Page 189

She had often cooked for them as she’d gotten older, when they’d lived in the back of an abandoned building, in a room far from the street, deep inside the bowels of the place, with a door that actually locked. It had felt secure. The best shelter they’d ever had, and they’d managed to get a propane burner and Esme had cooked them hot meals, because she liked it. Not because she was a girl—she’d made that quite clear even then.

It struck him that she did it now, living here in this sumptuous place. It was easy to forget where they’d come from. Sometimes preferable. Right now, he felt the past lying right over the top of the present.

“I like it,” she said, as she’d said all those years ago.

“You could have a personal chef,” he pointed out.

“I know that,” she responded. “But you know, we spent a lot of years without control over our food situation. I just like… I like knowing that I can make whatever I want. Buy whatever I want at the grocery store.”

The admission struck him square in the chest. He’d never really thought about it that way. But he could see all over the apartment that she had put personal touches of herself on everything. He would’ve said that a space like this was frilly, feminine and soft. That the explosion of everything lacked control. But that wasn’t true, he didn’t think. No. All of the details and the ways that they were so very unique to her spoke of a great amount of control over her environment.

She simply expressed her desire for that control in a completely different way than he did.

“Do you want some soup?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

It surprised him that he did. But he was more curious about what she had made than he was hungry.

“It’s tomato bisque,” she said. “It has an obscene amount of heavy cream in it.”

“You can’t go wrong with that,” he said.

It was a far cry from the canned tomato soup he’d often lifted from the corner store to keep them all fed. They’d still spent more years in poverty than they had like this. It was strange how easy it was to get used to things being easy.

In some ways.

In others, it felt like nothing had changed. Physically, he was a billionaire. Emotionally he was often still the boy in the abandoned building.

“I would agree,” she said, totally unaware of his musings. “I did buy the loaf of sourdough at a local bakery. I didn’t make it. I have a limit, and keeping a live culture in my fridge is that limit.”

“All right,” he said, not quite sure he understood. But then, he had never thought that he understood her. She had always been something different than him. Something separate. It was part of that softness that she still had in her when they had met. That softness that he had taken it upon himself to protect. And now, they would be attempting to live together, to share this extraordinary task, raising a child, and he refused to be the cause of hurting her. At least any more than he already had.

God, but this had backfired. It was like a mine field, and he had gone and stepped on all of them.

He wasn’t used to guilt. He had a healthy amount of mistrust for himself, and he felt like he had a realistic and clear idea of the ways in which he fell short as a man. But guilt… That was uncharacteristic. She made him feel guilty.

“Sit down,” she said.

“You are not serving me. You said.”

She looked annoyed, but she obeyed his order and sat down at the table. It didn’t take him long to find two bowls—which were cut angularly like gems, and emerald green just like so many other things in this space—and gold spoons. He served up the soup, placed it in front of her and then went to cut the bread.

He set the sliced loaf at the center of the table, and took his place across from her. The table was purple.

She snagged a slice of bread, and dunked it in her soup, looking up at him as she took a bite. “Okay. I don’t have any paperwork. We’re doing this like…well, not really like adults.”

“It was simpler then,” he said.

“I think your nostalgia is cutting out quite a few things.”

“You know what I mean.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Maybe.”

“What is it you want from this marriage?”

“I’m not the one who proposed it. You need to tell me what you want first.”