Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
STEVIE
Enzo comes back the next day.
And the day after that.
And the day after that.
I stop being surprised when I hear his knock. Three raps, quick and confident. The Enzo knock. I’d know it anywhere.
“You don’t have to keep checking on me,” I tell him on day four, already reaching for the door like Pavlov trained me with dick instead of dinner. “I’m being so good. Like, gold star, no felony, boring-little-housewife good.”
“I know,” he says, brushing past me into the apartment. “I brought wings.”
I nearly orgasm on the welcome mat.
He brought wings. The hot ones from that hole-in-the-wall dive two towns over I mentioned once while mid-rant about pepperoni snobbery.
This man listens. And then he weaponizes it. Shows up with exactly the food I didn’t know I needed and stands there like it’s no big deal, like he didn’t just make my uterus whisper, “take me.”
It’s disarming.
It’s also extremely attractive, which is inconvenient because I’m trying to maintain some semblance of emotional boundaries and he keeps showing up with my favorite foods and bad jokes and that crooked half-smile that makes my ovaries throw up the white flag and start redecorating for long-term occupancy.
By week two, he has a mug.
I didn’t plan it. It just happened.
He kept drinking coffee out of whatever cup I handed him, and one day I handed him the blue one with the chip on the handle, the one I never use because the chip bothers me, and he used it and put it back and the next day he reached for it automatically.
Now it’s his mug.
The and the little chip that always annoyed me until he touched it is somehow erotic. Like everything he touches gets consecrated into the Church of Things I Want In My Mouth.
The mug lives on the counter now, not the cabinet, like we’re in some slow-burn sitcom where the punchline is me begging him to fuck me on the kitchen floor between coffee refills.
His jacket lives on the chair by the door. The leather one he always wears. He takes it off when he comes in, drops it on the chair, and leaves it there until he goes.
I touch it when he’s not looking. Just to remind myself I haven’t dreamed him into existence like some kind of vigilante fuckboy mirage.
He has a spot on the couch. Left side, closest to the door.
I don’t know if that’s intentional, some security thing, keeping the exit in sight, or if he just ended up there once and stayed.
Either way, it’s his spot now. I sit on the other end, legs tucked under me, and we exist in our separate corners like we’re afraid of what happens if we get too close.
We’ve kissed once. Just once. But that kiss lives in my skull rent-free, pacing and smoking and occasionally slamming into the walls of my restraint like it wants out.
I swear my lips remember. They’re waiting for round two. Or seven. With hands pinned and all my dignity stripped down to a whimper.
He teaches me to throw a punch.
“Your form is terrible,” he says, adjusting my fist. His hands are warm. Calloused. Criminally competent. “You’re going to break your thumb.”
“Well, I’ve never punched anyone on purpose,” I say. “I’m more of a passive-aggressive emotional damage kind of girl.”
He stops. Blinks. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“Middle school,” I say solemnly. “Was a battleground. Bitch stole my Lip Smacker and my body acted on instinct.”
We’re standing in my living room, furniture pushed to the sides, and he’s showing me how to make a fist, how to twist my hips, how to put my body weight behind a strike.
It’s absurd. I’m a data entry specialist in witness protection learning how to throw hands from a man whose résumé includes creative applications of violence.
Honestly, this might be the most useful professional development I’ve ever had.
He’s patient. Adjusts my stance without making me feel stupid. Shows me the same motion five times without frustration.
“Why do you know how to teach this?” I ask.
He steps back. Does a full-body scan, probably ranking my odds of survival in a bar fight.
“I trained the younger guys. When they joined up.”
“Like an orientation program?”
He snorts. “Most of them thought fighting was just rage plus fists.”
“That’s not it?”
“That’s how you get stabbed in the parking lot.” He moves behind me. Adjusts my shoulders.
His chest brushes my back and I forget how to breathe.
Oh.
So this is how people accidentally get pregnant during self-defense lessons.
“Fighting is control,” he says near my ear. “Knowing where your body is. Knowing where theirs is.”
It’s the sexiest thing anyone has ever said to me while I’m sweating through an old camp T-shirt and fantasizing about reverse cowgirl with bonus grappling.
My body knows exactly where his is, actually.
I throw a punch at the air. It’s probably still terrible, but he nods.
“Better,” he says. “Again.”
Sir. Please stop saying things like that. I’m one command away from kneeling out of pure confusion.
My brain is filing it under ‘Things Enzo Could Say While I’m Face-Down That Would Make Me Come Immediately.’
It’s a long list. We’re considering a second filing cabinet.
I punch air for twenty minutes while Enzo watches and corrects and occasionally puts his hands on me to adjust something. By the end I’m sweaty, laughing, and fully aware that my arms are noodles and my thoughts are not safe for work.
“You’re not hopeless,” he says, which from Enzo is basically a parade. Balloons. Confetti. A plaque on the wall.
“High praise.”
“I don’t give praise. I give accurate assessments.”
“And your accurate assessment is that I’m not hopeless?”
“My accurate assessment is that if someone grabs you, you might be able to hit them hard enough to run away.” He almost smiles. “That’s not nothing.”
My chest does a weird little flip like it just got praised by someone whose approval I very much want in deeply inappropriate ways.
I throw a playful punch at his shoulder. He catches my fist. Holds it.
We stand there too long.
My pulse is in my throat. My hand is still trapped in his. My brain is chanting, “say something normal say something normal” and failing spectacularly.
“Just so you know,” I blurt, “this turns me on, it’s entirely your fault.”
His mouth twitches. “Yeah,” he says calmly. “I figured.”
My soul leaves my body for a second.
The moment tilts. The moment wants things.
Then he lets go. Steps back. And the air in the room becomes breathable again.
I teach him to bake.
This goes about as well as teaching a bear to knit.
“You’re supposed to cream the butter and sugar,” I say, watching him attack the mixing bowl like it wronged the family. “Not assassinate them, Enzo. We’re making cookies, not making an example.”
“I’m creaming them.”
“You’re turning them into fucking gravel, Romeo. That’s not creamed butter, that’s dairy carnage. It looks like Martha Stewart got shanked in a flour sack.”
He glares at the bowl like it just insulted his nonna. To be fair, the butter-sugar mixture does look like it’s been emotionally and physically compromised.
“Baking is stupid,” he announces.
“Baking is chemistry,” I counter. “Precision. Ratios. Gentle touch. You’re just bad at it.”
He bristles. “I’m not bad at things.”
“You’re bad at this. Accept it. Learn. Grow. Be humbled by the cookie gods.”
He looks so genuinely scandalized, I lose it. Like, full-body, unhinged laughter. The kind that makes you snort and then question every life choice that led to baking with a man who could crush walnuts with his knuckles and is personally offended by soft butter.
“Stop laughing at me.”
“I physically cannot,” I gasp. “You look like the butter called your bestie a whore.”
“The butter started it.”
“Rise above, babe. Be the bigger dairy product. Transcend the churn.”
I’m wheezing now. Actual tears. And when I look up, he’s staring at me with that same look, like I’m something wild he doesn’t know how to hold.
This sets me off again. I’m doubled over, tears in my eyes, and when I finally straighten up, Enzo is watching me with a soft, wondering expression.
“What?” I ask, wiping my eyes.
“Nothing.” He looks back at the bowl. “Show me again. The... creaming thing.”
He says it deadpan. Doesn’t even blink. And my brain throws itself off a cliff.
I slide up beside him, take the spatula, try not to imagine what else he could be doing with those hands if he ever learned to fold.
“Gentle,” I say. “It’s not a fight. You don’t win at cookies. You seduce them.”
He tries again. Still too forceful. Still hot.
I’m in hell.
“You’re not used to gentle,” I observe quietly.
“No.” He doesn’t look at me. “I’m not.”
I swear the air temperature drops five degrees and spikes ten at the same time.
I want to teach him gentle. Want to show him soft. Want to spread him out on this counter and demonstrate exactly what seduction means in contexts that have nothing to do with baking.
“Gentle’s overrated anyway,” I say lightly, breaking the tension before I do something stupid like lick flour off his forearm
I don’t push. Just stand beside him while he learns to be soft with butter and sugar, and wonder what it would take for him to be soft with himself.
Day twelve, he tells me about his father.
We’re on the couch. Leftover Chinese food on the coffee table. Some terrible movie playing that neither of us is watching.
“He was in the family,” Enzo says. Out of nowhere. Like the words have been building up and finally found an exit. “My father. He wasn’t important, just a soldier, you know? Did what he was told. Kept his head down.”
I stay quiet. Give him space.
“He got killed when I was fifteen. Wrong place, wrong time. Some shit with another family that had nothing to do with him.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. He wasn’t a good man.” Enzo’s jaw tightens. “He hit my mother. Hit me, when I got big enough to get in the way. I used to pray he wouldn’t come home.”
My chest aches.