Not that she could quite picture Nate being that blasé about the fact he’dchanged everything, and she’dgone along with that.But she couldn’t pictureanythingright now, so she focused very hard on the eggs she was scrambling when the door opened.
“All clear if we need to get out later.”
Sam noted theif we, but she didn’t address it.Or the relief that wanted to course through her.“Well, you come in handy, don’t you?”she said brightly.Probably too brightly.
“Looks like you do too.”She could feel him getting closer, but she absolutely refused to look at him.“This is a lot better than Pop-Tart.”
“I’m no Aly when it comes to food, but it’ll do.”
His arms slid around her from behind, his chin resting on the top of her head.“Smells amazing.”
It was an easy, sweet gesture that just about took her out.She wanted to melt into it, but she didn’t know how to turn her mind off now that coffee had her synapses actually firing.
He was just… acting like this was normal.Like they were somecouplewho had mornings together every day.Who shared chores and just… touched this casually, this intimately.
Still, Sam studied the eggs, flipped off the heat when she determined they were done.But she couldn’t justtake it.“Are we going to talk about this or just pretend it’s normal and not mention it?”she demanded, still staring at the eggs in the pan.
“What do you want to talk about?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Nate.Maybe the giant sex elephant in the room.”
“Sex… elephant,” he repeated, amusement in his tone, his headstillresting on hers, his armsstillaround her like they just belonged there.
“You know what I mean.”She had to resist shrugging him off.Remain calm.Remainin control.“I’m not saying we have to talk about it.I don’t need a state-of-things address.There’s just a lot of options here, and we should probably pick one.So we’re on the same page.”
The toast popped.It was burnt.She didn’t make a move to do anything about that, because he was stillholdingher, and she didn’t know what to do about it.
“Options?”
“We can do a friends with benefits type thing.”
“Is that what you want?”His question was carefully devoid of any inflection that might give her a hint of what he thought ofthat.Which was damn annoying.This was all so damn annoying.
Angry—or maybeterrifiedwas the right descriptor for this emotion, but she didn’t like that—enough she couldn’t sit still any longer.She turned to face him, but he didn’t let his arms drop.So, she was now kind of caged against her own counter by his big body.God, he had a nice body.He had a beyondniceeverything, and she really didn’t know what she was doing.
No, she didn’t want to be friends with benefits.That sounded like some kind of half having him, which would be somehow worse than being all in or all out.
Well, maybe not worse than all out.She’d been in a bit of a dry spell, and that was a hell of a… drink.
Thepointwas that… she… she needed this to not be awkward.Not make lifeworse.If she embarrassed herself, she didn’t know how she’d live throughworking with him.So she needed some sense of where he was at before she decided what she wanted or was going to verbalize wanting.
“What doyouwant?”she asked, because she could handle this.
She could adapt.The sex was… amazing.She wasn’t even shocked by that.The chemistry had been there from the start.
She was mostly shocked she didn’t feelweirdthis morning.It would be so easy to just ease into all of this.
Too easy.She’d never trusted easy.Not once in her entire life.
He took maybe five seconds to consider that question.“You.”
The answer was both somehow immeasurably sweet and overwhelming and irritating as hell.“That’s not a real answer.”
“Why not?Besides, you didn’t answer at all.”
She did push at him then, until he released her.She started putting the eggs on the plates she’d already gotten out.Threw the burnt toast on the plates.She shoved his plate at him.“Butter’s in the fridge.Peanut butter or jelly already on the counter.”
Then she sailed over and plopped onto her stool.Meanwhile he still stood on the other side of the counter, plate in hand, staring at her.
