Page 50 of Clean Hack
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I Wish Circumstances Were Different
Clean
For a good long minute, I looked around the kitchen. I didn’t have much here but that wasn’t really anything new. I didn’t keep any of my places stocked because I never knew when I’d return. I did have a few things in the pantry.
“Looks like soup it is,” I mumbled to myself as I reached for two big cans of tomato basil soup.
After finding the pot I was in need of, I started slowly heating the soup up on the stove. Sure, I could have used the microwave, but I felt bad enough as it was that all I had was canned soup to feed her. The least I could have done was to heat it slowly and made sure the flavors came alive. Not to mention, I didn’t know how long she was going to be and to me, food heated in the microwave seemed to get cold really quickly. Plus, it kept me busy. It took my mind of the deep urge I had to run down the hall and check on her. So, I stirred and stirred. And stirred some more.
Damn, I wish I had some fresh bread and some cheese, I thought as my mouth practically watered at the idea of making a grilled cheese. There was something that was always comforting about a grilled cheese sandwich and a bowl of warm tomato soup. It seemed like Lucy—wow, it still felt weird that I knew her name—needed some comfort right now. She’d been through a lot. I knew that even if I didn’t know the whole story. Hell, I didn’t even know what all she went through.
I wanted to talk to her about it but there hadn’t been the right time yet. She passed out in the car practically the moment I shut the door. I tried to wake her, I really did. I need to know where she wanted me to take her. But everything hit her hard and like a light, she was out. Maybe bringing her here wasn’t the best idea, only because I wasn’t sure how she felt. If she wanted me to, I’d gladly drive her anywhere. That said, I wasn’t quite ready to let her go. I had a tiny feeling that maybe she felt the same. I couldn’t say what was going on between us, but there was something. And I knew I’d have been a fool to ignore it, and a bigger one to walk away from it. I was just going to have to take this one moment at a time and maybe let her take the lead. Well, for the most part anyway. There were things I needed to know from her and I believed that it would probably help her if she talked about them, too. Holding all that in wasn’t good and I had this feeling that she’d been doing that for a long time.
Finally, just when I was about to abandon the soup on the stove to go and check on her, I heard soft, hesitant feet shuffling down the hallway. I turned just in time to see her round the corner to the kitchen. She stood there in the doorway, her plump bottom lip pinched between her teeth and her fingers playing nervously with the bottom flap of the shirt she had on. That shirt just so happened to be one of my work shirts. I don’t know why, but it fucking rendered me speechless. It wasn’t the one I’d left her within the bathroom. Not that I minded at all. Maybe in the back of my mind, I’d hoped she’d go in my closet and put one of them on when I told her that she could find something else if she wanted. My brain obviously knew something I didn’t. I wanted to say something but the words all rushed out of my brain, pretty sure they followed all the blood down south.
I jerked my eyes back up to hers. Those brown irises sparkled with an unsure glint. Her mouth parted like she wanted to say something but nothing came out. And of course, the movement caught my attention. I’d tried too hard not to think about what had happened in that bed. Really fucking hard. But staring at her perfect, little mouth, I suddenly was flooded with the feeling of it on mine all over again. That hadn’t been my intention when I’d crawled in the bed and pulled her into my arms. Not even when I laid back and let her curl into my side. But when she made the move I couldn’t help but to meet her halfway. It felt so wrong and so right all at the same time. Wrong, for so many reasons. I never wanted her to feel like I took advantage of her and the fact that she was so lost and vulnerable right then made me a complete asshole. I wasn’t going to let it happen again. So I just had to shake myself out of this intense hold she had on me and be strong for both of us.
“I made soup,” I said smoothly as I turned around and reached for a set of bowls. “I hope tomato basil is alright.”
“Y-yes,” she said so quietly that I barely heard her. “That sounds perfect.”
I didn’t have to turn around to know that she slid one of the stools out from under the island. I took the bowls and made my way around to the other side. I sat next to her after placing the bowls down and digging out some spoons for us to eat with.
We were silent as we casually ate our soup. I think neither one of us knew what to say.
“Your hair,” she said, her eyes down on the half-eaten bowl of soup.
I couldn’t help it, I laughed. That was the first words she’d spoken to me when I saw her in the motel room. I hadn’t said anything about it then and I didn’t really know what to say now.
“Yeah,” I said running my free hand over my newly shaved head. “I actually did it right before you called me. I figured that it was time.”
“Time? Why?” she asked, her head slowly turning to look at me. Her brows pinched together in the cutest way and I could see the curiosity and confusion in her eyes.
“I feel like I’m getting a little too old for what I had going on,” I answered honestly.
Then her brows shot up to her hairline.
“Old?” She searched my face like she was trying to gauge how old I was.
“I’ll be forty in three months.”
“Oh…” Her cheeks grew red and she quickly turned her attention back to her bowl.
I almost hated to ask. No, Ididhate to ask. I knew the answer was probably going to make me cringe and feel somewhat dirty. However, I felt like I needed to know. I could tell she was young and I feared justhowyoung.
“And you?” I resisted the urge to screw my eyes closed tight as I waited for the answer.
“Twenty-four,” she said and I could tell her mind was going a mile a minute.
I wondered what she was thinking about. Adding up the years that separated us? Thinking how gross it was that she’d kissed someone as old as me? Thinking I was some kind of cradle-robbing, dirty freak? Or, perhaps, she was taking it all in and thinking it might not be as bad as I was imagining it.
“Twenty-five in like five months,” she said and the words rushed out of her mouth like it would somehow help the situation. It didn’t make much difference really. “But age is really just a number, right?”
She shouldn’t have been asking me that. I was honestly a little conflicted. I mean, she was way past legal, so there was that. But I had to stop myself because when I started thinking things like that it made me feel like I had a need to justify it. Which only made it worse in my mind.
“I mean not like it matters,” she blurted out and I shifted my gaze to her. She was doing her best to not look at me and somehow the blush on her cheeks had spread down her neck. Her hand flew up and she began to fiddle with the point of the collar. “I-I wasn’t insinuating anything. Not like there’s something going on here. Or, you know, anything.”
