Page 93 of Honey Undone
“Malachi…” The triumph in her voice was vicious as Adeline pulled back from me. “Malachi Jensen!”
“Yeah yeah, shh now,” I kissed her again to keep her quiet.
“Malachi means angel doesn’t it,” she pulled away a second time, leaving me to chase her lips.
“Yeah,” I confirmed with a barrage of kisses around her face. “Do you want to keep asking questions or—”
My door flying open had me in the upright position in a second flat, Mom stood with her hand on her hip acting like I was sixteen again and got caught with a girl in my room. Which, to her credit, had happened because despite Adeline’s assumption, I was never a dork.
“You were supposed to be watching dinner,” she scolded, pointing at me, “He keeps the baby pictures in his bottom drawer,” she said to Adeline before bringing the phone back to her ear and disappearing down the hallway. “Move it, Kai!” she called once more.
“How is it possible that she’s still a cockblock when I’m an adult?” I rested my head against Adeline’s and huffed gently. “Don’t answer that,” I cut her off when she opened her mouth to argue.
“She calls you Kai for short!” Adeline rolled from bed as I stood up just to smooth out my hair from her fingers.
“Yeah, since I was a kid,” I said, still frazzled from the interruptions. “No one outside this house knows my name, Adeline.”
“Why? Are you spies?” She giggled.
“No it’s just—I go by Jensen outside these walls. Always have, Malachi is for my mom.”
“That’s so sweet,” her bottom lip jutted out. “You’re her angel.”
“Are you done?” I smiled at her and her weird love of random facts, such as knowing the meaning behind names.
“For now,” she cooed, hooking her finger into the collar of my shirt.
JENSEN
We made our way back to the kitchen, where Mom had her laptop out at the island, grumbling hopelessly over something. Adeline leaned against the counter at the opposite end as I made my way back to the stove. The pot I had been told to watch was fine, and I was sure that Mom was just being obnoxiously involved on purpose.
“Where’s Dad anyway, isn’t he your assistant chef?” I asked, giving the risotto some more liquid just like she had taught me.
“He’s in a meeting,” she said, “keeping stirring.”
“Alright,” I did as I was told as she tapped away on her laptop, clearly frustrated. “What’s going on?” I finally asked. It wasn’t like her to be doing work, especially not with company over.
“We’re launching the new web service for the hotels and with it the mobile app but everything that could go wrong, is.” She explained. “This app is cursed.” She swore under her breath.
“Can I see?” Adeline piped up, straightening out as she pushed off the island to move around to help my Mom. “It’s kind of my specialty,” she said, her eyes scanned over the screen. “Oh, I know this program.” She looked at the laptop, and my mom moved out of the way so Adeline could get to the keyboard. “If we rewrite this section of code.” She pointed to the computer and showed her, “then this will streamline bookings and stop the issue of users being timed out waiting in line.”
“You’re IT?” my mom asked.
“Developer,” she said, chewing on her lip while she typed something out. “We take clients and create their apps from scratch. Any of the assistance after isIT.” Mom looked over at me with a smile on her face, but her eyes were telling.Oh she’s out of your league. The teasing was loud and joking aside, I absolutely agreed. Adeline Sarah was well out of my league. But there was something else there, a softer expression ofI like her. And not that I needed the approval, but it made the corners of my mouth curl into a proud smile.
It was interesting to hear Adeline talk about work, she did it so rarely that I forgot she was a person outside of rugby. I can’t help but keep my eyes on them. Adeline had been so scared to come over here, and now she was typing away on my mom’s computer like it was nothing.
My mom looked up at Adeline and smiled softly, her expression full of gratitude and pride. “That’s impressive, we’ve been trying to fix that for hours.”
“Companies have been using artificial intelligence to run code and it’s been a pain in my ass— I mean butt.” Adeline grimaced when she swore.
“I’ve heard worse, Honey.” Mom’s attention was on the laptop screen when Adeline looked up at me with a smile. I gave her a small thumbs up, and she scrunched her nose at me sending sparks dancing across my chest. I couldn’t help but stare, it was like she glowed the warmest shade of amber. I always wanted to be around it and the way my heart was trying to beat out of my chest. The words were on the tip of my tongue, I could feel them there wanting to slip out as a conscious thought. But that’s not what we were, it was casual, simple. Fun.
I couldn’t be in love with Adeline.
She spoke again and pulled me from my thoughts to check the risotto in a panic, only to see it nearly done. She was typing again, and my mom was watching intently to every move she made trying to figure out what she was fixing.
“That’s what happened here, it just wasn’t prepared for the test load that you sent through but I’d say if you expect that many visitors to the app on launch I wouldn’t throttle the website.” She explained it slowly and clearly as my mom took notes and nodded in understanding.
