“Did you eat?” I asked, my tone softer now, and he shook his head.
This time, I walked to the fridge and pulled out the eggs and a handful of veggies. I set an omelet pan on the stove top, drizzled in some olive oil, and turned on the burner.
I needed to be busy, to make work for my idle hands. In reality, they yearned to smooth their way down Aston’s back. My mouth ached to place kisses along his neck and across his cheek, all the way to his mouth.
Instead, I sliced an onion, diced a pepper, and halved a few cherry tomatoes.
“You don’t have to cook for me,” he said, his voice scratchy, gruff, and oozing sex.
I scurried back to the fridge and grabbed some spinach. I needed to do something, and that something was not kissing him.
“Omelet okay? You still like it without cheese and your eggs mixed with milk?” I kept my gaze glued to the stove and my back to the man in my kitchen.
“Bexley, look at me.”
Ignoring him, I tossed the veggies in the frying pan and gave them a stir with the same concentration as if I were solving the national debt.
“Bex, turn around. Now.”
Reluctantly, I did.
“What’re you doing?” He wasn’t on the stool but walking toward me. “Huh?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t know.”
“You need to calm down.” He pushed a stray hair out of my face and ran his knuckles down my cheek. “I should be asking you if you ate.”
I shook my head because I hadn’t eaten, but he didn’t need to ask me that. That wasn’t his job anymore. Or ever, really.
“Come on.” He guided me toward the stove and stood behind me as he picked up the spatula and brought it to my hand. Together, we stirred the vegetables, his large hand cupping mine. His lips tickled my ear as he whispered from behind me, “I want to take care of you.”
I felt elated and saddened, all at the same time. How could I be so excited over him wanting to care for me . . . after he left me all those years ago? Chose his dad over me?
“Let’s get the eggs.”
He set the spatula down and guided me toward the sink where I’d left the eggs. He repeated the whole hand-in-hand cooking business, cracking eggs and dumping them in a bowl, adding milk, and whisking it all together.
Back to the stove we went.
He nudged the burner down a bit, stirred the vegetables one last time, and poured the eggs over top. Then he turned me, setting my butt on the counter next to the stove.
“Aston,” I whispered, “I don’t think I can. I’ve been waiting for this moment, it seems . . . all my life. But I don’t think I can now. It hurts. The memory of what we were, what we could have been, what later happened. There are too many sides, too many lies,” I said, rambling as my eyes began to sting.
He held my face close, looking deeply into my eyes. “Love isn’t scripted. It’s not a movie or a book where there’s a formula. There’s no plan. In real life, it just happens. This is our story, and it’s my time to come back into your life. We may have had a messy middle, only to get a little messier with this shit going on. But the ending is going to be perfect.”
I felt weak everywhere. My heart, my knees, even my toes. “How can you be sure?”
Ignoring my question, he said, “Now we’re going to eat, and then I’ll tell you what I learned. Go sit.”
Somehow the tables had been turned. I was now sitting on my kitchen stool, and Aston was walking toward me with half an omelet.
“Coffee? Pancakes?”
I could only nod. He poured me a cup of coffee, and I couldn’t help myself. “You make pancakes?”
“Damn straight.” Without another word, he started rifling through my cabinets, apparently looking for pancake mix.
Aston
“Here, take this, and we’ll talk.” I handed Bexley the coffee and took a plate for myself.
As she took a long sip, I watched her swallow. It was a beautiful sight. Bexley had always thought she was plain, had never realized how stunning she truly was. She was natural and real, everything I’d never been exposed to, and all I ever wanted to have.
It hadn’t been possible years ago, but now it was. I was through with being a pussy. Through bending for my dad. And definitely through with being accused of something I didn’t do.
I grabbed my plate and a cup of coffee for myself and stood next to where she sat on the stool, leaning my hip against the counter. “My dad thinks you and Milly had something to do with all of this.”
“What?” Bexley jerked as she looked up, almost knocking her coffee off the counter.
“He does, and now I have to prove him wrong, in addition to proving my own innocence. So I need to ask you . . . do you think Milly would do something like this?”
“How dare you!” Bexley went to get up, and I eased her back onto the stool.
“There’s a lot going on with Milly that you don’t know about. Try not to get your panties in a bunch.”
“Oh yeah? Are you spying on her too?” Bexley chugged the rest of her coffee, never taking her death stare off me.
“No, but the guy my dad had watching you couldn’t help but learn some stuff about her. A casualty of the job . . . we’ll call it.”
Bexley’s mouth hung open, and I couldn’t help but want to shut her up with something on her mouth—like my own. But I knew better than that.
“I thought you had someone watching me. Now it’s your dad who has someone? Who else will you blame in all this?”
“It’s both of us, actually. He had someone watching you, which is how he found out I was keeping
