5. Marie
MARIE
I wake the next morning to the scent of bacon drifting out from the kitchen, and I smile and straighten up in bed, glancing around. Outside the window, the snow is still laying thick on the ground, but it has finally stopped snowing, and the air is, at last, clear.
I stretch and slip out of his bed, grabbing a shirt from the floor and tossing it on over my naked frame as I step into the kitchen. I lean in the doorway for a moment, cocking an eyebrow as I watch him. He’s shirtless and hard at work making breakfast. I think this might be how I like my men.
“Don’t tell me you butcher your own pigs, too,” I remark, and he glances around, grinning at me as I make my way towards him.
“Haven’t gone that far yet,” he replies, slipping an arm around me and pulling me against him. My stomach fizzes with excitement. I know this is all so new, but I just can’t get over how good it feels to be this near to him.
“Oh, so there’s still something you can’t do?” I tease, leaning in to him happily, breathing in his scent.
“Seems that way.”
“You want me to set the table?”
I gesture over to the small, slightly uneven table leaning up against the wall, and he nods.
“Sure. Stuff’s in that cupboard.”
And, as I got to get us set up for breakfast, I'm surprised at how natural this feels. I can still recall moving in with Ryan, at first, how it felt like I was playing at being a grown woman who had her own place and could handle her own shit. Here, as I hum to myself, it just comes easy.
He plates up breakfast for us and we sit at the table together, knees brushing against each other.
Even that brief contact is enough to make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up with excitement.
How is it that even the barest touch from him makes me feel this way?
Is this just what I have been missing this whole time, this sense of connection, someone treating me like an equal?
“The storm’s nearly passed,” Gavin remarks as I start to eat, nodding towards the window. I bite my lip, nodding.
“Yeah, I guess it has.”
“So you can probably get out to see your sister, if you want to.”
“I thought you said my car was done for?”
“It is,” he reasons, taking a bite of bacon. “But I have a truck in a shed a few miles up the road. Use it to pick up supplies when I go to the city. I could drive you down, when the roads are clear.”
My face lights up, eyes widening.
“You would do that for me?”
“Sure,” he replies. “And I could hook your car to the back, get it to a mechanic, if you want.”
“Oh, I don’t know if I can afford to fix what’s wrong with it,” I reply, shaking my head.
“I know a few guys in town. I’m sure I could find someone who was willing to work on it.”
My face softens.
“Thanks, Gavin,” I murmur, and, beneath the table, he reaches for my knee and gives it a squeeze. My toes curl against the uneven wooden floor below. Honestly, as sweet as it is for him to offer, I'm not certain that I'm ready to be done with this place, at least, not yet.
“Maybe you could, uh, come and visit me sometime,” I reply casually, twirling my fork in my hand, trying to sound nonchalant. “I mean, if I end up staying there.”
He regards me for a moment, and he almost looks a little surprised that I'm suggesting it.
“Really?”
“Why do you say it like that?” I reply, with a slight laugh, though it is more nervous than anything else.
My heart is thudding in my chest, and I know that I should be a little more reserved here.
For God’s sake, I'm just out of a relationship that seriously screwed me up, and I don’t know where that leaves me.
“With my history, and all,” he replies, lowering his gaze slightly. “Being an ex-con. Like I said, it’s not exactly an easy life.”
“Yeah, but?—”
I stop myself in my tracks. I have already delved far enough. Better to keep my mouth shut and focus on the food in front of me than push for something more with a guy I had only hooked up with for the first time the night before. That might be all he wants.
“This is really good,” I remark, by way of breaking the silence.
“I do my best.”
“Well, your best breakfast is a hell of a lot better than I could manage,” I joke, and he cracks a grin. I like his smile; there’s no malice behind it, nothing to second-guess, and that makes a nice change after everything with Ryan.
And, as I tuck into my breakfast, I promise myself that I'm not going to dive into anything too quickly. Not when he reacts like that to the thought of even seeing more of me. I mean, he’s moved out here, to the middle of nowhere, for a reason, right?
I don’t want to be the asshole who blows that all up for him when he so obviously values his privacy.
Even if the feel of his hand on my leg beneath the table is way more distracting than I would like to admit.