Page 16 of Entangled in Them

Focusing my anger onto the task at hand, I pulled ingredients out of the refrigerator. Shrimps, sliced chicken, eggs, an assortment of vegetables, soy and fish sauce, and rice wine vinegar. I had some packets of noodles in the pantry. I picked the sharpest knife and julienned the vegetables with the skill of a chef.

I was the cook among the three of us. I knew what I liked to eat, and that both Dillon and Ryan were likely to mess it up. Dillon had zero cooking skills, and Ryan had a tendency to lean toward meat and bread—hotdogs, burgers, burritos. Basically, if you could wrap meat in bread, he’d eat it.

“Anything I can do to help?” Ryan asked.

I shot him a smile. I didn’t like things being tense between us. “Stand there and look pretty.”

He cocked his head. “That, I can do.”

I set about turning on the heat under the wok, adding oil to get it steaming hot, and then threw in sliced onions and peppers and mushrooms. I sensed two sets of eyes watching my every movement. I moved easily around the kitchen. The oil in the pan hissed and spat as I added ingredients to the stir fry, and then shaking in a variety of the different sauces. I didn’t need to measure that shit. I was happy to go with whatever felt right.

When it was ready, I dished the food into four bowls. It felt strange to have an extra mouth at the table. We never had people over. It was the three of us against the world, and because of the nature of our business, we didn’t want anyone from the outside coming here and accidentally stumbling across something we’d rather they didn’t see. Even Dillon knew not to bring any of his hook-ups back to the apartment, and make sure he went back to their place instead, though recently that had been happening less often.

“Come on, it’s okay,” I said to the girl. “You can come and eat with us, unless you’d rather eat over there by yourself.”

Shyly, she shook her head and rose from the couch. She made her way over to the table and selected the seat opposite Ryan. I guessed that was better than one beside him. He hadn’t exactly made any effort to hide the fact that he wasn’t happy to have her here. None of us were, and I experienced a pang of guilt and sorrow on her behalf.

What must it feel like to be completely unwanted?

I knew what it was like to feel lonely, but not unwanted. I’d had a different life before all of this—so utterly different it didn’t even feel like my own anymore. But loss can change a person, and it had changed me irrevocably. I’d been strait-laced, a grade-A student, with plans to have a career and raise a family, but one day all of that changed. It was crazy to me how you could wake up one morning thinking everything was just as it had always been, and then one moment can throw your life into a spin.

I cast my gaze to the young woman tentatively eating the food I’d cooked, and something inside my chest tightened. I’d put everything in place to ensure I wasn’t the person I’d been back then, and I didn’t want to ever go back to that place again.

The apartment door opened, and Dillon strode in, his arms filled with bags.

“Ah, something smells good. I see I’m in time for dinner.”

Dillon dropped the bags near the door, plonked himself down in the spare chair, and pulled a bowl of noodles toward him.

We all paused midway in our eating. Dillon grinned around at us all as though it was completely normal for us to be sitting at the table with a strange girl among us.

“How did it go?” I asked, sitting back in my seat.

“Good.” He forked up a mouthful of noodles. “I think I got everything.” He looked to Rue. “Hope you like them.” His gaze flicked down the front of her shirt and traveled down to her bare thighs. “Though Kodee’s shirt looks damned good on you, too.”

Her cheeks bloomed pink. “Thanks.”

Dillon had a way of charming people straight into bed. This situation was complicated, though, and I didn’t think it was going to help matters if he ended up sleeping with her.

“You didn’t get distracted, then?” I asked.

“Nope. Not me. I was good as gold.”

Ryan snorted at the idea but didn’t say anything.

It was surreal that we were just supposed to get on with our lives, even with a strange girl in our midst. How could we work while she was here? I didn’t want her reporting everything back to the Capellos. But we had no idea how long she’d be here.

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