Page 30 of Puck My Life

“Mal, let me teach you. I promise you can do this.”

He shudders and sniffs. I see his shoulders shaking.

“I’m not leaving you. Please, Mal, I’m only a ten-minute drive away,” I whisper. “I promise I’m not gone; I’m just not here.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?” Mal says thickly.

I shake my head, but he stands up. Our eyes meet in the mirror, and the pain in them shakes me down to the last shred of my control. They chose the wrong person; I can’t fix this.

“Let me show you how to cook an omelet.” I suggest, throwing out a distraction because I can’t win this fight with him.

Mal allows me to escape his arms. I lead him back to the kitchen and start cleaning up. After a moment, Mal follows my lead, scrubbing the dishes while I clean up the walls and stovetop. Once everything is clean, I open the fridge and pull out the ingredients. I’m glad I had the groceries delivered yesterday.

“Are you happy?” Mal asks.

I can’t lie to him, not anymore than I already have, but I don’t know how to answer that.

“It’s going to take some getting used to,” I say evasively. “Here, come sit beside me. So, we want to cut the bacon, capsicum, and tomatoes. We need onions and garlic, too. Okay.”

I run through talking about the cooking and prep, instructing him by softly telling him everything I know, until all the food is cooking in the frying pan, and there’s nothing left to do but turn and stare up at his gorgeous face.

“Don’t you want to see how you can do without me?”

“Honestly? No, I always thought we’d be together,” Mal says sadly. “I know it’s selfish, but I want you back.”

My heart is aching, and he just keeps firing arrows into it.

“I want things to go back to how they were before.”

I snap my mouth closed on my confession and inhale through my nose as I get four plates out.

“Things change, Mal. That’s a part of life.”

“But they don’t have to!” Mal says earnestly. “They don’t have to change. What we had worked.”

“For you, what about me, Mal?”

“You were happy; you can’t tell me you weren’t.”

“Of course, I was happy. But I also want more.”

“What more could you possibly want?”

“A boyfriend,” I snap back. “Children. A pack of my own. Someone who comes to my bed not reeking of another woman!” I shout.

Mal recoils, his expression undergoing lightning changes. “You want…fine. Let’s do it.”

I choke and slowly turn back to him. “What?”

“Let’s go out. We can get bonded or married and then have kids. It will be you and me forever.”

“Malcolm, you don’t know what you're saying,” I say faintly.

“I know exactly what I’m saying.” He advances on me and cages me against the bench. “Let me be the alpha who sleeps beside you every night, smelling of you.”

He’s potent. I’ve never had that charm directed at me, but he’s made it almost impossible to think clearly.

“You’d have sex with me? Even though you don’t think of me like that?”