Page 18 of Defying Ella
“Is that meant to make me want to be in the same space as you?” I snorted.
A beat or two of silence followed my declaration and I edged towards the door, frown lines creasing my face and applying pressure to a low-grade dehydration headache.
Maybe I locked myself away for too long.
My stomach rumbled, punctuating the point. I must have read through lunch and probably dinner. So the snowy blackout in my room made tracking time difficult. The fact my reading app had helpfully been designed in a way that removed all distractions probably added to the problem.
The stretching silence made me question whether he’d given up.
“I heard that,” he whispered, his voice oddly muffled. As if his face were pressed against the door.
I should have known he hadn’t left. He was too tenacious for his own good sometimes.
“I made you dinner.” A lid clicked outside the door and then the most delicious scent wafted through the door.
Food did sound good. I chewed my lip, debating the logic of sitting down with him again.
“You don’t even have to talk to me.”
My eyes narrowed. There had to be a catch.
“Just stay with me.” I couldn’t miss the faint whine in his voice. “Upstairs is big enough for the both of us.”
My brows climbed. It hadn’t felt that way since he’d arrived. I wouldn’t be in danger of emotional whiplash if we could actually stay in our own corners on the upper level.
“Please, Els,” he whispered. The pained sound hit like an arrow to my heart. “It’s too quiet alone.”
Sighing, I admitted defeat and braced myself for the fallout that would inevitably come later. I unlocked the door, schooling my features into hard lines. He stood in the hallway with an uncovered plate of mac and cheese. My favourite meal.How did he know?His grey jogging bottoms hung low on his hips and a stretched-out white t-shirt clung to every line of his torso.
I tore my eyes away from his body and our gazes clashed. My uncertainty was reflected back at me in those green depths. I expected typical male satisfaction — there was no way he missed my perusal. I allowed myself a second to absorb it, commit the memory of Jared Michaels staring atmelike I might hurthim.
“One foul look and I’m gone.” I pointed at him, my eyes narrowing. “No biting comments or veiled insults.” I brushed past him and started down the hall. “If I feel like you’re spoiling for a fight, I’m gone. Understand?” I asked, turning at the stairs.
Jared followed after me with a slack-jawed expression. Henodded, the movement jerky, and it might all be a lie, but he seemed surprised.
Hell, it shocked me too.
Icould have done without learning that Jared could cookandbake. It slashed through the image I’d built of him over the last few months.
Instead, I devoured an incredible plate of mac and cheese while he watched. I could confidently call it the best I’d ever had, and he knew it. He hid that smarmy satisfaction well, even tried to pretend his focus was on the dark glass behind me. Anyone else might have missed it entirely, but unfortunately, I’d spent far too much time around him not to notice the tiny shifts in his expression.
I paused, my fork hovering over another bite.
“This is weird.”
“What is?” he asked, a little too quickly.
It all seemed too civil for us, the silence and the presentation of food.
“Us, sat in silence, not bickering, while I eat food you cooked without even questioning whether you poisoned it.” I frowned.Why didn’t you think of that before you ate half of it?“On second thought, maybe I should have made you take a bite first.”
For a second, his cheeks reddened, and he glanced down.
“That’s ridiculous,” he muttered, his voice low and his gaze averted still. Then he looked at me with a hard glint of challenge in his eyes. “Where would I even get poison with no planning? C’mon, Els, if I wanted to kill you, I wouldn’t approach it like a woman.”
With my heart in my throat, I placed the fork on the table. “That’s not something to joke about, Jared.”
“Why not? Isn’t that what you did?” He shrugged, slouching back in his chair.
