Chapter 8
8
HUNTER
After a relatively quiet week, disaster strikes on Saturday night. Before the weekend arrives, I’m out the door each morning at dawn. Safely avoiding Dylan.
But as I return home each evening, exhausted from work and days that keep getting longer, I brace myself, expecting the worst. That this will be the night I find Olivia and Dylan smooching on the couch—or, even more painfully, locked in his bedroom.
Some evenings, Dylan isn’t home at all. Part of me wonders if he’s with Olivia, and my insides yank at the thought. Other nights, he’s chilling in the living room, playing video games or watching sports. His long legs casually sprawled before him, his hair in that effortless, just-woke-up style that has my fingers itching to run through it. Whenever I find him like that, I try not to stare at how his sleeveless hoodies show off his sculpted, ex-basketball-player arms or how he looks like he’s just rolled out of bed. Unfairly irresistible, and so forbidden.
The only solution is to physically tear my gaze away, focusing on whatever task I’ve invented for myself in the kitchen. Or altogether disappearing into my room.
Each night that passes without Olivia making an appearance is a small victory, though I’m not sure what battle I’m fighting. I exist in a constant state of fear, waiting for when Dylan will bring his girlfriend over and shatter the illusion I’m safe in my home.
But after a week of nothing, I start to relax, getting complacent, lowering my guard—and that’s, of course, when I’m caught in the storm.
The weekend has started weirdly already. I have zero plans. Nina is all loved up in the honeymoon phase of having moved in with her boyfriend, and she doesn’t call. Rowena is off somewhere in the Hamptons, playing pretend. As for me, I’m strangely untethered, adrift in my apartment. And most of all, alone. My two best friends have been a constant presence in my life since college. The three of us used to do everything as a group. Even with boyfriends in the picture, we’d hang out during the day—all together, or me and Nina, or me and Rowena. Now the distance—physical, that’s quickly transforming into emotional—feels unsettling.
With no plans, and after a grueling week of early wake-up calls and late nights, I sleep in on Saturday. But when the sun pours through the windows, too bright and warm for my groggy mood, I can’t ignore it’s morning any longer and get up. I pad into the kitchen, my hair a wild tangle around my face, only to stop short when I find Dylan at the stove, making pancakes.
His presence is as jarring as it is comforting, the smell of warm batter and maple syrup clouding my brain. He wasn’t home last night, and I had assumed he’d be sleeping over at Olivia’s. Otherwise, I would’ve showered, slipped on a subtly sexy outfit, and added a touch of makeup.
His broad shoulders are turned to me as he flips a pancake with unthinking grace. The sight sends a pang through my chest, a longing for something I can’t have. Maybe I can still run back into the bathroom and make myself presentable.
I must groan my frustration aloud because he turns, his face breaking out in a bright smile as he spots me.
“Morning, sunshine,” Dylan greets me in a teasing voice, his eyes sparkling with amusement as he effortlessly flips another pancake. “Not as much of a morning person as you claimed, huh?”
I scrunch my face, increasingly self-conscious of my wild hair and rumpled pajamas. But he’s seen me now. I can’t run back down the hall and go “powder my nose.” To sound nonchalant, I mumble, “I’m not a morning person unless I have to be for work.”
Dylan cuts one of the perfect spongy disks into quarters and offers me a sample, holding it out as if he wanted me to eat straight from the utensil. The golden fluffiness is too tempting to resist, and despite my hesitation, I lean in, plucking the fluffy morsel off the spatula with my fingers. The first bite melts in my mouth, buttery and light, distracting me from my disarrayed thoughts. “Oh wow.” I moan mid-bite, momentarily forgetting my appearance. “These are amazing.”
Dylan’s grin widens, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Secret family recipe.” He winks. “Stick around, and I’ll teach it to you someday.”
I nearly choke on my pancake. Stick around? Say the word, and I’ll stick to you harder than maple syrup.
Calm down. He’s just being nice. I shouldn’t read too much into it.
“Secret family recipe, uh? Nina never shared it with us.” I frown. “She never made pancakes. Her most cooking was ordering off the takeout menus.”
Dylan, looking a little self-conscious, admits with a shrug, “Baking is kind of my thing.” His eyes flicker down to the pan as if he’s just shared a scandalous secret.
I give him a questioning look at this unexpected revelation. “You mean cookies and cakes?”
He flips the last pancake. “Yeah, it’s not the most ‘macho’ hobby, but I enjoy cooking, baking in particular. The precision that goes into it.”
He says it so casually like it’s another thing on his list of endearing qualities, and I inwardly curse the love fairies. Because, of course, he loves to effing bake.
He sets a stack of pancakes on the small kitchen table, and they look straight out of a cookbook stock photo. Couldn’t he have at least botched one? Be a little less perfect?
As if to confirm his lack of human flaws, Dylan also pours me a mug of freshly brewed coffee.
I wrap my hands around the warm ceramic and keep my tone light as I ask, “Any plans for the day?” When what I really mean is, Do you plan to see your girlfriend? When? How? For how long? Doing what? Is she coming over? Because in that case, I need to beg for asylum somewhere.
No, I retract, I don’t want to know doing what. I hope his ding-dong is still bruised and out of commission.
Dylan shakes his head, replacing the coffee pot on the hot plate. “Nah, I want to finish unpacking. Tackle the pile of boxes left in my room. I haven’t even touched the office. I ordered a new desk, by the way; it should arrive next week in case you have to sign for a big package.”
He still hasn’t sat down after pouring me the coffee, and the second he says big package , I peek at his crotch. And he catches me .
I’m boiling from the inside out.
I avert my gaze quickly, wishing I could pretend it never happened. But he saw me—I have to acknowledge it somehow. “And have your manly parts recovered since the other night?”
Fuckety. Fuck. Tell me I didn’t just say that. Can the sea witch please come and steal my voice?
Dylan smiles awkwardly as he sits down. “No long-term injuries to report. Those peas did not sacrifice in vain.”
I stare firmly at my plate, focusing on cutting my pancakes into neat squares. “Glad to hear.”
He drops his elbows onto the table, crossing his arms. The movement makes his T-shirt stretch across his biceps, fueling my inner turmoil.
“What about you?” He thankfully reverts to our previous topic. “Any plans for today?”
I wish I could tell him I’m doing something extremely cool like joining a sustainable urban gardening class in Brooklyn.
But the question is salt in the wound of my non-existent social life now that my roommates have moved out. I shrug, vaguely gesturing with my fork. “Not really. I’m going to catch up on some reading, do a bit of cleaning. Finish some work stuff.”
It’s a lame answer, I know, but it’s the best I can come up with when my brain is short-circuiting from proximity to a man who redefines the expression “out of my league.”
Still, as we continue to chat and eat, the knot of tension in my chest loosens. Sharing breakfast with him feels natural, effortless almost, when I’m not blabbering nonsense.
For a heartbeat, I can pretend everything’s fine. It’s a dangerous illusion, I know. But for now, I let myself sink into it, savoring the warmth of his laughter and the sparkle in his blue-green eyes, as if this were just another typical weekend morning. As if my heart weren’t fluttering at every smile, glance, or accidental touch. And that’s my mistake.