He pushes his hands through his hair in frustration. “Promise me you’ll let me drive you next time?”
“No, but I’ll ask you for a ride if I need one.” I smile and wink at him to soften my words. He grumbles and scowls. But that’s all he’s going to get out of me. I’ve seen how much the man works. How busy he is. There’s no reason for him to chauffeur me around.
Plus, this is too new, and I don’t want to be that dependent on him for anything right now. Everything changed this afternoon, but I don’t think I trust him to not turn back into the reserved guy who ignored me for weeks.
“So,” I say, ready to change the subject, “weren’t you bringing dinner.” Kade’s face reddens slightly, and it’s freaking adorable. He threads his fingers through the back of his hair, and I’m immediately distracted by watching the muscles in his bicep shift.
“I uh…realized I didn’t actually ask you what you wanted. I thought maybe we could pick something out together, and I’ll run and grab it. Or we could go out?” He looks at me expectantly. Right. Stop staring and talk to the man.
“My socks are off, Kade.”
“Ah…I see that.” He pauses, confused. “You said it like I should know what that means.”
“I have to wear closed-toed shoes in the garage, Kade. I hate shoes. My feet must be free. I’m not putting shoes back on today.”
He’s chuckling again. “Okay. So we eat here. Wouldn’t want to cage the toes again.”
Jeez, I like him. He couldn’t give me shit about the shoe thing, but he seems happy to roll with whatever. But I’m really freaking hungry, so I head to the fridge and start pulling out ingredients.
“Becca…what are you doing?” he asks in confusion.
“Getting taco stuff out. I’m starving.”
“Fuck.” The sorry in his voice pulls my head out of the fridge. “I’ll go grab something quick. I can be back in twenty.”
My heart drops…this is so bad. “You…you,” I can’t even get the words out, even the idea of it so horrible. “You don’t like tacos?” I’m horrified. I’m sure my face is a combination ofwho the fuck are youandget out of my house.
Kade’s booming laughter suddenly fills the small room. “Fuck, Becca. The look on your face.” He snorts and wipes his eyes. “I just meant that I asked you on a date. It’s my job to feed you.”
I nod but push for clarification. “But how do you feel about tacos?” I cross my arms.
He studies me before huffing out another laugh. “I fucking love tacos.”
I relax, glad one of the biggest relationship hurdles we’ve ever faced in our five minutes of dating has been jumped over.
“That could have been a deal-breaker, dude.” I smile like I’m joking. But I’m really not. Kade’s really hot. But…Tacos. He’s shaking his head at me, but it’s okay. He can think I’m ridiculous as long as he keeps looking at me with those warm eyes of his.
“You’re…going to cook me dinner? Like from scratch?” He sounds surprised, and I can’t decide if I should be offended that he doubts my skills or sad that no one’s cooked for him. I settled for snorting and shaking my head.
“No way,” I say, seeing his smile dim slightly. “You’re helping. Grab a knife and a cutting board and get your ass over here.”
His smile comes back in full force as he follows my instructions. It stays as he methodically cuts the veggies. We work side by side at the counter, arms brushing and assembling our dinner. We settle into the small two-seater table loaded with bowls of meat and toppings.
Kade groans when he takes his first bite, then quickly takes another. I hum in agreement, my mouth too stuffed to talk. So. Good. When the edge is taken off our hunger, we settle back in our chairs.
“You know, this is the best meal I’ve ever eaten from this kitchen.” He says, his eyes drifting across the food left on the table.
“Really? Didn’t you live here for a while? You guys must have cooked, right?” Kade slouches down in his chair, stretching his legs out on either side of mine.
“Oh, we cooked. We couldn’t afford not to. We ate way too much spaghetti with plain tomato sauce…I haven’t had spaghetti since we moved out.” His lips turn down, and he shudders at the memory. “I think we lived here a year before we bought a salt shaker. Everything was bland or burnt. No, in between.”
“Who did the cooking?” I’m so curious about these boys who made themselves into a family. The sheer will it must have taken to pull them together and keep them together is astonishing.
“Ransom at first. But he was the oldest, so he was the one out front most of the time. The rest of us took turns. Except Jonas. He’d spend the entire night trying to find just the right recipe, and if he did, it took him a fucking hour to cut the onion up into perfectly even pieces. We’d have ended up so hungry we would’ve stuffed ourselves with shitty sandwiches instead.”
Every time he talks about his brothers, his voice softens, his love for them coming through clearly. I can picture them all here, groaning about how hungry they are and picking on each other. It sounds busy and crowded.
It sounds like family.