Page 68 of The Woman with the Wallet

Miko

I woke up to something I could only describe as caterwauling. For one second, I thought an animal had gotten into the apartment, gotten stuck, and started making its objections known.

Until I remembered I wasn’t alone.

That I had Chuck staying with me.

Even as I thought that, I could make out the words he was attempting to sing. And failing miserably.

Turning, I glanced at my alarm clock. For a second, I couldn’t decide if it was four in the afternoon or morning. The darkness outside the window wasn’t much help.

But the soft sigh beside me had me forgetting all about stupid shit like the time of day. When did that matter when you had a woman like Max in bed with you?

Turning, I realized how close she was.

She had no covers on, so I figured she was seeking my heat in her sleep. Her hair was still partially wet and half-covering her face. Reaching out, I slipped it away, excited for the day when I could see her face without all the bruises again.

I knew it was probably too early to say that kind of shit to her. Especially because she was so guarded. But I had a feeling that this thing going on between us, it was something different. Something more than I’d ever had with a woman before.

I was debating going ahead and waking her up to finish what I’d started right before I’d taken a shower.

But it was right then that there was a series of clatters in the kitchen loud enough to make Max grumble and turn over in her sleep.

“Whoops,” Chuck said, making me sigh as I climbed out of bed, taking a second to pull the covers over Max, then going out to make sure Chuck wasn’t breaking everything I owned.

“Chuck, the fuck you doing?” I asked as I made my way into the kitchen to find Chuck had damn near every one of my pots and pans out on the counter.

“Got hungry. You two didn’t want to wake up when I came to check on you—“

“You what?”

“Came to check on you.”

“You came into my room when we were sleeping?”

“I hadn’t heard from you.”

“Because I wassleeping. Did you knock?” I asked, a little concerned that I would have slept through that, regardless of how tired I was.

“No, just opened the door and looked in. Don’t worry, I didn’t see anything.”

Christ. I had to make sure I locked the door the next time. In case there was anything going on that I didn’t want his ass to see.

“Alright. What are you making?” I asked, seeing most of the contents of my fridge scattered around in various states of preparation.

“I don’t know,” Chuck said.

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I’m letting the ingredients speak to me.”

“Yeah? What are they saying?”

“Mostly that I don’t know what I’m doing,” Chuck admitted, reaching up to rub the back of his neck.

To that, I huffed out a laugh, remembering when my baby sister had tried to cook a meal for our mom on Mother’s Day, only to end up crying into her pancake mix until I moved in to help.

“Alright. Well, what do we have here?” I asked, clapping my hands as I moved in front of a pile of chopped food on the cutting board.

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