14. Conrad #3
At one point, I managed to get flour on my shirt. At another, Winnie laughed so hard at my attempt to flip vegetables in a pan that she had to brace one hand against the counter.
“You said wrist flick!”
She wiped a tear from her eye. “I did not say launch them into orbit.”
A mushroom hit the floor. We stared at it, then at each other, and simultaneously burst into laughter.
There were no children or work calls to interrupt us. Just warmth and food and sunlight slipping gradually toward evening.
Every minute together was increasingly tantalizing. Attraction was one thing. I could handle attraction. Attraction was simple. This?—
This was bigger. Intimate in all the ways that mattered most.
She held a spoon to my lips. “Taste.”
I obeyed automatically. The sauce was incredible with rich tomato, garlic, wine, and something herbal underneath I couldn’t identify.
“Oh my god,” I moaned.
Winnie flashed me a smug smile. “Good?”
“I might cry.”
“That would be dramatic.”
“I’m serious, Winnie.” I took another bite. “This is unbelievable.”
“You had a hand in it. You added the garlic, remember?”
Before I could stop myself, I said, “You seem happy.”
Winnie stilled, dropping her gaze to the simmering sauce.
“I am,” she admitted.
She looked beautiful like this. There was nothing glamorous about her like there had been that night at the speakeasy, but she was real, standing in front of me, breathing the same air. I could barely contain the instinct to pull her close.
Her hair curled around her face from the steam drifting up from the pan, and her cheeks were pinker than usual.
Homey. The thought hit me so hard, I had to look away. I could picture this life too easily. Too naturally. Coming downstairs to her. Cooking together. The children running through the house around us. It terrified me how much I wanted it.
Wanting it didn’t mean I’d stopped loving Jade.
I never would. I still missed her in quiet moments that caught me off guard.
Sometimes it was a song in the grocery store.
Sometimes it happened when I was reaching for my phone to tell her something funny before I remembered there wasn’t anyone waiting on the other end anymore.
There wasn’t a version of my life where she stopped mattering.
But sometime over the past weeks, the constant heaviness inside me had eased enough to allow something else to slip in next to it.
Not in place of it but sharing its space.
Hope, maybe. Or simply the certainty that life wasn’t done giving good things to me.
I hadn’t felt that since the day I buried my wife.
And now, standing in my kitchen with Winnie, I realized how desperately I’d missed it.
Dinner finished cooking just as dusk settled outside. We plated everything, but neither of us moved to the table.
The kids wouldn’t be back for hours, so we stayed in the kitchen, eating pasta from oversized bowls. She only took a few bites, claiming she’d eaten while I was napping upstairs.
“This is nice,” I admitted quietly.
Winnie glanced toward me over her wineglass. “It is.”
Evening deepened beyond the windows, and spring rain had started, pattering faintly against the windows.
Winnie reached for the wine bottle beside me at the same moment I moved for it. Our hands bumped. Then stayed there.
Neither of us pulled away.
I looked down at her fingers beneath mine. For one absurd second, my brain imagined us together many years into the future. Then I dismissed that, because it was insane.
Winnie looked up slowly.
And there it was again. That feeling. That unbearable awareness pulling tighter and tighter between us every day.
She didn’t move away. Neither did I.
My pulse thudded heavily in my throat. “You know,” I said quietly, “I’ve been trying very hard not to do something stupid.”
Her gaze flicked to my mouth. “That makes two of us.”
That was all it took.
I kissed her.
That thing that had been building between us for weeks stopped pretending to be something else. Her lips were cool, even softer than I expected, and then suddenly she was kissing me back with enough feeling to make my head spin harder than the migraine had.
My hand moved instinctively to her waist.
A small sound escaped her as she stepped closer, her lips parting against mine. Her taste… Intoxicating. Red wine and herbs and something sweet underneath.
Everything inside me tightened.
God.
I kissed her again, deeper this time, and she gripped the front of my shirt tight enough to wrinkle the fabric.
The kitchen disappeared.
The rain disappeared.
There was only her.
Then reality crashed back in all at once. Winnie pulled back first. Barely, only enough for air. We both stared at each other, breathing harder than either of us probably should’ve been from one kiss.
Her cheeks were flushed, pupils blown wide. I had never seen anyone look at me the way Winnie was looking at me.
Like she wanted something badly enough to fear it.
“Oh,” I said stupidly.
Winnie laughed breathlessly once.
“Yes,” she whispered.
I kissed her again.