Chapter Twelve
“When I said that we needed to go somewhere for brunch where we wouldn’t be recognized, I wasn’t anticipating this,” Kian hissed under his breath as they settled into the booth, the vinyl squeaking underneath them.
“You told me it was important to you that nobody would see us together,” Bastian said. “I can guarantee that this is the last place anyone would expect me to go for brunch.”
Kian still looked disbelieving. “Okay,” Bastian continued, drumming his fingers on the table, “I can be a little bit of a snob.”
“A little?”
Bastian rolled his eyes. “I am not going to apologize for my high standards.” He looked around, taking in the cheap fixtures, the tired, haggard waitresses, and the wailing baby three tables over. “But what’s important to you is important to me.”
“I just keep expecting you to run out of here, screaming,” Kian teased. He reached over the table and grasped Bastian’s hand in his own smaller one, his thumb rubbing one of his burn scars.
“We haven’t even ordered yet,” Bastian said, and figured this was as good a time as any to examine the laminated menu card the waitress had set in front of him only a few moments before. It was still damp from being wiped down—from what, Bastian wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
“Unlike you, I’ve been here before. Many times,” Kian said, not even bothering to glance at his own menu. “You don’t seem surprised by this.”
“You were in school. You were on an intern salary for the first six months. This place is cheap and open twenty-four hours. I might be a snob, but I’m not an idiot,” Bastian said. He paused. “Fruit Loop pancakes? Cinnamon roll pancakes?”
Kian laughed. “Those will definitely be too sweet for you.”
“How do you know I don’t have a secret sweet tooth?” Bastian said, pouting a little. Maybe he had been interested in the cinnamon roll pancakes, if only because he was curious what they’d be like.
“You don’t have a secret anything, not from me,” Kian said, “though I admit that you’re sweeter than I thought you’d be.”
“What, you believed I’d be throwing plates at home? Yelling at the TV?”
Kian looked thoughtful as he stirred some of that awful fake creamer into his coffee. “Actually no. I just think you have a soft side that most people don’t get to see.”
It was hard, but Bastian ordered himself not to blush. He knew what this was really about—the bath he’d given Kian last night. At the time it had felt right, to take care of him like that, but he also had no intentions of discussing it.
“I think it’s nice,” Kian continued and Bastian gave him full bravery points for actually taking a sip of the sludge they called coffee here. “Don’t get me wrong, I really like it.”
“I’d be worried if you didn’t.” Bastian told himself not to get defensive, but it still lingered in the edges of his voice.
“Hey, hey,” Kian said, reaching for his hand again. “I’m trying to say thank you, you surprised me, in a super nice way, and I’m doing a bad job of it.”
“You’d had a really hard day, some of which was my fault. What was I supposed to do? Tell you to suck it up?”
Kian’s smile was luminous. “You’d tell just about anyone else that.”
“Exactly.” Bastian sipped his ice water, and tried not to grimace at the metallic taste. “You’re not like everyone else.”
The waitress appeared at their table, breaking the moment. “Are you ready to order?” she asked.
“Yes,” Kian answered, before Bastian could argue that he’d barely glanced at the menu. “We’ll both have the grand slam breakfast. Scrambled eggs. Bacon, extra crispy. Hash browns, well done. Sourdough toast. Butter on the side.”
Just when Bastian thought Kian was done surprising him, he’d go and do something like that. Anyone else ordering for him would have gotten a full-on Bastard glare, but Kian had said he’d been here lots of times—maybe he knew better. Bastian would give him the benefit of the doubt.
“And an order of the cinnamon roll pancakes,” Bastian added smoothly.
When the waitress left, Kian shot him a look of disbelief. “They looked okay,” Bastian defended.
“My advice at someplace like this is to keep it simple. It’s hard for them to fuck up eggs and hash browns,” Kian suggested. “But I guess you do have more of a sweet tooth than I thought.”
“I usually indulge it with really good dark chocolate truffles,” Bastian admitted with a wry smile, “and I will torture you sexually for hours if you admit it to anyone, but they looked pretty good in the picture.”
Kian raised his eyebrow. “It’s probably all marketing and a really good food stylist,” Bastian said.
“Seems legit.” He did not seem convinced. “But I’m definitely interested in this sexual torture thing.”
“It isn’t as fun as it sounds.” Bastian tried to keep his voice serious, but instead the tone came out all growly sex.
It wasn’t his fault; in a moment of self-sacrifice aided by a healthy helping of guilt, he’d gotten Kian off but hadn’t had any release himself.
And this morning, there hadn’t been time because he’d promised Kian brunch before his shift started.
“Yeah, I don’t buy that for a moment,” Kian said. “So, let’s get this straight. The famous Bastian Aquino has a secret soft side and a secret dessert kink. I like it.”
Bastian shrugged. “If I can’t tell you those things, then who else?” Maybe Kian really hadn’t believed that he’d never told anyone but his mother that he loved them before. Because Kian seemed more surprised than he’d ever expected.
“Let me guess, Luc doesn’t know about either of those,” Kian said.
There was nothing Bastian regretted more than ever letting Kian know about the existence of his ex. If Luc could even be considered that, because of course he hadn’t known about either.
Luc had gotten the hard-as-nails Bastian who, at that stage of his life, had wanted to believe that his softer underbelly didn’t exist at all. His father had died only a year or so before, launching Bastian into a desperate, overly ambitious race to out-work even his own entirely absent father.
That hadn’t been Luc’s fault, but he’d never had access to any of the softness Bastian hid like it was shameful. The only person he’d ever been tempted to uncover it for was sitting in front of him.
“Luc got the Terroir version of me, and not much else,” Bastian admitted. “So I guess I do owe him something of an apology, after all.”
“Or not,” Kian said with a grin. “He was enough of an ass when we met. Decent payback.”
“I doubt he would feel that way.”
“Frankly, I don’t give a shit how he feels,” Kian said.
It was this hard, nearly bloodthirsty attitude hiding beside the sweet, kind smiles that had ultimately convinced Bastian that Kian could handle Terroir, including a sous chef who didn’t really like him.
“How did Mark do last night?” Bastian asked. Michelle had texted him some updates, but he’d really been hoping that Kian would tell him his own version of events. He’d anticipated not even needing to ask, but Kian had been very close-lipped about service the night before.
“He was fine,” Kian said in a closed-off voice, making it clear he had no interest in discussing Mark.
It was totally fine that Kian wasn’t telling him, Bastian told himself. He wanted to handle it on his own; and technically he wasn’t obligated to tell Bastian anything, since he’d handled the incident with the scallops himself.
Maybe with a few less broken plates than Bastian himself would have, but that was also okay. Kian wasn’t his carbon copy; he might not need to throw things to get his point across.
“Michael Mina is a lot smaller of a restaurant,” Bastian offered, despite Kian’s clear directive that he didn’t want to talk about Mark.
“I know that,” Kian said shortly and Bastian swore inwardly, because why the fuck hadn’t he just left it alone? Because it wasn’t in his nature to leave things alone, he thought shortly, it was in his nature to pry.
It was in his nature to control everything; even the man he loved.
“He’ll adjust,” Bastian said, aware of just how lame and unlike himself he sounded. When he’d headed the kitchen at Terroir, adjustment was instantaneous, or bad things happened.
He knew Kian didn’t feel that way; Derek was evidence enough of that. Bastian had allowed Kian to coax him along because he hadn’t felt like dealing with yet another new employee, but any other time, he would have been long gone, likely in a shower of pottery shards.
Kian looked startled. “I wasn’t anticipating him doing anything else,” he said.
“Right, right, of course,” Bastian said, and searched for another topic they could discuss that didn’t have anything to do with Terroir. But Terroir had been their primary discussion point for so long that Bastian floundered.
The waitress arriving with their plates saved him.
The food didn’t look . . . terrible. Bastian was willing to admit at least that.
The bacon seemed adequately crispy when he tapped it with the tines of his fork, and even the eggs seemed moderately fluffy.
The hash browns looked like a deep-fried slab of potato, which was not something Bastian usually found appealing.
The toast was dry and too pale, but Kian slid over the caddy of packaged jams anyway.
The pancakes were sitting at the edge of the table, the white ropes of frosting in danger of sliding unceremoniously off the top of the brown speckled pile.
“I’m currently thinking everyone who works for me should get a raise so nobody has to suffer through this,” Bastian said.
“Oh, stop being such a snob,” Kian said fondly, and Bastian was so glad he’d moved past the subject of Mark that he scooped up a pile of eggs onto his fork and took a bite.
Ignoring the slick of fake margarine, they actually had a decent flavor—they were definitely real eggs and not egg substitute which Bastian had been secretly afraid of.
“See, it’s not going to kill you,” Kian said, gesturing with his bacon. “It’s just breakfast.”