Chapter Three #2
He doesn’t answer, which is an answer in itself.
“Okay, no.” I point my wooden spoon at him. “Absolutely not. You’re eating real food tonight. Non-negotiable.”
“I have a schedule—”
“Your schedule can handle one plate of pasta.” I’m already grabbing a second bowl. “Sit down. Consider this a roommate bonding exercise.”
He looks at me like I’ve just suggested we rob a bank together. But after a long moment, he pulls out a chair and sits.
Victory.
I plate the pasta—penne with basic alfredo sauce, a sprinkle of pepper, a few basil leaves on top—and set it in front of him. Then I grab my own bowl and take the seat across from him. It’s probably one of my favorite meals and I make it often. It takes all of four ingredients and it’s delicious.
“Eat,” I command.
He picks up his fork like it might bite him. Takes a bite. Chews slowly.
And then something happens to his face.
It’s subtle—just a slight widening of his eyes, a softening around his jaw—but I catch it. He takes another bite. Then another.
“This is…” He pauses, like he’s searching for the right word. “Good.”
“I know.” I grin. “I’m a professional.”
We eat in silence for a minute, and I find myself studying him across the table. The sharp line of his jaw. The scar through his eyebrow that I want to ask about but don’t.
He’s not classically handsome. His features are too harsh for that, too severe. But there’s something about him that I can’t stop looking at. An intensity. A presence. That chiseled jaw and the bulk of his muscles.
Also, his forearms are ridiculous. I’m not usually a forearm person, but watching him grip that fork is doing things to my brain.
Focus, Emmie.
“So,” I say, desperate for conversation to distract myself. “Can I ask you something?”
He looks up. Wary. “Depends on the question.”
“Do you, um…” I stab a piece of pasta with my fork, suddenly nervous. “Do you have a girlfriend? I’m just asking because I want to know if I should expect anyone coming around, or whatever.”
He chokes on his pasta and has to grab his water to recover. When he finally looks at me, his expression is somewhere between startled and confused.
“No,” he says. “No girlfriend.”
“Oh.” I blink. “Huh.”
“What?”
“Nothing, I just…” I gesture vaguely at him. At all of him. “I’m surprised, that’s all.”
His brow furrows. “Why?”
Oh God. Why did I start this?
“Because you’re, um. You know.” I gesture again, more frantically this time, like that explains anything. “You.”
He lifts one dark eyebrow. “I don’t know what that means.”
“It means you’re…” I take a breath. Just say it.
Be normal. “You’re like eye candy. You’re basically a tall, brooding, muscular—I mean, women probably want to climb you like a tree, and I’m just saying if I were single and looking, which I’m not, I mean I am single but I’m not looking, I’m just—” I shove a huge bite of pasta in my mouth.
“Never mind. I’m going to stop talking now. ”
There’s a long, painful silence.
Crew is staring at me like I’ve grown a second head. His ears—are his ears turning pink?
“Tree,” he repeats slowly.
“Please forget I said that.”
“Climb me like a tree.”
“Immediately. Forget it immediately.” I’m definitely blushing. My whole face is on fire. “I have a condition. I just say things sometimes. Words just fall out. It’s a problem.”
He’s quiet for another moment. Then he clears his throat, looks down at his pasta, and says, “This really is good.”
Subject change accepted. Gratefully.
We finish eating in slightly awkward silence, and I’m loading the dishes into the sink when I remember.
“Oh, crap. My tea.”
I’m sure my mug is still sitting on the counter where I left it an hour ago. Cold now, abandoned, a ring forming on the granite.
But when I reach for it, it’s not there.
I turn to find Crew at the sink, washing it.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I say.
“It’s fine.”
“I was going to get it. I just forgot, with the unpacking and everything—”
“It’s fine,” he repeats, but there’s something in his voice. A tightness.
Oh.
I think about the seventeen-page roommate agreement. The color-coded—no, topic-organized—tabs. The way his refrigerator looks like a Pinterest board for meal prep.
The mug on the counter probably drove him insane.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’ll be better about that. I know I can be, um, scattered.”
He dries the mug, places it precisely in the cabinet, and turns to face me. “It’s an adjustment. For both of us.”
That’s generous, considering I’m pretty sure he wanted to wash that mug the second I set it down.
A loud meow comes from somewhere down the hall, and then an orange blur rounds the corner.
“Murphy!”
The tabby trots toward me like he’s been waiting all day for this moment, one ear flopped sideways, a single fang glinting. He winds around my legs immediately, purring.
“Hi, baby,” I coo, crouching down to scratch behind his ears. “Did you miss me? I missed you. You’re so handsome. Yes, you are.”
Murphy purrs like a motorboat, rubbing his face against my knee.
“He doesn’t do that.”
I look up. Crew is standing in the kitchen, arms crossed, watching us with an expression I can only describe as betrayed.
“Do what?”
“Any of that. He hates everyone.”
“He doesn’t hate me.” Murphy flops onto his back, presenting his belly, and I gasp. “Oh my gosh, he’s showing me his tummy. Crew. He’s showing me his tummy.”
“I’ve had that cat for two years. He’s never shown me his stomach.”
I rub Murphy’s belly, and he purrs even louder. “Maybe you just need to earn his trust.”
Crew makes a sound that might be a scoff. “I fed him. I gave him a home. I took him to the vet.”
“Relationships aren’t transactional.” I give Murphy one last scratch and stand up. “You can’t just check boxes and expect affection.”
Something flickers across Crew’s face—there and gone before I can identify it.
“I’m going to finish some work,” he says. “Let me know if you need anything.”
And then he’s gone, disappeared into his room, door clicking shut behind him.
I look down at Murphy, who’s now grooming himself on the kitchen floor like nothing happened.
“Your dad’s a little intense, huh?”
Murphy meows.
“Yeah.” I grab a bottle of water and head toward my room. “I kind of noticed that too.”
My bedroom glows warmly with fairy lights, my grandmother’s quilt soft beneath me as I settle in for my first night in my new home.
It’s quiet. Strange. The sounds are all wrong—the hum of an unfamiliar refrigerator, the creak of floorboards I haven’t learned yet.
But there’s pasta in my stomach and a purring cat who’s somehow found his way onto my bed, and a roommate who might be the most confusing man I’ve ever met.
I think about his face when he tasted the pasta. That tiny crack in his armor. I think about his ears turning pink when I basically called him a smoke show.
I think about the way he washed my mug without being asked, even though it clearly bothered him to wait.
Crew Jensen is a puzzle— all sharp edges and careful control, with something softer underneath that I don’t think he lets many people see.
I want to see it.
Which is probably a terrible idea, given that we’re roommates and I just signed a seventeen-page contract I definitely should have read more carefully.
But that’s a problem for future Emmie.
Current Emmie is exhausted, full of carbs, and ready to sleep in an actual bed for the first time in three weeks.
I pull the quilt up to my chin and close my eyes.
Tomorrow, I’ll start figuring out my new life.
Tonight, I’ll just be grateful I found one.