Chapter 16 Eliana
ELIANA
court-bouillon /?ko?or bo?o?y?n/: noun
The walk to the diner takes forever and a half. Two blocks shouldn’t feel like a marathon, but between the morning sickness and Bastian’s hovering, every step is an Olympic event. I spend most of the trek focused on not decorating the asphalt with whatever’s left in my stomach.
Bastian’s hand keeps almost-touching my elbow.
I can feel it there, suspended in the air like a mosquito I want to swat.
The urge to snap at him that I’m blind, not made of glass, rises in my throat, but I swallow it down along with the bile.
If I open my mouth right now, what comes out won’t be words.
Morning sickness is such bullshit. Who named it that?
Some bright-eyed optimist, that’s for damn sure.
A man, probably, an XY-chromosomed asshole who never experienced the joy of feeling like you’re on a boat in a hurricane while simultaneously being pummeled in the stomach by a legion of tiny fists.
Because it’s not just mornings—it’s all fucking day, an endless wave of Maybe I’ll puke, maybe I won’t; let’s play Russian roulette with my gag reflex. Doesn’t that sound like fun?
And, to heap problems on top of problems, it’s gotten leagues worse since Bastian showed up. Like my body decided to betray me on a cellular level, making me biologically dependent on the one person I most need to stay away from.
Inside the diner, the sensory assault makes me want to turn around and leave.
It’s a delightful combo of fryer grease thick enough to choke on, burnt coffee emanating from a pot that hasn’t seen soap since before I was born, and about fifty overlapping conversations between truckers complaining about the Bears and nighttime ER nurses complaining about each other.
Bastian’s hand floats just above the small of my back.
“Booth in the back corner,” he murmurs in my ear, close enough for his breath to ghost across my skin. “Eleven o’clock.”
I shiver, but I don’t shrug him off because I need the anchor point or else I might face-plant into someone’s hash browns. And judging by the angry cadence of the nearest nurse, she would be less than pleased if I did so.
The booth’s vinyl squeaks when I slide in. Bastian settles across from me.
“Coffee?” A waitress materializes beside us. She smells like a Virginia Slim factory.
“Just water for me,” I manage, breathing through my mouth.
“Coffee. Black,” Bastian says. “And ginger ale for her. With ice.”
I want to argue, but the thought of ginger ale actually sounds perfect, and I hate that he deduced that. He doesn’t know me. Not anymore.
“You look green,” Bastian observes when the waitress saunters away.
“Flattery will get you nowhere.”
“I’m serious. When’s the last time you ate something substantial?”
I can’t remember. Yesterday? The day before? Time has gone elastic since I came back from the funeral, stretching and compressing in ways that make no sense. “Define ‘substantial.’”
“Something that isn’t crackers or toast.”
“Then probably never.”
“Stay here.”
“Why? Where are you—”
But he’s up and moving, no longer listening to me. “Doreen,” he calls, presumably the waitress’s name. “She’ll have dry wheat toast, two orders. Side of plain white rice. Chicken broth if you have it, saltines if you don’t. And apple slices. No cinnamon.”
My spine locks up because, c’mon, excuse the fuck out of me. “I can order for myself,” I say indignantly when he retakes his seat.
But my protest comes out a lot weaker than I would’ve liked because I’m genuinely about three minutes from painting this Formica table with stomach acid.
“The toast will help settle your stomach,” Bastian says.
“Then explain the rice, broth, and crackers.”
“Same answer.”
“And the apples?”
“Those are for me.”
I bite back a surprised laugh. I want to argue on principle, but my stomach roils again and I close my mouth.
Fine. He wins this round.
“Since when are you an expert on morning sickness?” I manage between careful, shallow breaths.
“Had three pregnant line cooks at the restaurants last year. I pay attention.”
“Mhmm. I’m sure you do.”
“I can’t tell if that’s a threat, an insult, or a compliment.”
“Dealer’s choice,” I say with a shrug.
We fall silent. I take the time to breathe. A trucker three booths over is explaining to his buddy why the Bears’ offensive line is “softer than baby shit,” while the nurses at the counter debate whether someone named Dr. Martinez is or is not sleeping with the new respiratory therapist.
It’s bizarre to listen to all these normal people having normal conversations about normal things. Their minds would reel if they could hear what Bastian and I are occupying ourselves with.
The first wave of our smorgasbord arrives.
I take a sip of ginger ale and a cautious nibble of toast. It’s plain, boring, and perfect.
The wheat is dry enough to absorb whatever new rebellion my stomach’s planning, and for the first time in hours, the nausea retreats to a manageable simmer. My belly immediately sighs in relief.
“Stop staring at me,” I snap between careful nibbles.
“You can’t blame me. I just want to know if I’m gonna get puked on.”
Despite myself—despite everything, really—my mouth twitches. The bastard still makes me want to laugh even when I should be throwing things at his head.
The waitress returns with the rice, setting it down with a loud clink that makes me flinch. “Chicken broth’s coming, too,” she announces as she turns to leave again.
“Eat the rice,” Bastian coaxes. “Little bites.”
I want to tell him which orifice he can shove his dietary advice into, but he’s been right about everything else so far, so I pick up the spoon and follow instructions.
“I’m surprised you’re even willing to step foot in here,” I remark as I chew. “Shouldn’t you be morally opposed to establishments like this?”
“Safe to say it’s not my first choice,” he admits wryly. “But you need simple right now. Straightforward, familiar, safe. Nothing complicated.”
It doesn’t take a genius to realize he’s talking about more than food.
I force down another bite of rice to avoid responding, but it tastes like sawdust now.
Everything does when he looks at me like that—or, well, when I imagine he’s looking at me like that.
That’s one curse of my blindness: I’ll never know if his eyes still go soft when he’s trying not to care. If they’re blue or black right now.
“Can I ask how you’re feeling?” Bastian asks. “With the pregnancy, I mean.”
“Tired,” I admit, setting down my spoon. “Also nauseous and scared shitless. Usually one of those three things on a rotation. Sometimes a few at once.”
“That sounds about right.” He wriggles in the booth.
“Ayesha—one of my line cooks at Coruscant—she worked straight through to basically the day she popped. Used to prop herself against the prep station between orders, and she’d rip my head off every time I even considered telling her to take a break.
Kara at Quail’s Egg was seven months along and still hauling fifty-pound sacks of flour like they were nothing. ”
“I feel like I’ve got a fifty-pound sack of flour strapped to my stomach,” I mutter. “How do women do this? And this isn’t even the hard part! I’m still a party of one right now. Once this baby comes… Christ, life is gonna get real hard real fast.”
He bobs his head in acknowledgment. “Yeah, that part isn’t easy.
Sage was so little when he came to me. I had no fucking clue what I was doing, even though I read every baby book I could get my hands on and watched YouTube videos at two in the morning while he screamed bloody murder.
I remember—fuck, I remember when I tried to change his diaper for the first time.
” A laugh escapes him, almost as if it took him by surprise.
“I thought I had it all figured out—wipes ready, clean diaper underneath, very professional setup. The second I got the dirty one off, he peed. Straight up like a fountain. Got me right in the face, in my mouth, everything.”
I snort with laughter.
“So I’m standing there, dripping with baby piss, and Sage just stops crying. Looks at me with these huge eyes like he’s thinking, ‘Yeah, that’s what you get for being a damn amateur.’” Bastian sighs. “I started draping a towel over him like a tent after that.”
“Smart,” I manage between giggles.
My laugh seems to embolden him, because Bastian’s voice drops to that old, familiar pitch, back when it was just us nestled in the cozy darkness of his penthouse. “I missed that sound,” he murmurs.
“Bastian—”
“I know. I know you hate me. I know I don’t deserve anything from you. But I’m allowed to miss your laugh. That’s all I want to say.”
I have to grip the edge of the table to keep myself steady. My body responds to that low rumble like a tuning fork, vibrating at a frequency I thought I’d forgotten.
“You don’t get to do that.”
“Do what?”
“Say things like that. Use that voice.” I push the rice away, my appetite gone. “You don’t get to sit there and be human. Not after everything.”
“Would you prefer I be a monster full-time? Because I can do that if it makes this easier.”
“Yes,” I lie, then immediately shake my head. “No. I don’t know.”
The truth is, I don’t know which version of him is worse: the one covered in blood in that alley, or this one who cares.
At least with the monster, I know where I stand. This Bastian makes me want things I can’t afford to want.
His phone starts buzzing against the tabletop. I hear him frown and then the soft exhale as he reads whatever’s on the screen.
Just like that, the spell breaks.
“It’s Frank,” he says, all traces of that dangerous softness now completely gone. “Meeting’s confirmed.”
“Right,” I say with a gulp. “That’s good.”
“We need to go,” Bastian says as he slides out of the booth.
I hear dollar bills hitting the table, the thwap of what sounds like way too many twenties for toast and rice.
The waitress is going to think we’re either drug dealers or terrible at math.
Given the circumstances, she wouldn’t be entirely wrong on either count.
I grab Excalibur and follow Bastian out. The diner noise fades as the door swings shut behind us. The morning air hits my face, carrying exhaust fumes and the promise of another scorching day.
“Here.” He offers his arm.
I pause, weighing my options. My dignity says to use my walking stick and navigate solo. But my pragmatism says to take the help.
So, after a beat, I loop my hand through his elbow. His forearm is solid and warm under my palm.
“This doesn’t mean I forgive you,” I mumble as we start to walk.
“I know.”
“And when this is over—”
“I disappear. Yeah,” he says. “I remember.”