Chapter 24
Alexander
That Night
Her kitchen is too small for me. Too small for my height, too small for my shoulders, too small for the chaos in my head. The knives are blunt. The pan wobbles every time it heats. The cupboard handle is barely hanging on. And yet…I haven’t felt this calm in years.
The kind of calm that doesn’t feel earned. The kind that feels like trespassing. Intruding on a life that isn’t mine—but that I want far more than I should.
She’s curled up on the couch with a throw blanket wrapped around her, legs tucked neatly under her body, flipping through an old, cracked-spine book like it’s an anchor she’s carried since childhood.
Music hums from her phone—warm, soulful, unapologetically human. Something about the way she reads…the way she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear…the way she forgets to guard her face when she frowns at a page…It reaches inside me and grips something I didn’t know was still alive.
I finish the pasta—creamy mushroom sauce, garlic, a handful of real parmesan she didn’t know she had in the back of her fridge—and plate it carefully. Mismatched plates. One chipped. One slightly bent.
I bring the food to her, feeling absurdly out of place and exactly right. She looks up at me, bright-eyed and soft, and takes her plate. One bite. Just one. She moans. A soft, involuntary sound that shoots straight through me like voltage. “Oh my God,” she breathes. “I think I just fell in love.”
I arch a brow. “With the food?”
Her gaze drags up to mine—slow, playful, almost shy in a way that breaks me open—and she gives a tiny shrug. “With the chef, too.”
The world tilts. Not dramatically. Not the way it does in a boardroom when I win a billion-dollar contract. Not the way it does when someone tries to shoot me.
This tilt is quiet. Subtle. Dangerous in a completely different way. Because she means it. Not fully. Not fearlessly. But she meant it enough for the words to slip out. And I feel something uncoil in my chest—something tight, something stubborn, something I’ve kept caged for years.
I sit beside her. Close enough, our shoulders touch. Close enough, her blanket brushes my thigh. Close enough that I can feel her warmth through the fabric of my shirt.
She nudges my knee gently. “You’re staring.”
“I’m allowed,” I murmur.
She laughs—soft, breathy, unguarded—and rests her head lightly against my arm.
And in that moment—barefoot, slightly wine-stained, sitting in a too-small kitchen with a woman who sings while making eggs and reads old books like sacred scripture—I feel something I haven’t felt since before the knife, before the hospital, before Grace, before the betrayal that carved me into someone unrecognizable.
I feel at home. And that terrifies me more than anything else ever has.