Page 9

We travel though rows of bushes in autumnal colors that tower above my car. I try to peer around them, spying only a hint of a blue roof. Maybe he lives in a hedge maze, and he’s bringing me to help fight the minotaur. I start to laugh.

Then the hedges end.

I stop laughing.

And begin to hyperventilate.

“It’s…it’s…”

“A shack? A murder cellar? A tent in the foothills?” Lucy switches from joking to panic fast. “Sade? Talk to me.”

“It’s a mansion!” I cry out. “Columns, there’s fucking columns.”

“Columns for fucking or columns of people fucking?” Lucy asks, her voice light as if I can’t hear a twinge of jealousy.

“Balconies, a freaking statue!” Who the hell has a statue on their front lawn that isn’t a flamingo or gnome?

Aubry’s truck takes a left turn and we pass under the house. It’s so big, they built it over the driveway. As you do.

“You’re kidding. Very funny, Sadie. Where are you really?”

I glance down at my phone. “Brookhollow.”

His truck swerves and I start to follow toward a five-car garage. Then I look up.

“Holy pizza rolls!” I cry out. The view is beyond anything I expected.

We’re perched high on a hill giving us a view of the endless valley below.

Trees rustle in the breeze. Far in the distance are the mountain peaks, blue blending into the darkening sky.

But as I stare across the manicured lawn, my brain fizzles out. “There’s a moat.”

“A moat? Like alligators and shit? Are they gonna throw boiling oil on you?”

“A river, there’s a river circling the house right on the edge. Oh my god, it’s so pretty.”

“Hmph.”

This is impossible. A hot guy who saves my life lives in a house so beautiful I’m tearing up? Not in a million years did I think that could happen.

“Well, aren’t you lucky. All cause you can’t remember what’s in baba ganoush,” Lucy harrumphs.

I finally tear my eyes away from the view to find an even better one sliding out of his truck.

Aubry waves me on.“You can park over there.” He points to the garage next to him.

I do as he asks and sit in silence for a second trying to collect myself.

There isn’t much time as Aubry saunters into the open garage.

“I’ve got to go,” I tell my friend. “Talk to you later.”

“There better be pics,” she shouts as I end the call. This time I remember my seat belt and leap out of my car. He stands right outside, arms crossed. “What do you think?”

That you’re trying way too hard to get me into bed. It doesn’t even have to be a bed.

“It’s…incredible.” This house has to cost millions. How can he afford it? “They must pay bouncers really well in Vegas.”

His little pride smile dips. “Not many can do what I did. Come on, kitchen’s this way.”

Instead of heading inside, he loops back around through the backyard oasis.

There’s a TV outside. A couch that costs more than my whole bedroom rims the half room.

I spy a grill and a pizza oven built into brick just next to a kitchenette.

Ceiling high windows stream light as if they were anticipating the arrival of their master.

Aubry tests the door handle of one of the french doors, then opens it up for me. I brace myself for some baroque opulence, a chandelier here, a suit of armor there, but I’m met with…white. Flat. And a whole lot of space.

“Wow,” I say, wincing as my voice bounds back to me a hundred fold. “It’s very spacious.”

He shuts the door. “I’m in the process of filling it.”

Staring around the empty room with a ceiling that stretches into the stars, I ask, “How long does that take?”

“Depends on if we have dessert.”

The innuendo hits me the moment he walks past. In all the panicking about the restaurant I didn’t take the time to properly smell him.

I expect a man like him to be all dark noir with edgy base notes like wolverine growl or bare-knuckle brawl.

But I lean closer and get a whiff of green.

Like a fresh garden in the sunlight, or a salad from one of those places that charges forty bucks.

“Kitchen’s this way,” he says before I can grab his arm and give a deeper sniff.

“Do you do a lot of gardening?” I ask as he flips on the light.

Ah, here’s what I was expecting. Enough kitchen islands to form their own nation.

All in granite, of course. One of them has a farmhouse sink built in.

The other counters are empty save a box of cereal and a tin of cat food.

Aubry approaches the fridge with glass doors to display everything inside that’s already neatly tucked into more dividers.

“I haven’t in a long while,” he answers me, then begins to pull out ingredients. “What about you? Do you like plants?”

“They’re nice to look at, but every time I try to grow anything in my place, it withers. Or it gets moldy then withers. Or it falls off my desk, then gets moldy, then withers.”

He pauses, his arms loaded with goodies, to stare at me. “And how do you feel about vegetables?”

Is that about my weight? I fight off the frown and joyfully cry out, “Love ‘em.”

“Great,” he smiles, the awkward moment gone in an instant. “Because I’ve got a bunch I need to use up and what better time than tonight?” Aubry reaches for one of the knives hanging off the wall.

“Wait!”

The way he freezes, biceps taut and flexing distracts my brain before I reel back in. “I should be the one cooking. You saved my life. It’s the least I can do.”

“Are you certain?” he asks and takes a step back.

I roll up my imaginary sleeves and sidle up, prepared to wow him with my culinary expertise.

“What do we have to work with here? Zucchini. Okay. A mess of green beans. Sprouts. Um… Banana sauce? Coconut milk. I know that one. And tamarind. Great in curry. What is that?” I pick up the jar with a shrimp on the label. “Bagoong?”

“Shrimp paste,” Aubry says, a smile rising.

This is not the time to fail so bad I give him food poisoning. Raising my hands, I bow away. “Yeah, okay. I might be out of my depth here. Can I ask about the banana sauce?”

He slides into place and grabs a bulb of garlic, then a cutting board. “Do you want to try it?”

“What is it?”

A sly smile lifts his lips. “I suppose you shall have to wait and see.”

He lifts the knife, then pauses. “I nearly forgot.” The knife drops to the cutting board and he turns to me. “Your allergy. What is it?”

“My…”

Those eyes staring at me, not crinkled in concern as I gasp for air and fumble for the epipen. No…they’re laughing.

“Sadie?” A hand lands on my arm, and I jerk back. Aubry doesn’t move. “Are you okay?”

“Yes. I’m good. I just…” The ghost of trauma past wallops me in the head. Sucking in tears, I stare at the ceiling so he can’t see me fall apart. “I don’t like to tell men…people what I’m allergic to.”

“Why?”

It’s a good question. My one dating rule makes me sound a little insane, but most other men don’t even know I’m deathly allergic to anything. None of them had to save my life.

Rubbing my fingers on my scalp, I aim my gaze to Aubry. He’s not Derek. He won’t act like Derek. I can just tell him.

“It’s eh…” My throat closes up. I start clawing down the skin as if I can open it from the outside. It’s drawn Aubry’s curiosity, his eyes gleaming. I can’t tell him.

“I had this boyfriend and he’d, sometimes, give me things to eat that had…my allergy in them. Little things, and whenever it happened he’d apologize. Say it was a mistake. I just assumed he forgot. I forget all the time.”

Oh, how fucking naive I was.

My heart pounds faster, as if my blood pressure’s spiking from an attack. “It kept happening. Every couple months or so, I’d wind up in the hospital. Always an apology, always a mistake. Then one night…”

The flash of him standing over me, watching with this little grin. Like a cat entertained with a dying bug.

I fight to steady my breathing, my throat cracking into dust as I gasp for air. “It was bad. Really bad. One of the worst attacks of my life. I had my epipen and was about to stab myself when Derek… He knocked it out of my hand.”

Everything was a blur after that. I remember falling, then waking up in the hospital, Derek once again apologizing. As if I couldn’t remember what he did. As if I didn’t know it would happen again.

I cram all that old trauma back into its box and smile at Aubry. He’s unreadable, his face stone, but his eyes burn. Trying to laugh, like it was all some joke, I say, “So that’s why I don’t like to tell people my allergy. In case they forget. It’s on me if I…mess up.”

“I see,” he intones like a funeral bell chiming over a plague town.

Please don’t make me tell you.

I can’t.

Please.

“Well…” He turns back to his spread of ingredients and rests his hands on the counter. “Is anything here a threat to you?”

Even knowing there’s no chance of him having eggplant, I peer over his shoulder. Making a show of looking everything over, I nod and laugh. “Looks good.”

He turns his head. I only catch him in profile as he asks, “Derek, wasn’t it?”

“I’d rather not talk, or think about that. If it’s all the same.” I’m here to eat dinner and have wild sex, not roll out the carpet for past trauma.

Derek’s a nothing to me. A mistake I fixed by dumping him, blocking him, and moving as far as I could. I will not let his ghost ruin this, or anything else in my life.

To my relief, Aubry nods. I move to step to the side when I spy the veins rising on the back of his hands.

He’s gripping so hard to the counter he looks about to rip it off of its nails.

“Please keep a watch and warn me if I go for anything dangerous,” he says.

With a smile in place, he worries one of the cloves of garlic between his palms until the paper flies off.

Aubry’s quick with the knife. I barely see him move, just watch the garlic go from being a bulb to a fine mince. As he dices the zucchini, he glances over at me. “Could you fetch the pasta out of that cupboard?”