Page 40 of Defeated

The relief is overwhelming.

“Really?” I sit up taller, shaking off a little more of my awkwardness.

He nods. “But I didn’t?”

“No.”

We study each other, both smiling slightly.

He clears his throat. “I have a question.”

“About me?” I automatically brace myself.

“If it’s not one you don’t want to answer, that’s fine.”

“Okay,” I say, a little less guarded than before because I think my first instincts about him, which I was all too eager to ignore, might have been right.

Everything he’s done since he turned his back and answered Colton’s phone call is leading me to believe he is kind.

“I was curious about the toy in your apartment.”

If you can call a studio the size of a stamp an apartment. My landlord did. I wasn’t convinced, but it was cheap, and it came with a locked door.

Looking down, I stab my fork into a piece of chicken. “I was going to ask you why you packed it.”

“It meant something to you,” he says quietly. “Something good. I didn’t want you to leave it behind and regret it.”

I briefly close my eyes.

How can he read me so well?

I almost want to run so he won’t do it anymore. It’s been so long since someone cared that I don’t want to turn away from something I haven’t had in so long.

“Zoe?”

I shake my head. “You’re very perceptive.”

“About some things,” he admits, “Comes from standing a little apart from everyone.”

I lift my head. “That habit of running away from women?”

A faint smile pulls on the corners of his lips, and he looks more handsome when he smiles like that. “Perhaps.” He nods at the serving dish. “How about we see if this thing has a bottom because I have serious doubts it does.”

I lift my fork like I’m going in for battle. “Well, here goes.”

As we talk and eat, it’s strange and amazing how the world is shrinking to the size of mine and Chris’s small round table.

The paella does have a bottom.

We’re scraping the bottom of that family size dish of paella before we both have to tap out. Along the way to finding that bottom, we talked about anything that seemed to pop into Chris’s head, and so did I.

Literally anything. Jersey City, living in a retirement town, old cartoons we used to watch, anything.

We never ran out of conversation.

It was… easy.

After our meal, he paid.

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