Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
Edie pushed the thought of staying wiht Tarmek away, filing it somewhere deep where it couldn't hurt her. Then she carefully began slowly extracting herself from Tarmek's grip. Or trying to.
His arm immediately tightened.
"Where are you going?"
So much for not waking him.
"Bathroom," she lied. "Go back to sleep."
"You're lying."
"Am not."
"Your eyebrows are doing the thing again."
She reached up to touch her forehead, annoyed. "I do not have a tell, and you need to stop pretending you can read my mind."
"I don't need to read your mind. Just your face." He propped himself up on one elbow, blinking sleep from his eyes. In the grey morning light, the gold flecks in his dark irises caught the illumination. "You were going to leave."
"I need to check on my camper."
"It's been fine for days."
"It might not be fine now."
"Edie."
"Tarmek."
They stared at each other. Neither moved.
"I don't—" she started, then stopped. "This isn't something I do. The morning after. I usually—"
"Leave."
"Yes."
He was quiet for a moment, considering. "Why?"
Such a simple question, and such a complicated answer.
"Because leaving is easier than being left," she said finally. "If I go first, it doesn't hurt. If I never get attached, I can't be disappointed when things end."
"Things don't always end."
"They have for me. Every single time." She sat up, suddenly needing distance, needing to not be lying in his bed looking at his sleep-soft face while having this conversation.
"My mom gave me up when I was four. Too chaotic, she said.
She couldn't handle my energy. Every foster family after that.
Some were good, some were terrible, but they all ended.
Schools, jobs, relationships—everything ends eventually.
So I learned to leave before the ending, and take the pain on my own terms."
She hadn't meant to say all of that. She hadn't meant to crack herself open in his bedroom at whatever-o'clock in the morning. But the words had spilled out anyway, a flood she couldn't stop once it started.
He didn't respond immediately. He just watched her, the same focused attention he'd given her body last night now directed at her words. Reading her, and filing the information away for future reference.
"That sounds lonely," he said finally.
"It's safe."
"Those don't have to be the same thing."
"Close enough."
He sat up too, the sheet pooling around his waist, his bare chest a landscape of scars and muscle in the dim light. "What if I asked you to stay?"
Her heart stuttered. "Don't."
"I'm not asking yet. I'm asking what you would do if I asked."
"I don't know." The honest answer, for once. "I don't know what I'd do."
"That's progress."
"Is it?"
"You usually know exactly what you'd do." He reached out, slow enough that she could pull away if she wanted to. She didn't. His hand cupped her cheek, his calloused palm warm against her skin. "You leave. Always. Without hesitation. The fact that you don't know means something."
It means I'm in trouble, she thought. It means you're getting under my skin in ways I don't know how to handle.
But she couldn't say that. She couldn't give him that much power.
"I need to shower," she said instead. "And eat something. And probably check on my sketches because I have an actual job that I'm definitely neglecting."
His thumb traced her cheekbone. "Edie."
"Tarmek."
"Stay."
Not a question this time. Not a request. The same single word from last night, spoken with the same quiet certainty.
And again, against every instinct screaming at her to run, she did.
His shower was ridiculous.
That was the only word for it. Ridiculous. The thing took up half the bathroom, all gleaming tile and rainfall showerhead and what appeared to be actual shelves for products, which of course were organized by type and size because this was Tarmek's bathroom.
She stood under the hot spray and tried to process the last twelve hours.
The argument. The kiss. The table. The things that had happened on the table.
The bed. The conversation. The fact that she was still here, using his shampoo—which smelled like cedar and was arranged alphabetically with his conditioner and body wash—wrapped in the towel that had been folded with military precision on a heated rack, existing in his space like she belonged there.
Dangerous, her brain insisted. This is dangerous and I know it.
But for once, she wasn't sure she cared.
The bathroom door opened. She didn't jump. The glass was fogged enough for privacy, and besides, after last night there wasn't much point in modesty.
"There's coffee on the counter," he said from somewhere outside the shower. "And I'm making breakfast."
"You don't have to—"
"I know."
The door closed again.
She stood under the spray for another long moment, letting the hot water beat against her shoulders, trying to sort through the tangle of feelings in her chest.
This wasn't the plan. Her original plan was to come to Greenwood Hollow, paint a mural, and leave. Maybe flirt a little with an attractive orc hockey player, because she was human and he was gorgeous and where was the harm? But flirting was supposed to be casual. Light. Fun.
This wasn't light.
This was heavy in ways she didn't know how to carry. This was him making her breakfast and her using his shower and him asking her to stay and her actually considering it.
What am I doing? she asked herself. What am I actually doing here?
She didn't have an answer.
Eventually, the water started to cool, and practicality won out over existential crisis. She turned off the shower, dried herself with his stupid heated towel, and realized she had no clean clothes.
A folded pile sat on the bathroom counter.
One of his shirts—soft grey cotton, large enough to be a dress on her. A pair of her own leggings, which he must have retrieved from her bag in the guest room. Fresh socks, because apparently he'd noticed she always complained about cold feet in the mornings.
He'd noticed, and he'd done something about it without being asked, without making a big deal of it or expecting anything in return. The feeling that swelled in her chest was dangerously close to something she refused to name.
She dressed quickly and followed the smell of coffee to the kitchen.
Tarmek was at the stove, shirtless, making what appeared to be pancakes. Actual pancakes, from scratch, with a precision that suggested he'd memorized the exact measurements and was executing them with military accuracy.
The protein shake mess had been cleaned up. The table had been wiped down. Her tank top, shorts, and underwear were folded neatly on a chair.
He looked up when she entered. Took in his shirt hanging past her thighs, her wet hair dripping onto the collar, her bare feet on his clean floor.
Something in his expression softened.
"Sit down," he said. "These are almost ready."
"You really didn't have to—"
"I know." He flipped a pancake with practiced ease. "I wanted to."
She sat.
The kitchen was different in daylight. She'd seen it before, of course—had spent hours in here over the past week, raiding his fridge and rearranging his cabinets and generally driving him insane.
But she'd always viewed it through the lens of a temporary borrowed space.
Someone else's home that she was just passing through.
Now it felt different.
Now she could see where her coffee mug had left a ring on the counter (she'd never used coasters, to his ongoing horror).
Where the color-coded magnets she'd scrambled had been returned to their original positions, then scrambled again, then returned again in what had become an ongoing silent battle.
Where her favorite tea had been added to his collection, tucked between his precisely organized coffee pods.
He'd made space for her.
Not just physically—though yes, there was the guest room and the bathroom shelf he'd cleared and the drawer he'd grudgingly allocated for her art supplies.
But mentally. Emotionally. He'd adjusted his rigid routines to accommodate her chaos, her noise, her tendency to leave her mark on everything she touched.
"How do you like your pancakes?" he asked.
"What?"
"Toppings. Fruit. Syrup. There's also—" he paused, seeming almost embarrassed. "There's Nutella. I bought it because you mentioned once that you liked it."
He bought Nutella because I mentioned it.
She'd said that once, in passing, during a conversation about breakfast foods that she barely remembered having. And he'd filed it away. Remembered. Acted on it without ever mentioning it.
"Nutella," she managed. "Nutella is good."
He nodded, retrieved the jar from another perfectly organized cabinet and set it in front of her along with a plate of perfectly golden pancakes.
They were shaped like circles. Exact circles, like he'd used a compass. Of course they were.
"You're staring at the pancakes," he observed.
"They're very round."
"Is that a problem?"
"No. It's just very... you."
He sat down across from her with his own plate—protein-heavy, sensible, completely different from the indulgent stack he'd made for her. "I don't know how to make them any other shape."
"Most people's pancakes are blobby. Misshapen. Unique."
"That sounds inefficient."
"It sounds normal."
He considered this while she spread Nutella over her perfectly circular pancakes. "I've never been particularly good at normal."
"Yeah, I noticed."
They ate in comfortable silence. Or at least, she ate—he consumed his breakfast with the same methodical efficiency he brought to everything, probably calculating macros and nutritional balance in his head while she smeared chocolate hazelnut spread over carbohydrates like a heathen.
It should have been awkward. Morning-afters usually were, in her experience. All that pretending everything was fine while mentally calculating the fastest route to the exit.
This wasn't awkward.
This was... nice. Easy. Like they'd been doing this for years instead of hours.
"I have practice at ten," Tarmek said eventually.
"Okay."
"Will you be here when I get back?"
The question was casual. His expression was not.
She thought about lying. Saying yes to make him feel better, then slipping out while he was gone like she always did. It would be easier. Cleaner. Less terrifying than whatever this was becoming.
"I don't know," she said instead.
He nodded slowly. "At least you're honest."
"I'm trying to be."
"I know." He reached across the table and took her hand—engulfed it, really, his massive palm swallowing her fingers. "That counts for something."
For him, apparently, it counted for a lot.
She squeezed his hand back and tried not to think about how much she wanted to stay. About how right it felt, sitting in his kitchen, eating his pancakes, wearing his shirt that smelled like cedar and warmth.
Temporary, she reminded herself. Everything is temporary.
But for the first time in a long time, she wasn't sure she believed it.
He left for practice at nine-thirty, freshly showered and back in his usual controlled mode.
But before he walked out the door, he stopped. Turned. Crossed the room in two strides and kissed her thoroughly enough to make her toes curl.
"Stay," he said against her mouth.
Then he was gone.
Edie stood in the middle of his condo, still wearing his shirt, lips still tingling, and tried to figure out what the hell she was supposed to do now.
Her phone buzzed.
Sam: We should talk about commissioning something for the team lounge as well.
Right. Work. She had a job. A purpose. A reason for being in this town that had nothing to do with olive-skinned hockey players who kissed like they were conducting research and made Nutella pancakes without being asked.
She could focus on that. On the mural, the project, the temporary nature of her contract. On the concrete, practical things that didn't make her chest feel like it was going to crack open.
She texted back: Happy to discuss. When works for you?
Then she retrieved her own clothes from the guest room, got dressed in something other than Tarmek's shirt, although she may have stolen one of his hoodies, and headed for the arena.
She had work to do.
And if she left his spare key on her keyring, well—that was just practical. For emergencies.
It didn't mean anything. It couldn't mean anything. But as she walked through the parking lot, past the spot where her camper was still sitting like a backup plan she wasn't sure she needed anymore, she caught herself humming.
And somewhere in the distance, the arena doors opened to reveal the mural wall—half-finished, waiting, full of potential—and she thought about blank canvases and new beginnings and the terrifying possibility that maybe, just maybe, she wasn't as temporary as she'd always believed.