Leila
“I know how to cook.”
He turns his head back, lifting his brows. “Really?”
“Yes.” I roll my eyes. “I’m Colombian, cooking is like a rite of passage in my family. Not to mention my dad owns a food truck. He taught me how to cook when I was ten.”
“He did?” he asks, and I don’t miss how his face drops a little.
“Yeah.” I approach him. “He’s a great cook. Too bad he hates making vegetarian stuff.” It took watching him behead a chicken to change my mind about eating meat. I laugh, remembering how he looked at me as if I was crazy when I announced I was going to be a vegetarian. It didn’t stop him, though. He learned new recipes, new ways of making food without meat.
Aiden grabs the eggs from the fridge, along with the cheese and mushrooms, and places everything on the counter. I watch as he rolls his sleeves up, washes his hands, and grabs a chopping board that’s definitely not mine. I guess Rosie left it here.
“You’re really going to cook for me?” I ask him, admiring how he dominates the kitchen. My god, this man is so hot.
He laughs, grabbing a bowl from my cabinet. “You make it seem like I’m doing something extravagant. I’m just cooking you food.”
“Why?”
He turns his head, lifts his brows at me, his face covered in a green face mask. “Because, gorgeous,” he says, stepping closer to me. I can’t even start to explain what he does to me every time he uses that nickname. “I want to take care of you. I want to make you happy other than just giving you orgasms.”
Big, red alarms flash in my mind, reminding me I’m only supposed to want the orgasms. A laugh bubbles out of me. “I do love the orgasms, though,” I sigh.
He narrows his eyes, taking a step closer. “Just orgasms in general or the ones I give you?”
I slide my hands up his chest, feeling every hard ridge of his body. I lift onto my tiptoes, reaching his ear. “Just orgasms in general.”
He laughs, brushes his lips against my jaw. “Too bad I can’t prove you wrong. But I will. I’ll make you see that no one can make you feel like I do.” His lips graze mine and I close my eyes but before I can deepen the kiss, he pulls back with a satisfied smile. His thumb wipes the mask that transferred to my face. “This shit really gets everywhere, huh?”
I laugh while grabbing a rag to wipe his face clean staring into his bright blue eyes as I do. “There,” I say when his face is mask free. “All done.”
He smirks. “How do I look?”
There’s not a word in the English language for how handsome this man is. I can’t let him know that, though, so I lift my shoulder, shrugging. “Meh.”
He laughs. “Meh?”
I love how he knows I’m teasing him. It could be because he’s cocky, or he just knows that he’s one of the most beautiful men I have ever seen. “I’ve seen better.”
He chuckles, shaking his head and pulls me into him. “You always know how to flatter me,” he says, rubbing his thumb over my cheek, staring into my eyes. I don’t know how long we stay there, just looking at each other. “C’mon,” he says. “I need to get food in you.”
I nod again, unable to say anything, watching him walk past me into the kitchen, washing his hands before he holds the mushrooms up. “Do you want to help me?” he asks, placing them on a cutting board. I nod and he slides it over to me. “Cut them up into chunks,” he tells me.
“What exactly are we making?”
“Well, seeing as you barely had anything,” he says, glancing over at me with a pointed look. “The best I could come up with was an omelet,” he offers with a shrug.
I glance at him, unable to stop the smile that sprouts on my face when I watch him crack an egg into a bowl. How is it a few months ago I was so annoyed with this guy, under the impression that he was just a huge playboy and now he’s standing in my apartment, cooking me food? I was so wrong about him. “How did you learn how to cook?” I ask him, running the mushrooms under water.
When I turn to face him, his jaw is clenched, the muscles so tight. I frown. “I’m sorry, did I say something wro—”
“It wasn’t something I wanted to do,” he says, staring down at the bowl in front of him. “It was something I had to do.”
“What do you mean?”
He squeezes his eyes shut, opening them up a few seconds later. “My family are drug addicts, Leila.” His head turns to look at me, the dread in his face so apparent. “I come from a dirty, small trailer in Texas, smaller than your bedroom. I didn’t come from a family like yours with a dad to teach me how to cook. My dad fucked off before I was even born.” He turns back away from me, looking down at the bowl. “My mom is an addict, and my brothers are following mother dearest’s footsteps.”
He drops the bowl and turns his whole body to look at me, crossing his arms before he blows out a breath. “I’ve never touched drugs,” he explains. “I saw what it was doing to my family. Didn’t want any part of it. That’s why I don’t drink either.”
I want to say something, anything, but I just stare at him as his jaw clenches and he looks to the side. “But I got into their stash when I was young.” My hands squeeze the board, my other gripping the knife. I can’t take my eyes off him. I can’t look away from the pain in his eyes, the way his throat bobs as he gulps. I can feel the words burning his throat before he even says them.
“I was passed out for a good hour before any of them found me.” I want to throw my arms around him, to take all the pain away but I stay rooted in place as he keeps looking at me, staring so intensely. “I was admitted to the hospital. I woke up delirious, attached to all these machines. I was a kid,” he says, squeezing his eyes shut. “I didn’t know what was happening or what I did.”
He shakes his head. “And when I got home,” he says, looking to the side again, his fists ball up beside him. “When I got home, my mom beat the shit out of me for costing her medical bills.”
His eyes open, glancing at me. “I had to learn how to cook because if I hadn’t, I would’ve died.” This is the longest I haven’t spoken. I can’t say anything though. He doesn’t need me to say anything. He needs me to listen. “I burnt my hand right here,” he lifts his hand to my face, pointing at the scar on his palm, “making toast when I was nine.”
I look back into his eyes when he drops his hand. “I found the bread in a dumpster behind a store. It was past the expiration date, but unopened and still looked fine.” He shrugs. “I hadn’t eaten in days and we had no food at home, so I took it and attempted to make myself some toast on the stove, because we didn’t even have a toaster. My mother was passed out on the couch, high out of her mind and didn’t even notice. Eventually I got better. I learnt a lot in home EC and made it work.”
He glances at me, but I don’t say anything. He lets out a sigh, turning back and cracking another egg. “I’m sorry for spilling all of that on you. I haven’t told anyone that before.”
I turn back, too, grabbing a mushroom and cutting it into chunks. “Did you want to tell me?” It’s the first words I’ve spoken since he’s told me. I still don’t know what to say. He’s a completely different person than I originally thought. I thought he was privileged, and that he was given everything he ever wanted. That’s the furthest thing from the truth.
The knife scrapes the board, filling up the silence in the room. “I wouldn’t have told you otherwise,” he says after a few minutes.
“I’m sorry,” I mumble.
“For what, gorgeous?”
The nickname makes my stomach flutter, but I shake it away when I turn my head to look up at him. “For thinking you were an asshole.”
He lets out a low chuckle, shaking his head like the moments before never even happened. “That’s just your lack of judgment. My shitty upbringing has nothing to do with it.”
I smile at him, watching him whisk the eggs. “Where are your brothers now?”
He lets out a breath, eyeing me. “Cameron is in jail,” he tells me. “For robbing a quick-mart. And Brandon and Mom…” he trails off with a shrug. “They’re back home, spending the money I send them on drugs.”
My eyebrows lift. “You send them money?”
His jaw clenches as he looks down at the bowl. “We didn’t have anything growing up,” he says. “As soon as I came here and got a job, I thought I’d help them, thinking it would go towards food or bills, but it didn’t. And now they just want more and more.”
“What happens if you stop?” I ask him.
He shakes his head. “I can’t.”
“Why not?” Aiden works hard for his money, the thought of him having to give it away makes me so sad for him.
He blows out a breath. “It wasn’t just my mom who liked to lift her hand at me. My brothers beat the shit out of me growing up, for anything and everything. Sometimes it was because they were high, other times, because it was fun for them, I guess,” he admits. “I know I shouldn’t be scared of them, but I still am.”
My hands shake, thinking of the little boy who had to go through that, who just wanted to eat. Who had to learn how to cook, burns and all, to make sure he survived. I gulp, and at the same time, a blinding pain hits.
“Ow,” I shout, dropping the knife and stepping back from the counter. “Shit.” I grab my finger, pressing down on the blood drizzling out of the slash.
Aiden drops everything, grabbing my hand in his as he inspects the damage. “I thought you knew how to cook,” he says as I curse in pain.
“I thought I did too.” I groan, feeling the throbbing in my finger increase. “Cooking is dangerous.”
He laughs. “You’re dangerous.” He grabs my finger and brings it to his mouth, sucking on it.
“Did you just—” My eyes widen.
He chuckles, pulling my finger out of his mouth. “It stops the bleeding.” He pulls me, sitting me down on a chair. “Here,” he says. “Where do you keep your bandages?”
“I don’t have any. Check the bathroom, maybe Rosie had some.” He nods, heading out of the room. I stare at my bleeding finger, watching as the blood drops out.
“Give me,” Aiden says, walking out of the bathroom with a bandage. I hold out my finger to him. He crouches, wrapping the bandage around my finger. “There,” he says, pressing a kiss against the wrapped finger and smiling at me. “All good.”
I can’t help the grin on my face when he looks up at me. Who the hell is Aiden Pierce? And why do I want to get to know him when we’re not naked? This was not supposed to happen. Lines are blurring, things are getting too complicated. And I don’t want to stop it anymore.
