Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Eden
Asprig of rosemary on top of the eggs. From the little pots on the windowsill.
He's never done that before.
He's at the stove with his back to me, shoulders broad under a gray thermal, sleeves shoved up past his elbows. Bacon popping in the cast iron. Coffee already made.
He stayed last night, held me through the nightmare, and slept beside me until sometime before dawn.
"Hey." My voice comes out rough.
He grunts without turning. Nods toward the coffee pot. "Hot."
Back to grunts and one-word answers, pretending last night didn't happen.
I can do that. I'm good at that.
I pour a cup. He slides a plate across the counter—eggs, bacon, toast. The rosemary.
I don't eat breakfast. He knows this by now—four days of me pushing eggs around a plate while he demolishes enough food to feed a family of four. Whole chickens. Steaks the size of my head. Portions that would be dinner for normal people, twice over.
But today there's no second plate and no mountain of meat waiting on the counter.
"What, no whole chicken today?"
He shrugs without turning. "Not that hungry."
Diesel. Not hungry.
The pan scrapes clean, and there's no plate for himself—just coffee, black, same as me.
So last night got to you too, big guy.
"Thank you." I take a bite of bacon. "For staying."
"Couldn't sleep anyway."
"Liar."
The corner of his mouth twitches. Then he turns and puts the pan in the sink.
We don't talk about the nightmare. We don't talk about his name. We don't talk about any of it.
He doesn't sit, just takes his coffee and stands between the kitchen and the window, looking out at the tree line—not quite in the room, not quite gone.
I push eggs around my plate and watch him lift the mug to his mouth. His forearms flex with the movement. Tattoos that look tribal—sharp angles, thick lines, patterns I don't recognize. Scars layered over and under the ink, some thin and silvery, some thick and raised.
And burns. Patches of darker green where the skin healed wrong.
Ravgor. Fire-touched.
I wonder which came first—the name or the scars.
"The burns," I say. "Were those from before the rift?"
He doesn't look away from the window or tense—just takes another sip of coffee.
"I didn't have a single scar when I crossed."
He crossed the rift clean.
Every cut, every burn, every thick rope of scar tissue on his knuckles—we did that. Humans did all of that.
I want to ask more, want to know who did that to him, and why, and whether they're still breathing.
But I have my own demons. I know better than to poke at someone else's.
East of Eden sits in the stack by the armchair. I settle into the corner of the couch with it.
An hour passes. Maybe more. I read the same paragraph over and over without absorbing a single sentence.
I'm not thinking about Steinbeck. I'm thinking about his arm heavy across my belly in the dark. The way his breathing slowed when he finally let himself sleep.
By noon, I'm crawling out of my skin.
"I'm making us a meal," I announce.
"It's noon."
"A late lunch then. A real one this time."
Something crosses his face—doubt, maybe, or amusement, or some orc emotion I don't have the vocabulary for. But he just shrugs those massive shoulders and turns back to the window.
I head for the kitchen before I can talk myself out of it.
The freezer is stocked—wrapped packages labeled in handwriting that's surprisingly neat for hands that size. Ground elk. Pork chops. Something labeled "backstrap." All frozen solid.
The refrigerator has better options. A beef tenderloin sits on the bottom shelf, deep red and marbled. That'll work.
"Can I use this?"
A grunt from the window.
I take that as a yes.
I do not know what I'm doing.
Before all this, I ordered takeout. Ubered my groceries.
Ate lunch at my desk and dinner at book events and breakfast never, because coffee counted as a meal if you drank enough of it.
The sum total of my cooking knowledge comes from watching my grandmother make pierogi when I was seven and a brief, ill-advised attempt at meal prep that ended with me setting off three smoke detectors and ordering pizza.
I could ask to use his phone and look up a recipe like a normal person.
But I want to do this myself—a thank you for last night, even if he won't accept it as that.
People cooked before the internet. Entire civilizations rose and fell on the strength of their roasted meats and root vegetables. The Stone Age didn't have YouTube tutorials, and they managed fine.
I can manage fine.
The box of books sits by the armchair where I left it.
Crouching down, I dig through—a history of the Roman Empire, a book about fly fishing, a Tom Clancy with a cracked spine.
A few romances shoved in the back, probably for when the wife visited.
At the bottom, half-buried under a water-stained copy of Wuthering Heights, my fingers find something promising.
The Hunter's Guide to Outdoor Cooking.
Close enough.
I flip through while the tenderloin sits on the counter. Venison. Elk. Wild boar. A whole chapter on squirrel preparation that I'm going to pretend I didn't see. Finally: "Preparing Large Game Cuts." The instructions reference deer, but meat is meat. Probably. The fundamentals should transfer.
Season generously. Salt, pepper, garlic, rosemary. Sear on high heat until browned on all sides, then finish in the oven at 425 degrees. Rest before slicing to let the juices redistribute.
I can do this.
Twenty minutes later, the kitchen looks like a crime scene.
Salt everywhere—on the counter, the floor, somehow on the ceiling.
Garlic in uneven chunks because I couldn't figure out how to mince it properly, the cloves sliding out from under my knife every time I tried to cut them.
Rosemary more stem than leaf because I stripped it wrong, little woody bits mixed in with the needles.
Kindling, basically. I'm seasoning the meat with kindling.
And the tenderloin itself.
I tied it with kitchen twine because the book said to, something about "maintaining shape during cooking.
" Found the twine in a drawer with fishing line and duct tape—old hunting cabin supplies, left behind by whoever owned this place before.
The twine wouldn't cooperate, kept slipping and bunching, and now the roast looks less "professional preparation" and more like I'm holding it for ransom.
One end is bulging out of its restraints.
The other is cinched so tight it's turning purple.
But I seared it. Got the cast iron screaming hot, nearly set off the smoke detector, and somehow managed to brown most of the sides. It's still on the stove, finishing the last side while I work on the sauce.
The garlic is not cooperating.
I'm concentrating so hard I miss when he stops making noise at the window, miss him moving.
"Eden."
I spin around, knife in hand, heart hammering.
He's in the doorway. Arms crossed, shoulder braced against the frame, surveying the damage. His eyes move across the counter—the garlic carnage, the rosemary kindling, the salt I somehow got on the ceiling.
"I'm fine."
"Didn't say anything."
"You're judging."
"I'm observing."
"Your observing looks a lot like judging."
His gaze lands on the garlic, scattered across the cutting board. Shrapnel.
"Your garlic's wrong."
"My garlic is fine."
"You've been trying to peel it whole."
I open my mouth to argue, but he's already moving.
Three steps and he's in the kitchen with me, reaching past me to pull a head of garlic from somewhere—a basket on the counter, maybe, or thin air, it's hard to tell when he moves that fast. He breaks off a clove, sets it on the cutting board, lays the flat of a knife on top of it.
"Watch."
He presses down with the heel of his palm. One firm push. The papery skin cracks and falls away, and the clove sits there naked and ready.
"Crush it first. Skin comes right off."
He passes me the knife. I feel the warmth coming off him as I take it. The kitchen isn't big—galley style, all efficiency and no room for two people to exist without touching. There's maybe a foot of space between us, and I smell soap and woodsmoke and something underneath that's just him.
"Now mince it."
I try to copy what he showed me. Set the knife flat on the clove, press down. The skin cracks—miracle—but when I try to mince, the garlic slides. The cuts come out uneven, some pieces chunky, others mashed into the board.
"You're gripping too tight." His voice is lower now. Nearer. "Relax your hand."
"I am relaxed."
"You're white-knuckling the handle. Trying to strangle it."
I'm about to argue—I have a defense prepared, my explanation about different techniques and personal style—when I feel him move behind me.
His chest isn't quite touching my back. His arms come up on either side of me, palms resting on the counter, caging me in without actually holding me. The bulk of him fills the space behind me. If I leaned back an inch, I'd be pressed against him.
I go still.
"Loosen your grip." His voice is right next to my ear, low and rough. "Let the knife do the work."
I should step away and create space. That's what a smart person would do—the same smart person who wouldn't have asked him to stay last night, who wouldn't be standing here learning to chop garlic from an orc who smells like woodsmoke and soap.
My fingers loosen on the knife.
"Good." His breath is warm against my ear. "Now rock the blade. Keep the tip down, move from the wrist."
I try it. The knife moves differently now, pivoting on its point, and the garlic actually cooperates—falls into smaller pieces, more uniform, almost as if I know what I'm doing.
"Better."
He hasn't moved. Neither have I.
His breath stirs my hair. The rise and fall of his chest behind me, inches away but not touching.
I lean back.