I rubbed my fingertips against the area, trying to return the normal sensations back to my skin.
Brutus was all rough and tumble. Big and bad, and scarred, and mountainous, and scary.
However, on the inside, he was soft and malleable.
Easy to just… everything, you know? Easy to talk with.
Easy to walk with. Easy to get him to snicker.
Very easy to upset him. Easy to get under his skin.
Easy to get him to touch you.
“They’re fed,” Brutus said.
I pulled myself out of a trance I didn’t even realize I slipped into when I heard his voice. And when I gazed up, I saw him towering over me, his shadow cloaking my entire form.
Christ, the man was massive.
“What?” I asked.
His brow furrowed and he tilted his head. “Everyone’s gotten their plate. You ready for yours?”
He held out a plate and I expected it to be empty so I could dish up my food. But instead, it was already filled with the steaming hot food. I volleyed my eyes back to him a couple of times before I took the food from him, my heart warming in a way I wasn’t familiar with.
“Thanks,” I said.
He just nodded. “Wanna drink?”
I just reached for the fridge with my free hand and opened it for him.
“All right, let’s see,” he said as he dipped down and practically jammed himself into the damned thing. “We’ve got Coke. We’ve got some water. There’s a Gatorade back here. I could pour you some pickle juice—”
I barked with laughter. “I should’ve put pickle juice in the noodles while you weren’t looking.”
He reared back and up enough to glare at me over the top edge of the open fridge door. “You wouldn’t dare defile noodles in such a way.”
I batted my eyes innocently. “Whatever do you mean, Big Guy?”
He snickered as he dipped back into the fridge, and then he emerged with the spoils of his finding: a large Gatorade that was half frozen in the bottle and a couple cans of Coke.”
I reached for one of the Cokes before I eased the refrigerator door closed.
“Thanks,” I said as I took one.
“You can have the other as well, if you’re still thirsty after that first one,” he said as he picked up his massive bowl of food with his other hand. “The Gatorade will be enough for me.”
Wait a second, were we… eating together?
My toes tingled. “I appreciate that. I’ll let you know if I need it.”
We walked together for a little while, after checking that the oven and all of the burners on the stove were off. We walked through the safehouse together, and not a word passed between us. That was the thing about Brutus. He could talk, sure. But the silence with him was always comfortable.
Silence was never comfortable for me.
I found that I enjoyed it when I was with him.
“Where are you eating?” he asked.
I shrugged as we stopped at the door to my room. “I just figured in here, unless you had another idea?”
I waited for him to tell me that I could come and eat in his room. That we could take our food out back. I thought about Doc and Liz, their moonlit dinners beneath the stars. I wasn’t sure when I had started wanting things like that, but I’d go for a dose of it with Brutus.
Was that what my brother meant?
But Brutus simply shook his head. “Nope. Just need to know where to set your drinks.”
I felt my stomach deflate. “Just in here’s fine.”
It almost pained me, watching him set those drinks down before he retreated from my room.
He didn’t even look back at me over his shoulder before he grabbed the doorknob and closed the door behind him.
I just stood there for a moment, holding my bowl of food, waiting for him to come back.
To say that all he needed was to grab something for himself before he joined me in my room for dinner.
I listened to his bootsteps retreat, though, knowing damn good and well he wasn’t coming back.
I sighed heavily, slowly turning toward the bed in the room that I claimed for myself in the safehouse. I walked over and set my stuff down long enough to crawl onto the damned thing, and then I used one of the pillows that wasn’t flattened within an inch of its life as a makeshift table in my lap.
My bedroom door whipped open without warning.
“Whoo!” I exclaimed breathlessly as my gaze darted to the door.
I saw Brutus standing there.
Holding up a stack of napkins.
My heart leapt into my throat.
“Don’t think you grabbed one,” he said as he motioned with his head toward the bedside table at my side.
I just waved at him. “Come on in, don’t be shy.”
He nodded before he slipped inside, bringing the napkins over.
I reached toward the bedside table and cleared off a little spot, just in case I was about to get lucky as fuck.
He placed the stack of napkins down as I looked around me and, sure enough, I didn’t grab anything of the sort in terms of napkins.
I looked back at him and gave him a cheeky little smile. “My hero.”
That was when I found something new out about Brutus.
He snorted.
My eyebrows rose. “Did you just snort?”
He just shook his head before he stepped away from the table where he placed the napkins.
But he didn’t leave.
Please, please, please, please—“Yes?”
“I’m sorry,” he blurted out.
It took me a second to realize what he said, because out of all the things I hoped he’d say, an apology wasn’t one of them.
I blinked. “Why?”
He cleared his throat and jammed those gigantic hands of his into the pockets of his black cargo pants. “For touching you in the kitchen. Without your permission.”
It took me a second before I realized he was talking about the—
“You really did have grease on your face,” he mumbled as he gazed off at the wall behind me.
I felt myself melt a bit inside. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Bee. You don’t have to apologize.”
“Are you sure?”
God, there was a desperation in his eyes. “Of course, I’m sure. You didn’t do anything wrong, okay?”
His shoulders damn near sagged in relief. “Okay, good. I was hoping—”
Apparently, it was my time to blurt shit out, because the words left before I had a chance to catch them. “Wanna eat in here with me?”
That dark, stoic stare of his bounced to mine, and we held each other’s gazes for a little while. He just stood there, looking at me, like he waited for the joke. Some sort of punchline. I just stared back at him, though, waiting for whatever rejection was about to head my way.
I saw him look around.
“Ah,” he mumbled as he started toward the corner.
My eyes followed his line of sight and I realized what he was doing. “You could also just sit on the edge of the bed, if you want better access to the bedside table for your drink or something.”
He whirled around on his massive feet so hard that he almost toppled over.
I had to clap my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing at him.
“You, uh—” He cleared his throat and wiped his hands off on his black shirt. “You… want me in bed with you?”
Oh, he was flustered.
It was a good look on him. “I didn’t say all that, now, Big Guy.
But it is an option, if you’d rather have a more comfortable surface to sit on other than the wooden chair in the corner.
It’s a bit rickety. It wouldn’t shock me if you sat on it and the legs bowed right out from beneath the damn thing. ”
His eyes volleyed from the bed to the chair.
Bed. Chair. Bed. Chair. I practically saw the tennis match going on in his head, trying to figure out what to do.
If there was one thing I learned about Brutus in the weeks I spent at his side, helping him with patrols and shit, it was the fact that his brutal form housed a beautiful man.
But to my shock, he simply turned around and… walked out.
I was shocked. My jaw actually hit the floor, so to speak. Was it something I said?
“Fucking hell, Anna,” I grumbled to myself as I picked up my fork. “Why the fuck are you always trying to get under his skin? On your fucking bed? Shut the fuck up next time and—”
Just as quickly as his footsteps fell away from me, they came back with a vengeance.
My head lifted so quickly that I almost threw the damn thing out, and I watched as the massive man raced back into my room.
I saw that he had two glasses of ice in his hands, along with another stack of napkins and his Gatorade, of all things.
He sat everything down on the bedside table before disappearing again and reappearing only seconds later with his plate of food piled high.
Only to leave once more and return with a chair that wasn’t as rickety as the one in the corner.
Such a gentleman.
He placed the chair down next to my bed and eased himself into it. He placed his plate of food on the mattress, using it as a makeshift table while the actual table we used held the stacks of napkins, cups of ice, and our drinks.
“One’s for you,” he said as he pointed to the cup of ice closest to me. “Wasn’t sure if you wanted one.”
I couldn’t help but smile at him. “Thanks. I really appreciate it.”
And when he peeked back at me before taking his first bite, a soft smile crossed his face.
A smile that lit a fire behind his eyes that made him look almost boyish.
My God, he’s got a lovely smile.
I had to find ways to make him smile more often.