Working Back

by BJ Harvey

  “Moose knuckle? Really?”

  “I ran out of curse words.”

  “So you decided to use a random curse-word generator?”

  Her eyes lose some of their fire, and her lips twitch. “No. But that could be a good idea in future. Someone should invent that.”

  I chuckle. “They have. Jax got me a copy for Christmas once. I think it’s in a box somewhere.”

  “Well then, until we find it for future use, I’ll endeavor to be more creative.”

  Walking down the hall toward her, I study her from behind to look for any visible injuries, because all my past experiences with Faith cooking have resulted in damage of some kind.

  I see her still in one piece, I meet her eyes and hear her huff out a grumbled—though nonetheless cute—sigh. “Give me some credit, Cook.”

  “I’m just going by past experience, Cook.”

  Her gaze softens, a wry smile appearing on her face. “Dinner will be ready in five minutes.”

  “Okay. It smells good, babycakes,” I say, closing the distance between us and placing my hand at the side of her neck to press my mouth to hers. The tip of her tongue touches my lips. I slowly pull away, knowing we won’t eat if I deepen the kiss in the way I’d like to. “Be back soon.”

  “Okay. I’ll dish it up. But don’t worry—Cohen’s on duty if any medical assistance is required,” she adds. She turns around and returns to the kitchen, leaving me standing there dumbfounded.

  After a super quick shower, I put on a tee and sweatpants and exit the bedroom.

  Entering the living area, I freeze at the sight of our makeshift dining table covered in a red tablecloth, two plates, and cutlery laid out on top with a bottle of red wine, two glasses, and a single white candle in the middle.

  Faith walks around the kitchen island and shoots me a coy smile as she carries a square baking dish filled to the brim and topped with golden, bubbly cheese. I take a deep breath through my nose, mostly out of habit as there is a well-established history of my now wife, not knowing when something has finished cooking. Except all I can smell is deliciousness, making my stomach grumble in both appreciation and aggravation that I’m not already shoving food into my mouth.

  “That smells amazing,” I say, moving towards the table. Her smile brightens.

  “I just hope it tastes as good.” She places the lasagna onto the table and goes to pull out her chair, but I beat her to it, pushing it back in when she takes a seat. I reach for the uncorked wine bottle and slowly pour the scarlet liquid into her glass before handing it to her and filling my own.

  Sitting down, I reach for my glass and lift my arm in the air. “To surprise homemade meals,” I say with a grateful grin.

  Her answering blush almost matches the color of our drinks as she touches her glass to mine. “Thank you.”

  “I think I should be the one thanking you.”

  “You haven’t tasted it yet.”

  “Don’t need to. I can already tell it’s Mom’s recipe.”

  Her head jerks back. “How?”

  “Thirty-four years of experience.”

  “But it might not—”

  “Did you make it?”

  “Well, yes. But—”

  “No buts, Faith. What helps makes Mom’s cooking so good is the love she pours into it. Seeing your face and smelling this food, I just know I’ll be going back for seconds.”

  She opens her mouth to no doubt voice an objection, but I know in my gut that even if this pasta is half as good as I think it’s gonna be, it’ll be more than edible. I also know I’ll go back for seconds just to see the blinding smile on Faith’s face again.

  “Now let me dish it up, and we can enjoy my wife’s first home-cooked meal for us in our makeshift house.”

  Faith frowns but quickly schools her expression. She reaches out and covers my hand resting on the table, her soft eyes locked with mine. “Thank you.”

  “It’s gonna be me thanking you soon enough, babycakes,” I say, turning over my palm and giving her fingers a gentle squeeze.

  After serving dinner, I feel her gaze on me. I scoop food onto my fork and place it between my lips. My eyes close as rich tomato, perfectly cooked pasta, and tasty bechamel sauce overwhelm my taste buds. I’m powerless to stop the moan of appreciation rumbling in my throat.

  “Damn, that’s good.” I catch Faith’s nervous expression that she doesn’t even try to hide. “Your turn,” I say with a nod toward her plate.

  She picks up her own fork and takes her own small, tentative taste, her eyes widening when she does.

  “Oh my God,” she whispers. “It’s actually good.” Her voice is filled with wonder and disbelief, and without thinking, I lean over, cup her jaw, and pull her in for a quick brush of the lips.

  I flex my fingers against her skin. “You did good, baby.”

  “I wanted to cook for you, but I wanted to make sure I did your Mom’s recipe justice. I didn’t think it was conducive to a good marriage to burn down the shack just over a month after the wedding.”

  My head drops back as I burst out laughing, my hand falling down to the table as I do.

  When I look over at her again, she’s smirking at me, the tension she was holding in her shoulders now gone.

  “In case I didn’t make it abundantly clear, this is phenomenal. It’s just as good as Mom’s and given it’s my favorite meal of all time, that’s saying something.”

  “I’m glad. It is pretty good. Much better than the last time I tried—and failed—to cook for you. Do you remember?”

  I swallow my mouthful and grin, shaking my head at the memory. “Are you talking about the moussaka that was more mousse than ‘aka?’”

  Her answering giggle fills the room, and as I watch her do it with avid fascination, I wonder how it’s possible for her to become even more beautiful as she’s gotten older.

  I take another sip of wine, and we fall into comfortable silence as we eat.

  When my plate is clear, and my stomach is full to the brim, I cradle my glass in my hand and lean back in my chair. Faith settles herself into a similar position.

  “Honestly, if you keep cooking like that, I’m gonna have to add a few more miles when I go running.”

  Her eyes sparkle with amusement. “Would that be much of a hardship? Good food will always win out in my book.”

  “Mine too. Besides, there are always other ways to work up a sweat,” I say with a grin. “So, is that why you went over to Mom’s house last Sunday?”

  Her mouth drops open, but she quickly recovers, her gaze turning suspicious. “Let me guess. April told you?”

  I shrug. “She mentioned she saw you and said you were making my favorite dish. I put two and two together.”

  “April and Ronnie were there when I arrived.”

  “Does that mean there might be more meals like this in my future?” I ask, hopefully. I’ve loved cooking for us so far, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love the fact Faith has gone out of her way to learn how to make my favorite food for me.

  “Well I haven’t had to call Cohen for medical advice as yet, so the future is looking bright,” she says.

  I lock eyes with hers and wait until I have her full attention. “Yes, it is.”

  Her lips part and I know my words have struck the right chord.

  I want to keep talking to her, loving the relaxed, open mood she’s got going. She’s been taking the whole marriage/cohabitation/forced sleeping arrangements in her stride for the past six weeks, but tonight is the first time I’ve really seen her fully relax. The shutters behind her eyes are not only open wide, they’ve been ripped down and thrown away, and that gives me hope that she is going to let me in—in all ways, including physically. It’s not a hardship, sharing a bed with her every night, and seeing her clothes explode across the bedroom floor every morning when she rummages for something to wear before jumping into the shower. But it is starting to cause me physical pain to sleep with her barely clothed body draped over
mine when I don’t feel she’s ready for me to make a move just yet.

  “So, tell me, how did you survive twelve years living by yourself in a strange country and not cook for yourself?” I ask.

  Her smile widens. “Roommates.”

  My brows lift before she carries on.

  “When I first arrived, I was living with two other interns in staff accommodation. We hit it off, so when the internship finished, instead of moving into dorms at the university there, we found a flat together and moved in.”

  “Female, male, elephant?” I ask, trying hard to hide the gravel in my voice at the thought of her living with another man, even in a strictly friends-roommate capacity. I may have been with other women, but I’ve never lived with one, and she told me she hadn’t lived with a man she’d dated either.

  Her twitching lips tell me I’ve definitely failed in my endeavors. “Girls, Bry. Sasha and Kelly. We struck a deal as soon as they experienced my first Aussie culinary disaster. I took on a bigger share of the cleaning, and they split the cooking. It worked out well.”

  “Smart,” I say with a grin, taking another drink.

  “I can do many things well. Cooking is not one of them.”

  “This was fucking incredible.”

  “How about you? I remember you cooking me gourmet meals to get into my pants back in the day.”

  “It worked too,” I say, waggling my brows and earning me a snort.

  She grins and shakes her head. “Yeah, it was totally the food.”

  I watch her, really fucking liking the Faith I’ve got in front of me today and thinking back, every day we’ve spent together since City Hall has been better than the last.

  She’s proven most of my concerns from before I saw her again to be unfounded. She’s still the Faith Baker I loved completely when she left—she’s just a little wiser, more seasoned almost. Definitely more worldly, and day by day, I’m seeing her confidence and individuality shine through brighter and bolder.

  This Faith is brave and unapologetic. There’s something about seeing her work hard to get us back to where we should’ve been all along that touches me in a way I didn’t think possible. I’d hoped, sure, but going into this, all the planning and possible scenarios I’d imagined, the past six weeks have been better than I could have imagined.

  She’s still not there, but she’s pretty damn close.

  And I can’t wait to get to the place where I know she never wants to leave.

  “So, you’ve still got tenants in your house?” she asks, leaning her arms on the table.

  “Yeah. They’re on a three-month lease, but after that, it’ll be month-to-month since I didn’t know—”

  “Whether you’d be married and happy, or divorced and miserable?” she asks with a teasing smirk.

  I wince, and the flash in her eyes tells me she didn’t miss it. “It wasn’t like that.”

  “Bry, I’m not mad. You may have known you were going to ask me to marry you, but you didn’t know whether I’d accept, and neither one of us could have known how this was going to turn out,” she says, waving her hand between us.

  A small smile curves my lips. “I was hopeful.”

  “And now?”

  We stare at each other, and I watch her fingers nervously tap on the tabletop, her shoulders held tight and tense. “Now it’s less hopeful, more sure.”

  That at least has her letting out a soft sigh of relief. “So after this ‘pile of sticks’ is done, what happens then?”

  “We don’t have to worry about that just yet,” I say, knowing it’s noncommittal, but we’re only five weeks into a twelve-week flip, and an impromptu marriage. It’s too soon to plan for forever, as much as I’d love to do precisely that.

  “But we’ll talk about it when the time comes?” She sounds unsure, and I hate it. She’s not the only one.

  I reach over and take her hand, looking her straight in the eye, so she knows I’m telling the truth. “We’ll talk about where we’re going next when it gets closer to a time when a decision needs to be made, okay?”

  “Okay,” she says, a gentle smile appearing, and the fist that had wrapped itself around my heart releases its grip. It’s not that I’m unsure about my feelings for Faith, or even her feelings for me. It’s that once burned, twice shy, and I know I’d never be able to stand in the way if she was to get another opportunity to work somewhere other than Chicago and wanted to leave again.

  Lost in my thoughts, I belatedly realize Faith has stood up and is reaching out for my plate. Instead, I push out of my seat and grab hers out of her hand, stacking it on top of mine.

  “Why don’t you sit on the couch and put a movie on, and I’ll just clear the table and quickly do the dishes?” I ask.

  “Oh no, I can help.”

  “No. You can go sit your pretty ass on the couch and pick something for us to watch, or do anything else you feel like doing as long as your feet are up and that wine glass stays in your hand. You’re not doing the dishes with me. New rule—whenever you cook me a meal that makes me want to marry you all over again, I’ll do the cleaning up, and I’ll do whatever you want to say thank you.”

  A slow-growing smile curves her lips, and her eyes dip to my mouth, unmissable heat filling them. “Whatever I want?” she asks, her voice a rough whisper.

  “Yep,” I say slowly, enunciating the P under her focused stare.

  “How about a foot rub then?” she says with a slow-growing coquettish grin.

  Oh, hell yes. That I can do.

  Faith

  For thirty minutes I’ve been staring at the television, pretending to watch a movie about Egyptian mummies coming to life. My mind has been focused on Bryant’s rough hands cradling my feet, one at a time, as he strokes his thumbs deep into my arches. I’ve almost fallen into a foot-rub coma twice already. I’m lost in sensation when his warm palms slide over my ankles, moving up to my calves.

  Our gazes lock, and I physically feel the change in the air.

  His touch is the same—soft, firm, caressing, reassuring, intentional, calming, goddamn mind-bending caresses moving up my calves.

  But before this goes in the direction I want it to go in, we need to kick that old elephant out of the room.

  When Bry’s palm runs over my knee, I reach out and cover his hand with mine. He slowly lifts his head to look at my face.

  “So you know I went to see the moms last weekend and learned how to make that dinner?”

  “Yeah, and it was damn good, too.”

  “Well… your mom said something that’s kind of stuck with me during the week, and I think we need to talk about it.”

  His fingers flex against my leg, but he doesn’t look away. His jaw flexes, and while past Faith might have shied away from the potential consequences of this kind of discussion, the Faith I am now—the Faith Bryant has encouraged me to be since I got back—wants to face it head-on.

  “Whatever you need, Faith.” His caramel eyes are soft yet intense, the power behind them—the love I see in them—making my heart swell so big it could easily choke me.

  We sit there staring at each other, the air in the room growing thick and heavy like a weight on my shoulders that could flatten me if I let it. Yet, I know it won’t bury me because I want this—want Bryant—and I swore to myself the minute I stepped off the plane at O’Hare that I’d stop at nothing to get the future Bryant I deserve.

  “What did Mom say?” he asks, his arms wrapped around my legs, holding me close.

  “She said you knew why I left,” I say quietly, almost a whisper.

  His eyes flash, their intensity spearing through me. “It took a little while but getting scraps of information from Ez, and knowing you almost better than I knew myself back then, it didn’t take me long.”

  I move closer, needing more of him—more Bryant, more everything. “I’m sorry. I’ve never said it, and I didn’t because I was a coward.”

  “You wanna explain that?”

  “I always kne
w I’d marry you. You have been the only boy—then, man—I’ve ever loved. The only one I’ve ever wanted.”

  “But not at twenty-two…”

  I nod. “We were such a certainty, such a forgone conclusion. I lost myself in our relationship, and if I’d said yes that night, I knew I’d never get to find myself.”

  He leans in, his eyes so soft yet conflicted, so full of everything yet also lost. He’s a contradictory mixture of confusion, understanding, love and hurt, all of it summing up the lifespan of our relationship—the good, the bad, and the stupid.

  He lifts a hand to cup my cheek, his gaze roaming my face. “I get that, babycakes, I really do. I didn’t at the time, but once I got past the hurt, and the bruised ego, and the shock that you were there one minute then suddenly you were on the other side of the world, I realized that you did what you felt you had to do. And I respected that, it’s just…” He takes a deep, shuddering breath and I see every emotion I’m feeling reflected back at me.

  This moment is hard. It’s raw. It’s everything we’ve been avoiding but everything we’ve needed to say in order to move forward. I still can’t deny the existence of that small sliver of fear locked away deep inside, the part of me that still worries Bry won’t be able to ever fully trust me not to leave again.

  I cover his hand on my face with my own, anchoring him to me. “Just what?”

  His eyes move over my shoulder, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows hard then slowly drags his gaze back to mine.

  “You were able to make a complete break. Clean. Harsh. Totally fucking heartbreaking, and it made me so angry. I’d never contemplated hating you but for those months after you left when you wouldn’t answer my e-mails, wouldn’t call me? I really wanted to. It was so easy for you to walk away, I doubted everything we had. Fourteen years of friendship, eight years of more. All of it, and I let that feeling of rejection distort me.” His eyes glisten with tears, and that is the final straw, my own tears falling freely down my face, over our hands.

  That pain I felt before is no longer a spear. It’s a fucking big-ass meat cleaver, slashing me open.