Page 26 of Defeated

Just as I’d thought, the moment he sits down and drags his chair in, our knees bump.

I don’t know who’s the most embarrassed. Him or me. He angles his legs to the side and I pull mine back as he offers me a small smile. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I blurt out. From the heat on my cheeks, I’m blushing hard.

“How did you sleep last night?” he asks.

“Great,” I say when I barely got two hours of sleep last night, tossing and turning, unable to shut off the part of my brain that I’ve gotten used to leaving on high alert. But at least I was comfortable in the cotton T-shirt and sweats he loaned me. “You?”

“Good,” he responds, which I know is a lie because I distinctly heard him pacing throughout the night.

He doesn’t call me out on my lie, probably because I don’t call him out on his.

As he digs into his breakfast, I dig into mine, putting my fork down long enough to get up and save the toast when it pops up all crispy and brown. The moment our knees bumped, I’d forgotten all about the toast I’d put in the toaster.

It is not like me at all to be so aware of a guy. Or to blush. I never blush.

“I thought we could tackle the kitchen today.” Chris nods at the cupboards. “I had a quick look before you came down, and it shouldn’t take long. Colton doesn’t have much.”

It’s so domestic.

We’re complete strangers, yet here we are eating breakfast together and making plans for our day.

And the weirdest thing of all, it doesn’t feel as odd as it should. It feels comfortable.

“I can make up the boxes,” I offer.

He nods. “And I’ll make lunch for us later. Pasta and meat sauce or?—”

Knock. Knock.

My fork slips from my hand. Scrambled eggs go flying as my fork clatters against my plate. The moment it hits, I realize how stupid it was to assume the person at the door means trouble has found me. As if those shifters would knock first before they entered.

Chris frowns as he puts his fork down. “Zoe? I think we’re okay.”

Clearly, he was using his brain while I was forgetting to use mine.

I push my chair back and get to my feet. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to overreact. I’ll clean up this mess.”

He slowly gets to his, eyes searching mine as if he hears the way my heart is smashing into my chest. “I’ll go see who it is, okay?”

“Okay.”

I don’t let myself relax until I hear the door creak open, and Chris says, “Good morning. That’s a lot of mail.”

As I grab a cloth from beside the sink to clean up my big eggy mess, I tune out their conversation. My mind wanders, and the way it always seems to, it wanders back to Harlan.

There wasn’t any one thing that pushed me to leave Washington with no plan and no idea where I was going one night. I just left.

A combination of his cruelties, big and small, consumed my life.

One year being with Harlan was torture. There wasn’t one day when I wasn’t the butt of his jokes and had doors—real and metaphorical—slammed in my face.

I braced myself wherever I went and tried to guard my heart, but I never could.

He ground me down. Bit by bit, he changed me into someone I didn’t recognize.

One year had felt like ten.

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