5. Juliette
Chapter Five
JULIETTE
I've never cooked dinner for a man before.
That’s not to say that I haven’t sat beside random men at expensive dinners, time after time, at tables three times the size of Holt's tiny kitchen. But this is the first time I’ve stood at an unfamiliar stove making food for a guy because I wanted to.
The memory of Monique’s cozy kitchen brings with it a pang of sadness; it was the one place I felt like I belonged.
Mother put a stop to that and fired Monique when she found out about the diploma.
Holt's refrigerator is like a bachelor's museum piece: eggs, bacon, a giant brick of cheddar, multiple bottles of hot sauce, and enough elk sausage to survive a siege.
I raid it along with the grocery bags and build a skillet dinner.
I fry up the sausage, potatoes and onions and add a pan of drop biscuits in the oven, along with some gravy.
Six supervises by lying half-in, half out of the kitchen, his nose twitching at the smells. Holt comes in from the woodshed and raises his eyebrows. I hold up his plate, the butter melting on the biscuits. It's simple food, I hope he likes it.
“You cooked?”
“I did.” I pull out my chair before he can decide whether pulling it out for me is allowed. “Sit down and eat.”
Holt eats fast, clearing his plate. Then he has three more biscuits, and I feel like I've won a prize or something. Nobody in my family has ever eaten anything I made. Mother was always watching her weight and my father thought cooking was a servant’s job.
Monique used to smuggle my cakes out to the gardeners.
“You really can cook. And are you sure about the job?” he asks, mopping his plate, “I'll drive you down for your shift. Roads'll be dark at half five.”
“I’m sure. I need to start earning my keep. But you don't have to get up at five for me.”
“I'm up at five anyway. And you’ll need this to keep in touch with Nora, it’s an old phone.”
“Thanks, are you sure?”
“No problem.”
After the dishes are done, he takes me out to the porch with a hatchet and a round of dry fir, because I asked at dinner how he makes the kindling so thin. The air is cool out here as Holt sets the round on the block and hands me the hatchet handle-first.
“It's a wrist motion, not a shoulder one. Nothing too fierce.”
My first swing bounces, while the second one sticks. He steps in behind me and adjusts my grip with two fingers, his big fingers warm over mine. He tips the angle of the blade, and his voice rumbles low behind me.
“You got it… let the tool do it.”
My third swing drops a thin, clean curl of kindling off the round and I laugh out loud. Holt makes a sound behind me which could be a laugh or a cough, I have no idea. I’m taking it as a compliment.
I split kindling until my wrist aches and I’ve made a small pile of it.
“My father would have a fit… his daughter, doing yard work.”
“What would your father rather you be doing?”
“Looking decorative and making small talk.” I say it lightly, even though the memory twists inside me. “Kind of like one of those ornaments that you wind up and they play an annoying, tinkly tune.”
Holt is quiet while he splits the rest of the round himself.
He shakes his head. “Would’ve been a waste of a great baker.”
We take the kindling in and he builds the fire.
I sit on the couch with Six's head on my knee, watching Holt's hands stack the splits into a little cabin shape over the tinder. He has a long white scar across two knuckles. He strikes the match and the fire takes, and as the light moves on his face, I suck my breath in. He’s so handsome, but it’s more than that.
I could watch his face forever and not get bored.
“How old are you, Holt?”
His shoulders tense. “Thirty-nine.”
“I'm twenty-four.”
He closes the stove door harder than it needs. “Yep.”
“And?”
“There’s not much more to say, Juliette.” He stands and puts the matches on the shelf, squaring the box up with the edge. “You know, when you were in high school, I was working my third protection contract? We’re different generations.”
“So?”
“It's fifteen years.”
“I can do math, you know. Despite my young years.” I stand up too, because I'm not having this conversation with him looming over me, even if standing still leaves me with a height difference of a foot. “What are you trying to say?”
He turns around and the firelight catches his eyes, making them look almost silver.
“You're only thirty-six hours from a wedding you ran from. The first door you knocked on happened to be mine. In a year you'll be somewhere better, wondering what you were thinking, telling stories of some weird old guy on a mountain you had a strange week with.”
The fire pops; Six lifts his head. He looks at us both, sighs heavily, and puts it back down.
Anger builds inside me, bubbling up until I can’t stop it. “You know what you’re doing, Holt? Deciding things for me, without asking what I think. I ran to get away from that…”
A muscle in his jaw ticks. “Juliette…”
“Everyone in my life has told me what I want! You don't get to do it too, not you, I won't…”
I don't get to say any more, because he crosses the space between us and kisses me.
Despite his huge size, he holds my face gently, one big hand sliding back into my hair.
His mouth is slow and certain, and I moan as his tongue explores my mouth.
I stand on tiptoe, pressing my body against the hard lines of his and he groans.
He smells of fresh air and woodsmoke, so good that I don’t want this to ever stop.
My heart hammers in my ears as his hands move on my back, pressing me closer.
When he stops, we're both breathing hard. Six is looking at us like we’ve gone insane.
He shakes his head. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
“I disagree.”
He laughs, a deep rumble in his big chest. His eyes are warm as he trails a finger under my jaw. “You're going to take my whole life apart, aren't you?”
“Maybe…” My mouth is an inch from his and all I want to do is kiss him again. “I haven't decided yet. I hear I'm allowed to decide things now.”
He smiles. Then he steps back.
“We need more wood. It’s bedtime.”
I raise my eyebrows.
Holt shakes his head, smiling. “That was my mistake. I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
The door closes. Six sighs from the couch like the whole performance exhausted him. I stand in front of the fire and put my fingers against my mouth, tracing where his lips have been.
I go to bed smiling, because he's wrong, and I think he already knows it.