Chapter 20 #2
She was fairly sure he was being hyperbolic, but out of all the compliments Tiana could be given, those were two of the top four.
Kindness, thoughtfulness, loyalty, and honesty—those were the four traits that Tiana valued above all else.
When you grow up in the system and have literally no family to speak of, those are things you realize a lot of people don’t possess and a lot of people take for granted.
“Well, you say that now, you haven’t tasted it,” she teased, hoping to lighten the mood.
He smiled, a smile that warmed her body from the inside out. That made every cell inside her feel alive. She found herself holding her breath as he cut into the breaded chicken, then twisted the knife in the pasta and brought it to his mouth. The moment he did, his eyes closed and he moaned loudly.
She smiled. “Foodgasm?”
“Foodgasm,” he confirmed after he chewed and swallowed. Then his eyes opened on a discovery, as if he was in awe. “You made the sauce spicy.”
“Yeah, that’s what you said you liked.”
“It is, I do like it spicy.” He grinned.
Tiana felt her cheeks blush at his obvious double entendre as she cut her own bite, instead of wrapping the pasta around the fork prongs, she cut it and then tasted her creation. She wasn’t sure what it was supposed to taste like, but it did taste pretty good if she said so herself.
Within a few more bites he’d finished one chicken breast and was halfway through the other and only had a little salad left. He was inhaling it. “I didn’t know you could cook,” he commented as he stuffed his fork into the pasta.
“I can’t.”
Niko fanned his hand over his meal. “All evidence to the contrary.”
“I can follow a recipe, but if you gave me a mystery box, like on those cooking shows, it would be a disaster.”
“What else did I say in the article?”
“What?” Tiana asked.
“In the article, did I say why it was my favorite meal?”
“No.” She shook her head.
He took another bite of the Greek salad and, again, made a grunting noise of appreciation. “It was my dad’s favorite thing to cook.”
“Oh.” Tiana knew that Frankie and the twins lost their dad when they were very young. “He was a firefighter, right?”
Tiana could see both sadness and love in his eyes as he nodded. “He was, yeah. My mom cooked after he died, but never this. Once we moved onto the Sterlings property, we just ate whatever my mom prepared for them. She’d bring us plates.”
“Did you like living there, at the Sterlings?” She pressed her fork into the Greek salad.
“It was…okay. I liked hanging out with Tristan and Liam, but honestly, I think it would have been a shit time no matter what. Our dad was…” He paused, cleared his throat, took a deep breath, and then took a drink of his wine. “Sorry, I never talk about this.”
“We don’t have to, I mean, you don’t have to—”
“No, I want to. I mean, if you want to kno—”
“I do.” She’d wanted to ask but hadn’t felt it was her place.
“My mom was out of it. As an adult, it’s obvious that she always had issues with depression and alcohol back then, she’s better now, but as a kid, especially when my dad was alive, I didn’t have a clue.
I thought it was normal that all moms sometimes stayed in bed all weekend and forgot to pick kids up from the after-school program until it was dark.
But when our dad was alive, he sort of overcompensated for it.
He was a force of nature. He was a real-life superhero to me.
He would show up at school with soot still streaked across his face, still in his turnout gear, and he’d scoop us up and take us straight to the pizza place or drive-thru.
And when he was home, he cooked, cleaned, and he made games out of us being quiet so she could rest. He was pretty much a single parent when he was alive, and then he was gone.
“The job at the Sterlings was supposed to be temporary, till she got on her feet, but she never did. She worked during the day, then drank at night and cried herself to sleep. I used to be jealous that Liam and Tristan had both parents, but the truth was Dr. Sterling was never home. Honestly, I think I saw him once a week at most. He worked long hours and travelled a lot. But they had the big house, the clothes, the shoes. But the one thing they didn’t have, and the reason I would never have traded places with them even if I could, was they didn’t have AJ and Frankie. ”
“Have you always been close to your siblings?” Tiana felt stupid as soon as she asked the question. “I mean, of course you are, you’re a twin.”
“Yeah, I never went through that stage of hating my siblings. Maybe it’s because we are all so different. Frankie was a little force of nature. AJ was, well, AJ. They were my two favorite people then, and they still are.”
“That’s amazing.”
“Do you have siblings?” he asked.
The honest answer was she had no idea, but she didn’t answer honestly. “No.”
“Can I ask you something?” Niko looked down at his food, and Tiana could tell he was nervous.
That was an emotion she’d never seen from him before, which made her wary. “Okay.”
“It’s none of my business, and you don’t have to answer.”
This was either going to be about money or Brock, she knew it.
“What did I do to upset you this morning when you went to Golden Years?” His eyes lifted to hers.
Shit. For once in her life she would have actually preferred that he ask her about the money or Brock. She looked down at her food, wondering how she could answer that question. Or if she was even going to answer that question.
“Do you have a big family?”
She looked up at Niko, wondering why he’d subbed in that question. “What? Why? Why did you…?”
He finished chewing his bite and explained, “It was something my sister said.”
“What did your sister say?” Frankie had said something to Niko about her family? She didn’t have a family, what could she have said?
“Actually, no, it was something she didn’t say.”
“Are you speaking in riddles? Is this something I’m supposed to solve?”
He grinned, and she could see he liked being called out on his skirting around a subject. “I went to Frankie’s house to ask some advice about you and—”
“Wait, you did? Is that a joke, or did you really?” Tiana wasn’t sure if this was a bit or not.
He cut another bite. “I really did, and you’ll be happy to know that her loyalty was firmly with you, which confirmed a suspicion I’ve long held.”
“A suspicion?”
“You are an alien, or an angel, or a goddess, or some kind of—”
“An alien?” she repeated.
“Not like E.T., I’m talking Sil from Species, or Leeloo from The Fifth Element, or Gamora from Guardians of the Galaxy.”
“Didn’t Sil impale victims with her tongue and strangle them with her breast tentacles?”
“I feel like you’re getting caught up on the wrong things.” Niko smiled. “She was hot.”
“Got it, okay.” Tiana nodded and then pretended to write as if she was taking notes. “Murderous is fine as long as she’s hot.”
Niko picked up his glass of wine and tilted it towards her as if he was doing a cheer. “Hey, no one’s perfect.”
She laughed. “Right.”
He took a drink and set the glass down. “My point was, I’ve always thought you were an other-worldly being, a goddess, an angel, an alien, and you must be, that is the only way Francesca Lydia Costas would choose someone over her brothers.”
Tiana shook her head, sure that Niko was not being serious.
“She basically told me I have had my head up my ass—”
“No, she did not.”
“She did, and I have. I don’t know you at all. I feel like I do because I have… let’s just say, for legal reasons, admired you from afar.”
Her brows lifted. “Legal reasons?”
“You were married.” His half-grin nearly had her reduced to a puddle on the ground. “And despite my reputation, I don’t fuck other people’s wives.”
Hearing him say the word fuck was as if she were a scarecrow and he threw her a lit match. It had her burning up. And that smile—her lady parts could see that smile. And from the look in Niko’s eye, he knew exactly what he was doing to her.
She picked up her glass of wine and sipped it.
“So, that’s why I asked if you have family. I realized I don’t really know anything about you.”
When she set the glass down, she debated what to say. Typically, she didn’t tell people much. No one really cared, but he had just opened up about himself. And he did seem to be interested.
“I don’t have any family, not with my DNA at least. Or I don’t think I do.
If I do, I’ve never met them anyway.” Once she started, it was like she couldn’t stop.
"I grew up in foster care and group homes. I was taken as a ward of the state when I was two, and I don’t have any memory before that.
There wasn’t a record of either of my parents.
I was found abandoned in a home. No one ever came forward or filed a petition to care for me, so… ”
That was information only a handful of people knew, and Tiana started feeling insecure. Niko stared at her, his mouth hanging slightly open. She wished she knew what he was thinking.
“What about Pops?” he asked.
“Oh, I’m not related to him. He’s my family, but not by DNA.”
“Isn’t his last name Matthews?” he questioned.
“Yes, I changed my last name from Pike to Matthews when I got emancipated.”
“Your last name was Pike?”
“Yep.” She nodded. “That was the street that the house was on that they found me in.”
Niko set down his fork and took in a deep breath. “So you knew Pops when you were growing up?”
Tiana explained Pops’ role in her life, the liquor store, the stealing, her ‘employment.’ How he had been her only constant, and how she believed, saved her life.
“Wow, that’s…” Niko took in another deep breath, and she could see he was processing everything she’d told him. “…that’s…
She wasn’t sure where he was going with that open-ended sentence. That’s sad, that’s too bad, that’s crazy.