Page 10

“The guy is going to burn out,” I said around a scoop of mint chocolate chip ice cream.

Raina gave me big eyes and Maddy looked contemplative.

“I mean, he has so much going on. Yet every second or third day, whenever I’m nearing the end of my raspberry juice, he comes home with a new one.

And he always watches at least one episode of Game of Thrones with me.

It’s like . . .” I huffed, letting my back fall against the couch as I pushed my quart of ice cream away. “I don’t know what it’s like.”

“I think he’s trying to impress you.” Raina waggled her brows and Maddy scoffed.

“Or he’s trying to be a man of his word, as good men should be.”

“Well,” Raina stabbed her spoon into her caramel swirl tub. “That’s a possibility too.”

“How do you feel about him trying so hard?”

“I feel like a burden.” I replied to Maddy’s question, hating that I felt that way. “I’ve told him he doesn’t have to do these things, but he always does.”

“Well maybe you should do something for him.”

It was when Raina said things like this that I felt untrusting. Yes, she was my friend. Yes, I loved her to the moon and back. But the woman was a little crazy. She was all about skinny-dipping and gypsy living, while I was a little more restrained.

“What do you have in mind?” Both Maddy and I were giving her wary looks. Both of us had experienced the wilder side of Raina’s advice.

“I don’t know,” she lifted her spoon to wave it in the air. “Give him a night off being the student. Take him out. Get him wasted and just have fun. Remind him that he’s twenty-three years old.”

“Get him wasted? That’s your grand advice?”

“Yep,” she popped her lips. “That’s it.”

I considered. Then to my surprise, I agreed. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Her eyes got huge and then she reached over to slap a hand on Maddy’s thigh. “Baby cakes, will you come?”

Maddy rolled her eyes at the nickname. Honestly, I’d roll my eyes too. “I don’t know.”

“Oh, come on!” Raina bounced excitedly. “It’ll be fun. We’ll all go out together.”

I watched Maddy a little hopefully. It was when her eyes came to me that she sighed and relented. “Fine. I’ll come.”

“Yay!” Raina clapped. “I’ll text Kai. He’s with Beck now.”

“He is?” I was surprised to find Beckett wasn’t planted at the island counter with his books.

“Yeah, they’re at the gym. It’s like the only time Kai sees Beck anymore.”

“I’m glad he’s out. He’s been at the counter so much it’s starting to look like an extension of him.”

This wasn’t a lie. Beckett studied all the time.

I understood and tried to make things easier on him by doing the simple things I could.

I tried to make dinner diligently, because if I didn’t, he ate a banana or a bag of Cheetos, and I couldn’t imagine that was enough food for a man as large as Beckett.

So I cooked. I didn’t hate cooking, so it wasn’t a big deal.

I’d cooked for Raina when I lived with her, but cooking for Beckett felt way different than cooking for Raina. It felt almost intimate in an odd way.

Besides, I had to eat too. I might be sassy, but I wasn’t cruel.

Cooking for myself and ignoring Beckett would be rude.

So I cooked for him as much and as often as I could.

I’d even started making eggs and toast before class each day.

He appreciated the effort and let me know it. So I continued doing it.

This had been going on for nearly a month.

I’d been living with Beckett now for nearly three months.

It was going well. Really well. But I was beginning to feel almost couple-ish even though Beckett had basically stopped hitting on me as he had when I’d first met him the weekend of Raina’s birthday.

We’d moved past the entirely inappropriate comments to an easy friendship where teasing banter and feel-good words were exchanged in place of sardonic quips.

I liked it. I never expected to, but damn, I did.

If someone would have told me a few months ago that I would feel this way about a man I lived with, I would have laughed. I would have laughed at the thought of living with a man, and I would have laughed at the thought of feeling any kind of trust towards any man at all.

It was shortly after I lost my parents in a car accident with the city transit that I’d learned just how untrustworthy men were.

A little girl learns quickly that her daddy is her white knight and her mommy is her queen.

A little girl who loses both at four years old learns that the world isn’t a fairytale and life isn’t easy.

It wasn’t easy for me.

I never got adopted. After the accident, I’d stopped talking. People might want a pretty child, and I was a very pretty child as I’d so often been told, but no one wants a child so touched by grief that they stop talking.

So I’d moved from foster home to foster home until I turned eleven.

I lived with more kids than I could count—and a lot of kids who weren’t kids at all, but demons in the night.

The boys in particular were bad with their mean comments, threats, and tricks.

It only became worse the older I got. Kids in care are defensive.

Their bark is really all the protection they’ve got and I know, being in care myself, that sometimes a vicious bark can invoke a whole lot of terror.

But not all the homes I was sent to were bad.

I had one really good one. Emmie Roberts was a beautiful woman both inside and out.

She was single and had a daughter, Gracelyn, who was kind.

I was eleven years old when I moved in with the Roberts family.

They quickly made me one of them, and for the first time since I’d lost my white knight and queen, I felt like I had a mother and sister.

And then my sister was diagnosed with cancer.

It came out of nowhere and it obliterated not only my life, but also Gracelyn’s.

Emmie lost it after that. I still remember the day she sat me down and told me she couldn’t do it anymore.

I remember the terror that spilled free inside of me as I assured her I’d be fine.

I’d loved Emmie and Gracelyn, but it was when I packed my bags and moved into a new home with a new family that wasn’t quite so nice, that I decided I’d never love again.

I was fourteen and with only four more years in the system it seemed like my best course of action.

I’d been right; especially considering the next three and a half years of my life I lived with Jayden.

“What do you think, Mar?” Raina waved her hand in my face. “Earth to Mar . . .”

“What?” I blinked. Then I blushed.

Okay, so it’s rare, but it happens. Sometimes when I think about my past, I space out. That’s why I didn’t think about it. I didn’t deal with it. I’d shoved it under the rug a long time ago, and no matter how long I lived, I didn’t ever intend to lift that rug. Not for anything.

But lately the thoughts had been slipping free from their prison regardless of my effort to keep them locked away.

She lifted her brows and repeated, “Saturday night work for you?”

“For what?”

“For going out, silly.” Raina giggled, eyes narrowing slightly. “Are you feeling okay?”

“Yeah,” I shifted toward my ice cream desperately needing something to do with my hands. “I’m fine. Just thinking about what I’m going to make for dinner.”

She eyed me carefully before glancing at Maddy. I pretended to ignore the very obvious silent exchange between my two friends as I shoveled a huge scoop of green ice cream into my mouth.

“Okay,” she continued. “Well, Beckett says if you’re in he’s in.”

“I think he likes you,” Maddy said dreamily.

There was a soft smile playing at the corners of her lips, and I wondered if she was thinking about Austin.

Austin had been the one to teach Maddy to live.

I don’t really know how one person can teach another how to live, considering we’re all alive and breathing, but from what I hear, their story was epic and tragic.

From the bits and pieces Maddy had shared over the last few months we’ve been going to the gym, I had to agree.

Their love was something rare, and beautiful, and tragic.

But the gifts he gave to her before he passed away were gifts she would forever cherish until the very end of her days.

If Maddy could still smile after losing everything she had, I didn’t understand why I couldn’t find it in me to do the same.

In a way, it made me feel pathetically weak.

But I just didn’t smile. I hadn’t smiled in years.

It wasn’t until I met Beckett that I’d even wanted to.

“Great,” I said to Raina, making a conscious effort to ignore Maddy’s comment. “Saturday. Let me know when and where.”

“This is great, peanut.” Beckett moaned the words around a mouth full of food.

I had made a lemon chicken stir-fry for dinner. And Beckett was right. It was great.

“Thanks.”

“Where’d you learn to cook?”

“ Google, ” I said matter of fact. “And then Pinterest. ”

He chuckled. “Well, you learn fast on your own.”

“I do everything better on my own.”

It was from the corner of my eye that I saw his jaw lock tight. He chewed. He swallowed. And then his eyes met mine. “It doesn’t have to be that way.”

“What way?”

“You don’t have to be lonely.”

“Lonely works for me.”

“Bullshit.”

“Excuse me?” I cocked my head to the side, lifting one brow.

“I know what lonely is like and it’s not all you’re cracking it up to be.”

“ You know what lonely is like?”

“I do.”

“I doubt that.”

His eyes narrowed and I thought maybe, just maybe I’d pissed him off. Worry flared, but his voice was low when he spoke. “You think you know everything about my life, but you don’t.”

I felt my heart jump a little. “Okay, what was your life like?”

“You think I had it all—everything I wanted, right?”

I swallowed a sip of my juice. “I think you had more than I did.”

“You’d be right. I did have pretty much everything I wanted. I also had affection whenever my parents were around, but they weren’t around much, Amara. My parents are successful people, and it’s no secret that they never wanted kids. Never. I was an accident and that’s never been a secret either.”

Stunned, I had no words for him. I didn’t need them. He continued.

“I had a good life and I know that. I was well provided for, and even though I knew they didn’t want me, they still loved me.

I was lucky for that. They told me often that they were proud of me, but I never really had a family—not the way I wanted.

I never had the mom who cooked and family game nights didn’t exist in my house.

Fuck, you’re the first woman outside of my nanny to cook for me.

” He dropped his fork and it clanged against his plate.

“I didn’t have the kind of childhood Raina and Kaiden had.

I was luckier than you, but I wasn’t that lucky.

And you can’t hide lonely from someone who knows what it looks like. ”

“I . . .” I pushed my rice around my plate. “I’m sorry, Beckett. I didn’t know.”

“I don’t know much about it, but I know you had a shit life, Amara. Don’t be sorry. Just don’t keep living your life like you’ve still got a shit life. You don’t. You’ve got people who care about you now.”

“I . . .”

“You’re not lonely. You’re just choosing to act like it.” He lifted his plate and dropped it in the sink. And then he disappeared into his room, closing his door loudly behind him.

And there I was, left alone with the ghost of his words.