Page 12 of Saber's Claim
Shelby doesn’t turn around. She spreads the peanut butter with careful, quiet strokes, and she doesn’t make a sound. She’s moving like she doesn’t want to be noticed.
I’ve seen her do this a few times now. The way she presses herself into the walls when my brothers walk past in the hallway. The way she eats standing up. The way she carries her bag on her shoulder everywhere she goes, like she might need to run at any second.
Somebody taught her this. Somebody spent years training her to fold herself down and shut herself up and vanish so she wouldn’t be a target.
Not somebody. Kyle. The piece of shit in the khakis who pissed himself in the diner.
I want to find him. I want to drag him out of whatever soft suburban life he crawled back to and put his face through the fucking drywall.
And then I want to ask him how it worked. How he took a woman with fire in her and broke her down until standing in a kitchen making a sandwich was an act of fucking courage.
But he’s gone. So there’s no wall and no skull, and the only thing left is her, pressing herself flat against my counter, like she’s apologizing for being hungry.
I walk in. She hears my boots and her shoulders go tight. I stand three feet away, giving her room.
“Have you eaten today?”
She nods but doesn’t look at me.
“Anything besides a sandwich?”
A pause. Then she shakes her head.
I open the fridge. Pull out eggs, butter, and hot sauce. I don’t ask what she wants. I cook.
Four eggs, scrambled, on a plate. Buttered toast. I set it on the counter next to her sandwich.
She stares at the plate.
“It’s food,” I say. “Not a contract. Eat the goddamn eggs.”
Those green eyes come up. She’s searching my face for the catch, the invisible string attached to a plate of eggs. Because every good thing a man ever gave her came with a leash.
“Why are you doing this?” she asks.
“Because you’ve eaten peanut butter for four days, and I’m tired of watching you pretend that’s a meal.”
Something crosses her face. Not gratitude. I don’t want her fucking gratitude. Something closer to confusion. Like she’s forgotten what it looks like when a man gives without taking.
She picks up a fork and takes a bite. Her eyes close, and the sound she makes is quiet and involuntary and goes straight to my cock.
I turn around and pour more coffee I don’t need.
Fuck. She’s making sounds like that, and I’m supposed to keep my hands to myself.
I will.
I’ll keep my goddamn hands to myself if it kills me because she didn’t choose to be here. She’s here because a dead man in a parking lot made sure she couldn’t be anywhere else. And that look in her eyes is not lust. That’s relief.
She’s never had a man treat her right, and now she thinks the first one who does must be the best man in the world.
I’m not the best anything. I run guns for a living. I’ve put men underground who made the mistake of crossing me, and if she ever saw what happens in that back room, she’d lock her door and never open it for me again.
But she ate the eggs.
She’s sitting on the counter now, legs dangling, bare feet swinging, finishing the toast and looking at me over the plate like I handed her the whole fucking sky.
It’s eggs and a slice of bread.
