I straighten from where I’ve been pretending to adjust the logs, my heart beating faster than I want to admit. She appears in the living room doorway, and I search her face for signs of retreat.
She doesn’t look closed off. She looks... uncertain. Like she’s testing the waters.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey.”
“So.” She crosses her arms, but it’s not defensive. More like she doesn’t know what to do with her hands. “What’s for dinner?”
The question catches me off guard. I wasexpecting awkwardness, maybe another interrogation. Not something so... normal.
“I hadn’t thought about it yet.”
“You have a refrigerator full of food and you hadn’t thought about dinner?”
“I was busy.”
“Doing what?”
“Chopping wood.”
She raises an eyebrow. “For six hours?”
“The woodpile was low.”
“The woodpile was fine. I saw it yesterday.”
I don’t have a response to that. She’s right. I was just keeping my hands busy so I wouldn’t do something stupid like knock on her door and beg her to talk to me again.
“Well.” She pushes off from the doorway and walks toward the kitchen. “I’m hungry. And since you won’t let me clean, I might as well cook.”
“You don’t have to?—“
“I know I don’t have to.” She’s already opening the refrigerator, peering inside. “But I’m not going to sit around doing nothing while you burn more eggs.”
“I only burned them once this morning.”
“Three times.” She glances at me over her shoulder. “I saw the trash can.”
Damn. I thought I’d hidden the evidence better than that.
“Fine,” I admit. “Three times. But I got it right eventually.”
“Eventually.” She pulls out vegetables, a pack of chicken, some herbs. “That’s very reassuring. ‘Eventually he’ll stop burning things.’ I’ll put that on your tombstone.”
My bear perks up at her teasing. He likes this. Likes her comfortable enough to give me shit.
“What are you making?” I ask, moving closer to the kitchen.
“Chicken stir-fry. Assuming you have a pan that isn’t permanently scorched.”
“There’s one in the cabinet by the stove.”
She finds it, inspects it, nods in approval. “Okay. You can help.”
“Help?”
“You do know how to chop vegetables, right? Or do bears just eat everything raw?”
