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“Oh, it’s more than fitting, though I do have a bone to pick with whoever coined the term. I know the idea is supposed to be an easy, simple meal for cooks to whip up after a long night on the line, but honestly, even turning on the stove is too much most nights. I’m perfectly content with a bowl of cereal.” She hefted some well-honed customer-service cheer into her statements, hoping it would cut through some of the tension. When Brass simply plucked her chef’s knife out of her worn knife block and got to work slicing up the garlic, she wasn’t sure whether it was better to fall back into the silence or run and hide in her bedroom.
Was he angry at her, and why the hell did that bother her so much? If anything, she should be miffed at him after he almost ran that red light. Molly tried to hold on to that small flicker of displeasure and willed the stuff to fan into anything remotely related to a good angry tantrum. No dice. The best she could muster was mild indignation, and even that was forced.
Revisiting her original tried-and-true method of running from her problems, she eyed her bedroom door down the hall. Perhaps he wouldn’t mind if she stepped away for a few?—
“I don’t like the idea of you hurting. It doesn’t . . . sit well with me,” Brass remarked after setting the knife down and turning to face her. “And the longer you go without saying anything, the more time my mind has to spin stories that all result in a body count. I’ve been around you all day and have yet to see anything that would suggest that, by virtue of being you, you’re somehow worse off by default. So, unless you tell me otherwise, and based on your confession about men to a damn stray animal who can’t understand you, that leads me to believe someone must have hurt you.” He slashed the air in front of him in frustration with the knife in his hand, and she winced at the proximity of the sharp blade to her curtains above the window. “I’ve tried to wash the notion away, tried to mind my own business and help in the ways I promised, but it’s gnawed at me like a rail pike in my skull.”
Then he lifted his face, and Molly saw something that made her rethink ever running away from the man. It was almost as if he’d become . . . unraveled, as if whatever spool he’d been accustomed to drawing from had spun out of control and he had no idea how to gather things back into a tight order again. His eyes searched hers, and something in those amber depths persuaded her that this confession would be safe with him and that maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t pull it out and whip her with it.
With a deep, shuddering breath and one last look toward her bedroom, she unearthed what she’d always sworn would stay good and buried.
Please don’t let me regret this.
“Braden,” she said through tight vocal cords. “His name was Braden. We used to work together, back when I was still just starting out in the culinary world. And if you want to hear more, you’d better drop the pasta in the water and grab that bottle of wine from the top cabinet.” She gestured toward the panel above the stove.
Fifteen minutes later, with the two of them settled catty-corner to each other at her vintage dining room table and their plates and glasses filled high with the most uncomplex of carbs, Molly ripped open a bandage that hadn’t just been adhered over wounds but cemented.
“Five years after culinary school, I got a job working for a modest catering company. We did all of your standard fare, small-scale weddings, graduations, bar and bat mitzvahs, even private parties. It was a newer operation in its own right but was quickly gaining steam. I think that was largely because the chef and owner offered a decent mix of the usual suspects but were also trying out some farm-to-table fusion concepts that were really popular at the time. That popularity gave way to more expansion, and additional cooks were brought in six months later. Braden joined the company in that wave.”
Molly idly twirled her spaghetti around her fork tines, desperate for her fingers to be occupied lest she allow her nerves to nibble her nails away. “I was on cold apps, and he was on pastries, which meant our schedules had a lot of common hours. Most of the prep for our food was done in advance, so we wound up spending a lot of time together during plating sessions.” She lifted her fork toward Brass to aid in the storytelling. “Let me tell you, nobody wanted to plate. It was grunt work at its finest. Lots of tiny little cups and ramekins, with finicky garnishes that were technically edible but didn’t add any real value to what they were sprucing up. Literal window dressings. Most of the other cooks weren’t focused on presentation like Braden and I were, so we found ourselves connecting on a lot of things. After a month or so, those connections got a lot stronger and we wound up connecting out of the kitchen as well.”
A low grunt rumbled from Brass’s chest as he took several large gulps from his wine glass.
“For about six months, things were going great. The catering company was booking bigger gigs, and at one point, we’d been hired to cater a Christmas wedding down in Boston for a well-known football player at the time. Well, well-known to football fans. You could tell me that guy’s name until you’re blue in the face and I’d still have no recollection of him, but the holiday bonus that year was phenomenal. It was right around then that some of the cooks started spreading their wings a bit and used the pseudo-fame of our more high-profile clients to explore other opportunities, so I did the same, after a fashion.”
“What did you do?”
No matter how wretchedly past events had soured the memory for her, Molly could never fully tamp down her pride at the brainchild she’d birthed. “For a couple of months, since there were fewer on-staff cooks and we were mainly working with temps, there was less competition. I wanted to impress the head chef, so I tried something that had been lurking in my mind for a bit, but I hadn’t had the chance to ever present it to the higher-ups before.”
Brass lounged back in his chair, leaving the muscles of his chest on resplendent display against the tight waffle knit of his Henley shirt. “Clever girl,” he said with a hint of pride in his voice.
Molly’s cheeks heated, and she took a quick sip of her wine before continuing. “There was a Cinco de Mayo event that had been scheduled the following month. One night, after the rest of the staff went home and Braden and I were getting everything ready for the following day’s event, I went into the walk-in fridge and pulled out a tray of tacos I had secretly been working on. They were all single bites of puffy fried tortillas folded around minced jicama, mahi-mahi, jalapeños, and pineapple with a chilled dollop of avocado crema that would melt into a sauce at room temperature. But the real kicker was what held up the tacos.”
Molly leaned forward, still unable to curb her enthusiasm after all this time. “Each taco had been skewered to sit on top of a halved lime. Almost like a pedestal of sorts. These made for easy and stable handles as well as stands. Then guests would pluck the taco off the lime and squeeze the lime juice on it before popping the whole thing into their mouth in one bite. It solved so many problems, both from the catering side and the consumer side. Tacos are notoriously hard to serve without taco stands, which are single-use items that take up a lot of inventory space physically, as well as in the budget, especially when you’re traveling. The good ones don’t exactly fold down neatly. And everybody loves tacos, but they can be messy as hell. Braden had been so impressed, he picked me up and twirled me around the kitchen, saying how the world wasn’t ready for me, but he sure as hell was, and everyone better look out.”
If only the memory had stopped there, Molly might have been able to carry on without her stomach revolting against what little spaghetti she’d managed to eat. She took a deep shoring breath and dropped her head into her hands. “I’m not sure I can do this.”
From beyond the cage of her fingers, she could sense Brass’s warm presence moving closer. With gentle encouragement, he placed a soothing hand on the back of her neck and rubbed away the strain she’d amassed from holding everything in for so long. She didn’t bother to dwell on how he knew it was the exact touch she needed at that moment.
“You don’t have to,” he whispered, dangling the out in front of her while the warm caress of his breath tickled her ear. “It’s just a memory, Molly. Your brain’s trying to protect you from pain by making it easier and more desirable to keep the hard stuff buried. But it can’t hurt you, not truly.”
One pervasive thought pounded through her mind as his firm touch began dissolving her long-built defenses.
But you can.
Chapter 12
But you can.
Molly’s subconscious flung that hard truth against her prefrontal cortex faster than she could conjure all the reasons to believe him. Logically, she knew it served no benefit to sit in the suck of her misfortunes, but when those strings of bad luck went from manageable curve balls to four-seam fastballs and just kept coming, it was hard to see things clearly.
Molly’s hands fell away from her face, and she braced herself for the pitiful sad eyes and slanted brows that always came her way whenever she shared the grimier parts of her life with unsuspecting well-wishers. What she got instead took her breath away.
Brass’s sharp features were carved into a mask of dogged determination. That amber gaze bore into her with fierce precision, until Molly was certain she didn’t need to tell him anything more, for surely he could see every hidden part of her. It was unnerving, not because of what she felt but because of what it promised.
“It’s okay if you hate me for this,” he added, still massaging the back of her neck in short, calming strokes. “I’d rather you hate me for dredging up past pain than look at me the same way you look at every other man.”
“H-how do I look at other men?” she stammered.
