Page 43 of Sweethearts and Savages
And he was kind of hot. Though I wanted to growl at myself for even thinking that.
I strode over to the kitchen and looked in the cupboards. Most of the cans didn’t even have labels. Kell stood behind me so that the chain was slack. But then he was the one who’d made me put the cuff around my good wrist, so he had to be close.
I grabbed a container down and opened it. Flour. Nice. I could work with this.
Kell cleared his throat, and I turned to look at him. Pink flushed his cheeks and his eyes looked too bright. “Here, I’ll hold this for you,” he said, grabbing the canister of flour.
I grabbed a silver sachet that had the ambiguous title of “stew” printed on the side. That was it. Well... I could work with that too.
“Stand,” I said, pointing to a few feet away from me, because I was finding his scent intoxicating. He was beginning to smell delicious and it was ruining my good sense.
I made a dough out of the flour and some warm water, happy that I could use my bad hand enough that it didn’t make much difference to the mixture. I left it off to the side and opened the stew. It smelled a bit like dog food, but hopefully I could season it and it would be fine.
I worked silently, taking a ball of dough, rolling it flat in my palm, adding some filling and then closing it up. I pointed to the pile of dough, lifting my chin to tell Kell to do it too.
“Seriously? You make it look easy but I have my doubts.”
Still, he gave it a go, saying fuck more times than making a stuffed flatbread really needed, and I had to admit, his first one looked a little mangled. I gave him an encouraging smile and he tried again.
This was so damn messed up. But I was starving for something hot and not stale, so I’d look past the fact that I’d probably had some kind of crazy mental break in thinking this was okay.
It might have been that my wolf was broken and was insanely attracted to him. Might have been that the Omega in me was drawn to the sadness that hung around his eyes, even when he was smiling. It might have been because of his dark hair that seemed to be artfully messy all the time, plus he had a jawline so sharp I lost my good sense. What I had left after the accident anyway. He was a type of danger that had stalked me my entire life, and now that I was too broken to feel fear, something else had popped up in its place. Lust.
Finally, I had a plate filled with tiny, floured flatbreads and even Kell looked impressed. He picked up the griddle and some oil that had been hiding in the back of the cupboard, and I grabbed the plate of food.
He reached in to put the griddle directly on the coals of the fire, slopping a bit of oil in. At least he wasn’t completely useless. But as I stopped in the middle of the room, my wrist spasmed, my hand going dead and the plate falling to the floor.
“No!”
I dived for it, but missed, and the stuffed breads landed all over the floor. A mess. Like my fucking life. “No. No,” I whispered, dropping to my knees and peeling them off the old, dirty floorboards. Sadness welled up in my chest, and it wouldn’t be contained.
Not about the food. Or the fact I was being held hostage. Or even the fact my body was fucked from the accident.
It waseverything. The sadness wailed past my lips and spilled from my eyes.
Kell was suddenly there, righting the plate. “Hey, no, it’s okay. They’ll be okay.” He sounded nearly desperate as he grabbed them and piled them high on the plate again, ignoring the black specks of dirt and other stuff I didn’t want to think about. “The fire will burn all this off. Enit, it’s okay.”
I shook my head. It wasn’t okay at all. Not even a little okay. I just curled into a ball, my body bowed over my knees, and continued to cry. He took them over to the fire, dropping a couple in like he could prove to me that it was okay. Like it was just the bread that I was crying over.
I could smell them cooking, but sadness had curdled my stomach. Arms wrapped around me, picking me up like I weighed nothing. He dropped me in front of the fire, grabbing out a flatbread, holding it in front of me.
“See, totally fine,” Kell said, as he juggled it from one hand to another. He took a bite, breathing around the hot bread. “Holy shit, this is amazing.”
I turned my face away, trying to make myself stop crying but I just cried harder.
“Fuck, Enit. Don’t cry like that.” He sounded almost pained, and then he surprised us both by dragging me onto his lap and wrapping me in his arms like I was a child who’d fallen over and gotten a boo-boo. His arms looped around me, my tearstained face pressed into his chest. “It’s going to be okay.”
The outrageousness of that comment made me drag in a ragged breath. “No.” I turned on his lap, realizing we were now sitting on the couch. “Not okay. Maybe never okay.”
I just wanted fucking connecting words and whole sentences. To be able to speak without having to pause and force my lips around it. I wanted to be able to hold a plate. I wanted to be at home in the arms of my partners and not in the arms of a stranger who made me feel things I had no damn right feeling.
His face shuttered, and he heaved in a breath. “Okay. You might have a point there. But this moment, right here, right now? I can fix that.” He lifted the fried bread to my lips and I opened my mouth instinctively, taking a tiny bite. I ignored the intimacy of the action, especially in supernatural culture, and just enjoyed the warmth of the crisp bread against my tongue.
I made a small hum of satisfaction, and I felt his chest rumble. “See? They might not be perfect, but we can make them work.”
I wondered if he was talking about the food or the situation we found ourselves in. Because there were only ten days to go on his timeline, and he hadn’t told me what his endgame was. Maybe he was a freaking sociopath and toying with me like a cat would a mouse. I nodded, because what did I even have to say to that really?
I slid from his lap and sat in front of the fire, placing some more flatbreads on the griddle. I had to close off that small part of me that hoped my life would be anything but a shitshow, and just take it as it came. If you had no expectations for tomorrow, then you couldn’t be disappointed.
