I laughed, shaking my head. “Alright, alright. Maybe I’ve been a little impulsive.”
“A little?”
“Shut up.” He finished chopping the peppers and moved on to the onions, and I turned back to the stove to drain the pasta. The kitchen smelled so damn good, my stomach had no choice but to keep growling. “And what about you?” I asked. “You make plenty of bad decisions.”
“Like what?”
“Like dating Vanessa.”
Kade groaned. “Don’t remind me of that shit, Storm.”
“She was crazy. She used to call you like fifteen times a day.”
“I know.”
“And she cried every time you didn’t answer.”
“Storm, I’m aware.”
I grinned, seasoning the chicken. “I’m just saying. You dodged a bullet when you finally ended that one.”
“I didn’t dodge shit. You and my mother made me end it.”
“Kade, she showed up at your apartment at two in the morning because you didn’t text her goodnight.”
He paused. “Aight, yeah. She was crazy.”
“Thank you.”
“But you weren’t much better with that nigga–what was his name? Derek?”
I froze. “We arenottalking about Dante.”
“Why not? You just brought up my past.”
“Because Derek wasn’t as bad a mistake as Vanessa.”
“A mistake you dated for six months.”
Laughing, I hollered, “Because I was trying to make it work!”
“You were tryna protect his feelings. I respect it, but nah, he was a mistake, Storm.”
I grabbed a pan and set it on the stove, adding olive oil. “Well, I learned my lesson. No more fuck niggas.”
“Good.” He came up behind me, kissing my neck. “‘Cause I had to watch you date all those lame ass niggas for six years.”
“You dated plenty of people, too, Kade.”
“And none of them ever mattered.”
The air shifted, just like that. One second, we were laughing, and the next, the kitchen felt smaller. I turned back to the stove and tossed the vegetables into the pan. They sizzled, filling the silence. “Hand me the chicken,” I said quietly.
He brought it over, standing close enough that I could feel the heat of him beside me. I added the chicken to the pan, stirring everything together, trying to focus on the food rather than the way my hands were shaking.
“You’re good at this shit,” he said after a minute.
“At what?”