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“I’m not sorry.”
“You’re . . . not sorry?” Was he kidding? Had he just let her embarrass herself, stew in her fury, then come and knock on her door just so he could what? Watch it all?
Molly scooched off the bed and stalked toward the soon-to-be dead man on the other side of the wall using up all her small apartment’s available oxygen. “If you think for one second you can humiliate me in my own home, you’ve got another thing?—”
She wrenched open the door and was stunned into silence. There was no casual fisted forearm resting against her doorframe showing off a toned bicep, accompanied by a charming and disarming smile. No hands in pockets or sunken shoulders demonstrating remorse. All the usual tactics she’d grown accustomed to dismissing from men were stowed neatly away into Brass’s leanly muscled frame. Instead, he stood several feet back with his arms braced at his sides and a dejected expression pulling down a mouth that she imagined had always looked more comfortable smiling. The brightness in his eyes had dulled from fiery to flaxen, and dammit all if it didn’t kick her anguish in the teeth to boot.
His nostrils flared as he spoke. “I’m not sorry, because sorry is what people say to sidestep the consequences. It’s a cowardly word meant to reflect remorse, but all it ever successfully accomplishes is sweeping the speaker’s discomfort under the rug so they could carry on with their day pretending they didn’t ruin someone else’s.” He took a step forward, crowding out the space between them. “I deserve every bit of your ire. So, no, Molly, I’m not sorry, but I’m . . .” Frustrated fingers found his scalp and dug into the longer locks at the front as he raked his hand through his head.
“You’re what?”
“A coward,” he forced out, then let his shoulders settle before throwing his arms up in the air. “I am a stray cat, Molly. You were right, and I shouldn’t have kept silent just because I wasn’t prepared for how keenly and accurately you view things.”
Molly stumbled back slightly under the sincerity of his words because, without a doubt in her mind, she could feel he meant them. In her years working in kitchens, Molly had become something of a savant when it came to reading people. It had been a necessary skill, almost as vital as knife work, because when line cooks were throwing around “Yes, chef!” in response to every question or comment, sooner or later it became important to decipher those two words into its own language.
“Yes, chef!” I’m four orders behind, but I can’t be the weakest link.
“Yes, chef!” I oversalted the sauce, but my shift ends in ten minutes, so what does it matter?
“Yes, chef!” I know I hit the cook temp on that medium-rare sirloin out of the park, but I’m terrified of it overcooking before it actually gets to the table.
But for Brass to call himself a coward, and not only that but to also admit that she was right? Her well-honed bullshit meter didn’t budge one iota, and that freaking terrified her for a slew of whole new reasons.
“Can I come in?” he asked.
Molly simply nodded, folded her arms across her chest, and stepped back into her room, resisting the small tremble that warned her against occupying such a small space with him.
Against occupying this space with him.
Brass looked around at her shelves, which were just extensions of what would have lived in her kitchen had all the minuscule available wall space not been taken up by 1970s appliances and cabinets. Across from her queen-sized bed, particleboard bookshelves sagged under the weight of estate-sale cooking tomes and vessels and appliances too large or awkwardly shaped to fit neatly anywhere else. But if Brass felt the need to give her shit for her admittedly ingenious wall-mounted immersion blender, he didn’t let it show.
Yay for small kindnesses.
He prowled farther into her room, and for the first time, she wished she’d relocated into the room across the hall, which had been Drea’s before her best friend had moved out. The space wasn’t that much larger, necessarily, but it had two windows facing west and always got the best crisp evening breezes before winter would get its act together and make opening the windows at night unbearable. Molly’s lone window remained closed, boxing her and Brass into the stuffy-aired space along with her dusty cookbooks, and boy, did she regret it. With each step Brass took, he seemed to displace more of the air around him, as if moving through water. The result was eerie and yet somehow compelling, urging her to drift closer.
Fully aware of her folded arms and best-get-to-talkin’ stance, she only acquiesced by moving one step nearer. Well, two, because her OCD wouldn’t consciously allow her to have an uneven stride.
“You were, uh, saying how you were a cat,” she reminded him.
His deep chest rose and fell on a tremulous breath. “Molly, there’s something I need you to know.”
She stilled, then hugged herself tighter, because no good ever came from a statement like that.
“I have a . . . condition.”
Now, that she wasn’t expecting.
“What sort of condition?” she asked, taking a seat on the bed.
Please don’t be something oozy. Please don’t be something oozy.
“It’s not contagious or anything, but it is limiting. My ailment is”—he looked to the window and searched the night sky for words—“mentally debilitating. When it flares up, it affects my personality and sometimes my physical capabilities.”
“Is it a brain condition or something?”
The corner of one lip twitched. “That’s probably the most accurate assessment. What I have is, well, it’s very rare and not well studied.” A dark pall fell over their quiet conversation, and Brass joined her on the bed. She turned to face him and instinctively reached for his hand but thought better of it when he kept his gaze trained on the carpet and notably not on her.
Brass was sick? Like, really sick?
