Page 64 of Bone Deep
He shakes his head slowly, eyes dragging back up like it takes effort. “No. Haven’t really been hungry.”
“You need to eat,” I say. “Just lay down. I’ll grab you a fresh water and figure something out.”
He looks like he wants to argue but doesn’t have the energy. “Thanks,” he mutters, settling back against the couch.
I head into the kitchen and open the fridge to grab him a bottle of water and figure out what I’m going to make him. I blink at what I see—or rather, what I don’t. “Are you kidding me?” I lean over the kitchen island, raising my voice. “Dude. You have no food in here. What the hell?”
“I eat at the office or with clients,” he calls back weakly. “And I hate grocery shopping. Even online.”
I shake my head, laughing under my breath. “We need to fix that, Spence.” I grab a can of cat food, find a bowl, and set F-Bomb up like the king is. Then I start digging through cabinets and drawers. I find five plates, a couple glasses, and coffee mugs. One drawer reveals a zip-top bag full of takeout condiments.
Hmm.
I sift through it, grabbing soy sauce packets and red pepper flakes, and then double back to the fridge, snagging a bottle of hoisin sauce I spotted earlier. I pop into his butler pantry and in the only cabinet that has actual contents, I find one lonely package of ramen noodles. At least they’re the good kind. Not the one-thousand packages for a dollar kind. Behind it is a jar of peanut butter that I’ll be putting to good use.
I hustle back into the kitchen and line everything up on the counter, hands on my hips as I assess the ingredients.
A slow smile spreads across my face. “Okay,” I murmur, clapping my hands together once. “Let’s work some magic.” Then I glance around the kitchen again.
Please tell me this man owns a pot.
It takes me a minute, but I finally find one pot and one frying pan shoved all the way in the back of a lower cabinet behind a box of unused plastic storage containers someone must have gifted him.
How the hell did I not notice how empty his kitchen was when I rifled through his drawers the first time I came here? Then again, I hadn’t exactly been focused on cabinet inventory. I was more focused on the man standing in the gourmet space and entirely different drawers that I’d like to rifle through.
Sounds about right.
I shake my head and get to work filling the pot with water and setting it to boil. The quiet hum of the kitchen settles something in me. Grounds me. Gives me something to do that isn’t obsessing over Spencer Stark and the vulgar things that come out of his beautiful mouth.
What was I doing? Oh, right. Food.
Mixing a small amount of peanut butter with hoisin, chili flakes, and soy sauce in the pan, I let it warm just enough to melt the peanut butter and blend with the other ingredients until it turns into a smooth and glossy sauce.
“Okay,” I mutter. “That’ll work.” The water boils. Noodles go in. A few minutes later, I drain them, leaving just a little of the pasta water to help distribute the sauce. I toss the sauce with the noodles, coating every strand. Tasting a forkful, I decide it’s pretty damn good for what I had to work with.
I dish everything into two bowls, grab a couple sets of chopsticks from the takeout stash, and head back into the living room. Spence is exactly where I left him, curled into the couch looking miserable.
“Alright,” I say, setting the bowls down on the coffee table. Without overthinking it, I lift his feet gently, slide in underneath them, then rest them back down across my thigh as I lean intothe arm of the couch. He swallows thickly and I pretend I don’t notice.
Grabbing one of the bowls, I hand it to him. He stares at it, looking confused. “Did I fall asleep?” he rasps. “Did you go out and get food?”
“No.” I chuckle, leaning forward to grab the chopsticks. “I made it.”
His head turns slowly, eyes scanning the kitchen behind him. “How?” he asks. “There’s no food in there. You said so yourself.”
“I made do with what you had,” I say, shrugging as I hand him a set of chopsticks.
He looks back down into the bowl, suspicious. “What even is it?”
“Spicy peanut noodles,” I tell him, proudly. “You need carbs and protein.” Then I reach out and give his ankle a light squeeze. “The spice’ll help your sinuses.”
He just blinks at me. “You—you didn’t have to do that.”
“Yeah, I did. Now eat. You need your energy.”
Spence narrows his eyes at me like he wants to argue. Instead, he just huffs. “Fine.” He takes a small bite. Careful. Testing. I watch him, and I catch the exact second it hits. His eyes change, but he doesn’t say anything.
Not yet.
