Page 144 of 10 Rings I Hate About You
“Get out of the car.”
He got out, and the second I reached for the door handle, his voice cracked through the dark lot. The door opened from the other side. “Iwill open your door for you.”
“Can I get out now,sir?” I practically purred the last word.
His eyes went dark at the edges. His voice followed, deeper. “Fucking hell, Delaney.” A warning that wasn’t really a warning at all.
He took my hand to help me out of the car and used his other hand to adjust himself. I took great pleasure in knowing that one word got to him.
I kissed his cheek. “Thank you for being so sweet.”
“The thoughts I’m having about you are definitely not sweet,” he muttered beside my ear.
“Tell me about it later,” I said. “Come on.”
I hadn’t been here much this week, but as always, the smell hit me on the landing.
It always did. Every time I put my key in the lock and pushed the door open, the apartment exhaled—old wood, dried herbs, the particular warmth of a space that had been lived in full-time. Aunt Jem’s smell. Not her perfume, not any single thing I could point to. Just: her. The accumulated presence of someone who had loved a place and had been loved in it.
I stood in the doorway for one long breath. I’d missed being here.
Marc didn’t rush me. He waited on the landing with the patience that was just part of how he was built. His hand was on my lower back. Not pushing. Just there for support.
I went in.
He followed, taking in the space. Not commenting, not filling the silence with observation the way some people did. He just looked around. The crystals on the windowsill caught the low lamp. The stacks of books lined every surface because I hadn’t been able to bring myself to put them away with intention. Two mugs sat on the counter because my hands had done it before my brain caught up, the same way they always did in this kitchen.
Muscle memory. Aunt Jem had that effect. Her kitchen trained you.
I filled the kettle, set it on the burner, and reached for the tin without looking at the label because I didn’t need to. Chamomile. A little lemon balm. The dried lavender she grew herself on the kitchen windowsill that I’d been rationing because I had no idea how to grow it and the supply was finite.
“She made terrible coffee,” I said while watching a kettle that didn’t need to be watched.
Marc settled into a chair at the small table. “Yeah?”
“Refused to get a pod machine. Said the coffee wasn’t the point anyway.” The kettle ticked softly as it warmed. “She said it was the tea that actually helped. The coffee was just caffeine, but the right tea was medicine. She had knowledge about which ones were for which ailment.”
“Was she right?”
“Always.” I smiled at the tin. “It drove me crazy. I wanted to catch her being wrong, just once.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
The kettle reached its slow simmer, and I poured. I brought the mugs to the table and sat beside him instead of across. He curled both hands around the ceramic, and I watched his shoulders drop a fraction as the warmth moved into his palms. His eyes were starting to glaze. The specific quality of a mind running too many calculations at once, losing the present to the logistics of next week.
“Marc.”
He surfaced.
“It was a good class,” I said. “We’ll make next week better. Everything that can be planned has been planned. There’s nothing left to organize.”
“You’re right.” He sipped his tea.
I gave him a soft smile. “I’m not trying to shut you down. Tell me what you’re most worried about.”
He looked at me, a small pause—just enough to tell me I’d caught him off guard, not by the question, but how directly I stated it. “Theo. And how disappointed he’ll be if this doesn’t go well. He asked me to help, and I said yes. I need that to mean something.”
