CHAPTER 23
COLT
T he house was too damn quiet.
There were no impatient little feet scrambling down the hall, no soft giggles, no whisper-singing the theme from Moana as Ruby tried and failed to sneak into my room without waking me up.
I reached out across my mattress anyway, palm sliding over the sheets as I searched for my girl.
We’d stopped the crawling into my bed in the middle of the night, switched now for early hours of the morning, and even though I pretended to be exasperated when I woke up to her digging her cold feet into my stomach, mornings without her felt wrong.
My palm found only the cool, untouched sheets where her small body should have been. I blinked at the empty space, my mind still foggy with sleep, unable to recall why my daughter wasn’t there beside me.
Fragments of last night slipped through the haze of sleep. Ruby was at my parents’, and I should have been savoring this quiet morning all to myself.
The dull ache behind my eyes wasn’t from the beer. It was the replay of last night that wouldn’t stop. Blaire’s skin under my fingertips, and words we couldn’t take back.
She’d followed every command I’d given her, touching herself while I watched, my name breaking from her throat when she came. I’d told her she was mine, demanded she say it back.
Fuck.
My cock was already half hard from the memory, and the most damning part was that I’d known exactly what I was doing.
I couldn’t blame the beer when I’d spent the whole damn evening giving myself the same warning over and over.
Don’t cross that line, don’t let her see how much power she still has over you.
But I’d gone and done exactly that.
That line had been obliterated the moment she laughed and called me, “house daddy.”
Then I’d trampled right over it again the moment she admitted she’d never loved her fiancé and that it was me she thought of when he touched her.
And then she’d ran into the house and left me treading water and drowning in thoughts of her. I stayed until the cool water finally bit through the heat she’d lit inside me.
I rolled out of bed and stood in the middle of my room as I told myself to get it together, to be a fucking adult and not spin out over something that was never meant to happen.
I walked into my bathroom, turning on the faucet and splashing cold water onto my face with both hands. I held the water in my palms and pressed it to my neck, letting the shock run down my spine, but it didn’t help. All I could think about was her.
I told myself to shower, to get dressed, to do literally anything except walk out that bedroom door and look for her. But my feet moved anyway.
The hallway was colder than my bedroom and the floorboards creaked under my bare feet. As I got closer to the kitchen, I slowed my pace. I could hear her humming softly and the scrape of a mug on the counter. There was no music playing, no TV, nothing to fill the space but her.
I leaned against the counter and watched her.
She was standing with her back to me, barefoot in a pair of sweatpants that were rolled twice at the waistband, and a tank top that hugged every line of her body.
Her hair was down and wild, tumbling past her shoulders, and I wanted to bury my hands in the strands.
She bent at the waist, digging through one of my lower cabinets, and I couldn’t look away from the sharp little V of her shoulder blades or the line of her back.
She stood with a frying pan in her hand, and I grinned as she set it on the stove, then looked around. Things may have changed in the time since she’d been gone, but the Blaire I’d known had always been an awful cook.
I cleared my throat when it was obvious she still hadn’t realized I was there. “Mornin’.”
She startled a little, like she’d been expecting me but not so soon, and her eyes flickered over me and then away.
“Morning.” Her tone was light and easy, and she moved to my fridge as if nothing had happened, like we hadn’t spent the night breaking each other apart and putting ourselves back together in ways that couldn’t be undone.
She grabbed the creamer from one of the shelves before she closed the doors, and she held it up as she smiled at me. “Coffee?”
“Sure.” I nodded, and she turned away from me, busying herself with the coffeepot.
I moved to the other side of my island and took a seat as I watched her. Her shoulders were tight as she wrapped both hands around one of the mugs before she turned and set it on the island, sliding it across the counter to me.
I wondered if she remembered everything as vividly as I did, if her body still hummed with the aftershocks, or if she’d already forced herself to forget it ever happened.
I wanted to say something. I wanted to apologize or demand to know what we were supposed to do now, but I couldn’t force either from my lips.
She didn’t say anything either. She sipped her coffee and stared at the counter like it held all the answers.
I needed to do something, to say anything to break this awkwardness between us. “Are you about to cook?”
“Oh.” She looked at the frying pan, then back at me. “I was thinking about making a grilled cheese.”
“For breakfast?” I raised an eyebrow, unable to suppress the small grin that tugged at my mouth.
“Yeah, well.” She bit her lip, and I could tell she was debating how much of herself to show me. “It’s the only thing I know how to make.”
I sipped my coffee, coffee that was exactly how I liked it, and let the silence draw out between us. “You know, they say breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but I don’t think they were talking about grilled cheese.”
She rolled her eyes, and a faint flush marred her cheeks. “I can do cereal too. Toast with jam.”
“That won’t do.” I shook my head, putting down my coffee and standing. She watched me as I rounded the island and made my way to the fridge. “Have you been eating grilled cheese and cereal for the last ten years?”
She laughed, but I could hear the tension she hid behind it. “No.” She shook her head. “My dad had a cook when I lived with him, and Grant—” She hesitated and our eyes met. “Grant preferred to go out.”
“Hmmm,” I hummed my response, hating hearing that fucker’s name fall from her lips, and pulled the eggs and bacon out of the fridge.
“I’m not helpless, though.” The way she said it made me want to close the distance between us, to force her to look up at me, and reassure her that there wasn’t a single part of her that was helpless. There never had been.
“Well, we have two options here.” I closed the door with my hip, and her gaze dragged down my bare chest. “I can either cook breakfast for you or I can teach you how.”
She blinked, and something changed in the set of her jaw. It was so subtle most people would have missed it, but I’d spent years watching her. “You’re going to teach me to cook?”
“Yeah,” I said, keeping my voice low and easy. I slid in beside her, close enough to smell her, and set the ingredients on the counter. “If you want me to.”
She looked away from me, and I could practically feel her pulling away.
“It’s just bacon and eggs, Blaire.” I tried to keep it light, but it sounded like I was talking about far more than our breakfast.
I opened the carton of eggs before I turned on the burner on the stove. “What are we thinking here, scrambled eggs or fried?”
She let me brush past her as I reached for the kitchen scissors, arms crossed over her chest, but she didn’t move away.
“Fried, I think.” She was watching me carefully, and I quickly cut open the pack of bacon before I took a step back.
I motioned her forward with my hand, and she glanced at the stove then back at me before she finally moved in front of me.
“I’ve made bacon before, but June used to say I’d burn all the flavor right out of the poor pig.” She smiled a little at the memory.
I chuckled, picturing June’s face as she said it. “The secret to bacon is all about temperature control. Too cold and it just sits there, too hot and…” I adjusted the burner dial, watching the blue flame dance beneath the pan. “Everything goes up in flames.”
My mind drifted to last night and the heat that spiraled far beyond any kind of control I thought I had.
When I told her to lay the bacon away from her so the grease wouldn’t pop, she nodded, doing exactly as I instructed. The sizzle rose, filling the air with a smell that made my stomach growl, and a little of my anxiety settled as I watched her move around my kitchen.
She reached for a fork and lifted the bacon after a few minutes. “Take it off now?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder at me.
“Perfect.” I nodded, and I meant it. I wanted to reach over and touch the small of her back, settle her right against me the way I used to, but I didn’t.
“Is June going to teach you to make your jams?” I asked with a smile, and she shook her head.
“No. I’m the straight up brains on that project. She’s going to have to do the cooking.”
We settled into an easy rhythm after that. Blaire cooked the bacon, and I hovered behind her before we moved on to the eggs.
“There you go,” I said as I leaned forward on my elbows beside her. “Gently slide the spatula under the egg, then flip it over in one quick move.”
“I hate this part.” She shook her head even as she did what I’d said. The egg flipped but caught on the edge, and the yolk burst open and flooded across the pan. Blaire swore under her breath, and her face scrunched into a frown. “Well, I fucked that up.”
I grinned, amused as hell. “You can’t fuck it up. It’s just eggs. Breaking the yolk is the worst thing that can happen, but I love my eggs like that.”
I didn’t, but I wasn’t going to tell her that.
I could see the doubt on her face. I reached for the spatula, swiping it out of her hand and into mine, and I quickly flipped the next egg myself, making sure to break the yolk. “See? Now they’re both perfect.”
She laughed, her shoulders easing. “You’re such a liar,” she said, but she was smiling.