Page 29 of Off the Grid
He stared at her in amused disbelief.
McKenzie let her knee fall to the side so it nudged his gently, then retreated into her own personal space. “Thank you, Leo, for being that one-in-a-million idiot.”
“My pleasure.”
He took a Twizzler out of the packet and tore off the end with his teeth. McKenzie looked back down at her almonds.I need to stop watching him eat.
“So…” Leo trailed off, leaving the air thick with innuendo.
“So, what?”
“So, what’s with your eating habits? I thought we had a deal.”
“You know what they say when you assume?” McKenzie dropped another almond into her mouth, relishing the creamy sweetness as it dissolved on her tongue. No matter how many creative desserts she made or tasted, there was nothing quite like the simple pleasure of chocolate. She sucked the coating off before finally biting down on the almond hidden inside. “You make an ass out of you and me.”
“Pretty sure we were both assholes already.”
A laugh slipped through her lips before she could stop it. “Touché.”
“So, are you going to tell me? Or are you going to suck all of the chocolate off yet another almond and pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about?”
Something in his tone made McKenzie glance over. The heat in his eyes made her freeze, a deer caught in the headlights one second before impact. An unfamiliar burn spiked down her back as his gaze dropped to her lips, then rose back up, silently questioning what else she could do with her tongue.
McKenzie started choking on her almond.
Karma, you vindictive bitch.
“Whoa!” Leo jumped over and slammed his hand into her back until the piece dislodged enough for her to swallow.
“Thanks,” she muttered and drew in a long breath.
“Saving your life is becoming a nasty habit I can’t shake.”
She glared at him. Leo just widened his grin.
McKenzie relented.I guess I owe him this much.“The food thing is… I don’t know what it is. When I’m eating a meal, I like to keep all the foods separate so the flavors don’t contaminate each other. Then I eat one pile at a time. When I’m eating snacks, I usually find some way to organize them. If it’s Skittles or M&Ms or something with color, I divide it by that and eat one group at a time. If it’s something more like mixed nuts, I’ll divide by type before I dive in. With the almonds, size was the first thing that came to mind.”
“Smallest to largest,” he commented.
She half-heartedly shrugged. “I like to save the best for last.”
“And bigger is…better?”
McKenzie stared at him pointedly, but there was earnest curiosity in his gaze. She couldn’t help it. She winked. “Isn’t it always?”
His brows drew together with incomprehension. A moment later, the lightbulb went off. He rolled his eyes so hard she thought they might fall out, but there was honest humor sparkling in his eyes. “Can you tell me why?”
“Do I really have to explain it to you?”
“Not that,” he interjected, shaking his head as her lips wobbled. “Why with the food? Have you always eaten like that?”
“Sure. I guess.”
She looked away instinctually as the lie rolled off her lips. McKenzie knew exactly when the habit started, but she wasn’t ready to get into the truth right now. How could she explain that her need for control popped up sometime between when her father was arrested and when she got to school one day to be greeted by the wordsDaddy’s little see-you-next-Tuesday—only, the NC-17 version—keyed into her locker? Were there enough words to describe going from a normal teenager one day to a pariah the next? Would she explain that it started small—cutting her sandwich for lunch into cubes, then her grapes into halves, then separating her vegetables by color, then giving up salads because the mixing of all that food made her uncomfortable? Or would she say how she quit playing soccer because the girls iced her out, and suddenly, the rigid rules of ballet, the isolation and precision, became her norm without a team sport to balance it out? Or maybe her baking was the best descriptor, how she’d graduated from messy brownies in the oven to only wanting to work on the most complex French pastries, because the measurements and the temperatures and the times were all that made sense? It boiled down to a sad truth—one that was so common it was trite. As her world unraveled, McKenzie had latched on to the few things within her power to control, and even now, years later, her grip hadn’t let up. She didn’t need a shrink to tell her that.
“The world can be an unfair place,” she finally murmured into the silence, not sure how long Leo was prepared to wait for an answer she wasn’t quite ready to give. “I guess I like to hold on to a little bit of order when I can.”
McKenzie hesitantly met his gaze. Leo’s sharp eyes probed, digging beneath her words, reminding her that it was his job to pick apart people’s lies. “I’m sorry I asked my partner about your father. I should’ve come directly to you.”
