Page 51 of Levee

It was the most normal I’d felt in weeks.

But the second he walked out of the door, it all came flooding back.

Then three days later as I was walking in late from a gallery opening I’d attended, a shadow moved out from the corner of my vision. And before I could react, could even draw in a breath to scream, it was on me.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Levee

“All those hunnies out there and you’re in here chopping carrots with me,” Eddie said, shaking his head like I was out of my mind.

“Well, you’re in here too,” I reminded him.

“Yeah, ‘cause the hunnies like a man who can cook. This is me being in my element. Being all sexy and shit,” Eddie said, waving down at his apron-covered front.

To be fair, the girls did fawn over Eddie. They would be in and out all during the parties, heading to freshen up, grab drinks, steal some ibuprofen to fend off alcohol headaches, or sneak some food. And each and every time, they would stop to tell Eddie how hot it was when a guy could cook, how good his food was.

I honestly didn’t know how the guy was still single since the girls did seem to like him and he sure as hell loved them.

“I’m not interested,” I said, shrugging.

“Yeah?” he asked, brows raised. “That have something to do with a certain pretty hunnie I’ve heard some of the guys talking about?”

“Yeah,” I admitted. What was the use of trying to lie about it? Everyone in the club could see I was not my usual party-hard self.

You never would have found me hiding in the kitchen from the fun before. I would be right out there in the pool with everyone else.

But there I was.

Chopping carrots.

Wondering how long it could be before I slunk away to my room, locked the door, found my pictures of Jade, and rubbed one out like some fucking teenager or something.

I was still kicking myself for not getting her damn number. And while she had mine, I guess she was busy. Or didn’t want to seem needy by reaching out to me first.

Even if I was checking my phone fifty times a day in the hopes that she had texted.

“She got you all strung up, huh?” Eddie asked, tone completely devoid of judgment as he drained and rinsed several cans of beans.

“Guess so,” I admitted.

“Lucky, man,” he said, glancing over at me. “Just waiting for a hunnie who gets her claws all up in me. Dunno why these fuckers,” he said, waving a spatula toward the back door where the other prospects were all partying, “seem to think it’s the worst thing that could happen.”

“Dunno. Guess I was one of them a few weeks ago too,” I told him. As much as I liked seeing my friends, especially Seeley and Cato, happy with their women, some part of me just didn’t understand it.

That whole ‘why eat one meal when you can sample the whole menu’ mindset that I’d been carrying with me for years.

Guess everyone neglected to tell me that your mind changed and your tastes developed when you’d feasted on the best meal of your life.

Figuratively.

Though, yeah, I wouldn’t mind getting some eating done with Jade again… literally.

“Which one of ‘em you think is next?” he asked as a chorus of male laughter came drifting into the kitchen.

“I don’t know. I can’t see Coast settling down.”

“No? With how good he is with kids? I can see it. But maybe not next.”

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