Chapter Fifteen
Winter
If I eat another bite, there’s a possible chance I may spontaneously combust in the middle of Our Open Table. Then Vinnie will be mad at me for making a mess of his establishment. Although I’d be dead, so I guess it wouldn’t be my problem.
“I think you cheated,” Ridley accuses with narrowed eyes, before turning to an elderly woman sitting between us. “Don’t you think she cheated, Beth?”
Beth sighs, setting her cards down. “You always think she cheats when you lose. Ain’t nobody accusing you of playing tricks whenever you win.”
Ridley harrumphs. “I still think she was hiding draw fours in her sleeve to use on me. How many usually come in a pack?”
I snicker and pass him the deck. “You shuffle them to make yourself feel better. I’ll even shake out my sleeves to reassure you that I’m not hiding any secret weapons in them.”
He frowns. “I don’t have time for another game.”
Last I knew, he had nowhere else to be. But I play along, knowing it has more to do with being a sore loser than a busy schedule. “I should get back to the kitchen and see if Bev needs any help anyway. I’ll see you later?”
He nods begrudgingly, making Beth roll her eyes at him. I pat his shoulder in comfort as I walk around him, offering him the friendliest smile I can muster. Despite his trying to be mad, I know he can’t stay that way.
When I walk into the kitchen, I immediately put my hair into a ponytail and ask, “Do you need any—”
My question stops short when I see who’s standing at the oven next to Bev.
Thomas Moskins.
Vinnie comes over and puts a hand around my shoulders. “Look who came back to help! I told him he should have brought his fancy camera crew because I’m having a good hair day.”
My eyebrows go up as I glance over at his balding head, but I choose not to rain on his parade. Instead, I turn my focus back to the man whose house I left days ago. “What are you doing here?”
He stops stirring whatever is in the pot on the burner. “I wanted to help. Bev and Vinnie told me I could come back whenever I wanted.”
Bev bobs her head. “Yes, we did. I told you before, Win. Any friend of yours is welcome here.”
“But we’re not—” I stop myself from finishing that sentence and collect my thoughts. Amusement curls Thomas’s lips, but I do my best not to react. “I wasn’t expecting you. That’s all.”
“Well, we’re glad he’s here,” Vinnie tells me, dropping his arm. “We had a pallet full of canned goods come in this morning that weighed over one hundred pounds. We needed the manpower.”
Shipments usually come on Saturdays, but sometimes the loads are split into two.
I suppose an early delivery isn’t uncommon, especially if they’re stocking up for the colder weather coming in a handful of months.
It means more mouths to feed and shelter.
“Why didn’t you call me? I would have come earlier if I’d known you needed help. ”
He waves me off. “You have a life, kid. I can’t always call whenever I need something. We have other volunteers.”
“Plus, have you seen these muscles?” Bev chirps in, gesturing toward Thomas’s arms. “If he can’t move ’em, none of us can.”
I swear I see the faintest shade of pink dot Thomas’s cheeks at the attention. Since when is he embarrassed by people complimenting his looks? He usually gets off on it.
“Now that you’re here,” Bev continues, coming over and guiding me to the oven, “you can help him finish with the pastas and sauces while Vinnie and I go set up the serving station. It’s nearly dinner.”
Before I can protest, Vinnie passes me a hairnet and follows his wife out of the kitchen.
“Well, that was…something,” I murmur, securing the net over my hair and studying the pots on the stove. One contains pasta, one has red sauce, and the other has white sauce. “Ah. Italian night.”
I can feel Thomas’s eyes on me as I check the pasta to make sure it’s not overcooking.
“You’re staring,” I state without having to look at him. In fact, I don’t want to. I’d rather dunk my hand in boiling marinara sauce than meet his gaze.
“Am I making you uncomfortable?” he asks, bemusement in his tone.
I grind my teeth. “No.” It sounds unconvincing even to my ears. “What are you doing here?”
He puts his hand over mine to get me to stop fiddling with the pasta boiling. “I already told you,” he replies, taking the spoon away and setting it onto the counter. “I wanted to help.”
I finally turn to face him. “Why here?”
One of his shoulders lifts. “Because I enjoy cooking and I was hoping you’d be here.”
The admission is so casual, so nonchalant, that I almost think I heard him wrong. “Me,” I repeat slowly.
He dips his head once.
“You came here,” I drawl out, “for me?”
Typically, I only come on weekends. But because we have the charity gala coming up, it means preparing for that rather than coming here. I like popping in every now and again during the week to help out and be around people. It drowns out my inner thoughts.
But Thomas doesn’t know that I only come on weekends, which makes me wonder how many times he’s shown up before today.
Thomas chuckles. “Yes. For you. And here you are. Which means we can talk, because I’ve been thinking about something you said the other day before you left.”
A long stretch of silence lasts between us as my ears ring with anticipation. What could he have possibly been thinking about? I didn’t say anything interesting enough for him to dwell on.
“You said you weren’t sure if you were capable of being loved,” he finally says, voice uncharacteristically soft.
Heat warms my face and tingles in the back of my neck at the reminder of those regretful words. Out of everybody I could have admitted that to, why did it have to be him?
“I get it, Winter,” he tells me, brushing his knuckles against my arm until I’m peeking up at him. “More than you know. But I’ve decided something.”
That doesn’t sound good. “And what is that?”
“It’s bullshit.”
My lips part in shock. “Excuse me?”
“The notion that you’re unlovable is bullshit,” he repeats casually. “If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from Emaly, it’s that there are different kinds of love. If you think you’re not capable of any of them, you’re lying to yourself.”
The nerve of this man. “You really have the audacity to say something like that to me?”
“It’s not audacity,” is his easy retort. “It’s called the truth. Take it from someone with firsthand experience.”
Is he saying he knows what it’s like to be unlovable? “Thomas, you and I are nothing alike. You have a wife who loves you regardless of what you do and fans who literally wear your name and number. You’re loved by thousands of people.”
He stirs the sauce and shakes his head. “I’m inclined to disagree with you. We’re not that different, whether you want to admit it or not. So, how about another secret? Tit for tat.”
“I don’t want to play any games, Thomas.” I groan, rubbing my tired eyes. I haven’t been sleeping well, and it’s catching up with me thanks to Cody’s absence at work, adding on to my to-do list.
“Neither do I.”
The seriousness in his tone makes me drop my hands and loosen a sigh. “Fine. You go first if you want a secret in return so badly.”
I expect him to argue, but he doesn’t. “The worst kind of love is the unrequited kind,” he says quietly, lowering the heat on the pot and moving on to the other saucepan like he knows what he’s doing.
“You can be married to someone and realize that the love you have with them is different than the one you wanted.”
I’m not sure what secret I was expecting from him, but this one…I swallow, feeling a pang of hurt in my heart for him. “You said that you and Emaly weren’t together like that. Why?”
He never gave me the details, but it’s obvious that he loves her. And there’s no doubt in my mind that she loves him too. She wants him to be happy, to have companionship. Why not give him those things herself?
Thomas shifts his attention to me, a small smile on his face that isn’t sad but…reminiscent of something equal to acceptance. “Because she’s in love with somebody else.”
That pang of hurt grows into more, and I can practically feel the weight of those words as if they’re free weights sitting on my chest. “I’m sorry,” I tell him. “That must be hard.”
To my surprise, he shakes his head. “I’ve accepted it by now.
I’m not the person who can give her what she wants.
I love her. I’ll always love her. And, sure, a part of me, a younger version of me, expected more from us.
She’s been my best friend for a very long time.
But it’s a different kind of love we share.
I’m grateful for any that she can offer me. ”
Who is this person? I’ve never seen this side of him before, and I don’t know if I like it or am scared of it. Because he seems too…human. Normal. Vulnerable.
“Truth is, sweetheart,” he says gently, “you can be loved and adored by thousands of people and not feel worthy of it. So, I’ll take whatever scrap I can get from anybody important.”
The room falls quiet, save for the hum of the refrigerators and the sauces bubbling as they heat. If I listen carefully enough, I may even be able to hear my heart crack.
“That seems like more than one secret,” I finally say, voice quiet as I take him in.
His lips curl up higher at the corners. “The others are a bonus. I just want one.”
“Why?” It isn’t that I’m unwilling to give him one in return, but I need to know why it matters to him. It’s not for blackmail, not like I’d originally suspected. No. This is something else. Something deeper.
His tongue drags along his bottom lip before he looks away at something above my shoulder. His face turns contemplative, as though he’s trying to come up with the right answer.
When his eyes come back down to me, there’s something soft in them. “Because maybe we stand a better chance at happiness if we lessen the burden on our souls. Nobody knows what I’ve told you. Not even Emaly knows what I thought of us in the beginning. That secret is yours to keep. It’s ours.”
I can see it then. The need to stop feeling the way he does. He’s hurting. Badly. And I don’t think it has to do with Emaly’s unrequited love. After all, they’re married. There has to be a reason she hasn’t left him for the other man she’s in love with.
So, I offer him something that equals his truth.
“I don’t think I deserve love, because I took advantage of it when I had it.
I didn’t appreciate it, and then it was taken away.
And I can’t…” My throat bobs as I try to swallow the pain coursing up my windpipe, trying to steal my words.
“I can’t change what happened. I can’t apologize.
I can’t make amends. So, sometimes it’s easier for me to accept that my punishment is loneliness. Because maybe that’s what I deserve.”
I’d been such a brat the day my parents died. I’m eighty percent positive I didn’t say I love you when they left, even when they agreed to let me stay home. My therapist said it’s survivor’s guilt that makes me feel this way, but I’m not so sure.
I think it’s a reasonable punishment. Fair. My parents loved me unconditionally, and I never got a chance to thank them for it. It doesn’t matter how often I go to their graves when I’m upset to talk to them, to tell them now how selfish and blind I was to their love, because it’s too late.
Thomas tips my chin up. “Nobody deserves that.”
I close my eyes to fight off the tears burning in the backs of my eyes.
Then, I’m encompassed by heat and muscles and a scent that’s woodsy and something masculine that I can’t put my finger on.
Thomas Moskins is…hugging me.
And I melt into his body and soak it up because I need it.
I miss being hugged.
My last secret. Now he has another to add to the stockpile between us.
One of his hands comes up to my head and strokes my hair. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to, and I’m grateful for the silence.
When he pulls away, he swipes at my cheek with the pad of his thumb. It’s only then I realize the tears escaped their ducts despite my best efforts to keep them at bay.
Then, he simply turns back to the oven and continues the work we were assigned to.
Just like that.
We exchanged secrets.
Shared a moment.
And now we’re back to…this.
Comfortable silence.
And my chest feels ten times lighter as I help him finish dinner and serve it.