“It’s nothing.” Now that she could smell the cheesy goodness, her belly rumbled, and she decided she was hungry after all. Plus, if she was eating, maybe he wouldn’t ask her fifty questions she wasn’t sure how to answer. She nibbled on a piece of sandwich as he took a seat next to her.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him watching her. He wasn’t even being covert about it. He’d turned on the stool and was facing her. “You’re safe here, Rosey-Posey.”
It was sweet of him to try and reassure her. “Why do you call me that?”
“Rosey-Posey?” He swallowed a spoonful of soup, and she braced herself when she recognized the wariness in his eyes. “Umm—I’m not sure if I should say it; you might shove the sandwich down my throat.”
“Violence isn’t something I’m prone to.” She raised an eyebrow, silently daring him to tell her. “Go on, tell me why?”
“When me an’ Kace were kids, we had a raccoon called Rosey, but we mostly called her Posey?—”
“Posey? You nicknamed me after a trash panda?”
He winced. “Yeah, Rosey-Posey.” He munched on his sandwich. “She was lethal if you had any food left out and raided the pantry like she’d never been fed. It drove our folks nuts. But it’s the look in your eye that reminds me of her.”
“What look in my eye?”
Maybe he was right about me chucking food at him.
“The wariness. A wildness that never quite left. Don’t get me wrong, she was tame for us. Well, for Kace,” he amended. “Maybe Rosey-Posey isn’t a good name for you after all.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
Is anyone else confused?
She silently asked in her head as if someone who didn’t exist would answer her.
Because I’m confused. Totally confused.
There should be a manual for figuring out and troubleshooting men, especially for this model; the Caleb Hunt version of men was different, rare, and oh-so confusing. “Hmm.” She made a non-committal sound and waited for him to continue.
“I don’t want you to prefer my brother to me like the raccoon did when we were kids.”
Darn it, he freaking blushed when he said that. It was almost enough to make her rethink her stance on men. Not quite—but almost. “Umm.”
“I’ve embarrassed you. I’m sorry. That wasn’t my intention.” The heat rising up her face told her he wasn’t the only one blushing. She lowered her head to focus on her food. If she ignored the elephant in the room, maybe it would stomp on out, and they could move on. “I met Janek during my last year at community college.”
What are you doing?
She yelped in her head. She wasn’t supposed to say anything, but now she’d started, she found she wasn’t able to stop, and the words poured out of her. “He was every girl’s dream man. Attentive, possessive, charming, money to burn.” She’d been an idiot not to have seen beyond the mask that Janek wore like a second skin.
“Some men are good at reeling you in.”
“Reeling suckers in, you mean.”
He shook his head. “No. Narcissists see people, especially strong women, as challenges. They live to break them.”
“Oh, he tried.” No longer hungry, she pushed the plate away and reached for the water. “I didn’t see it for so long. A ‘the blue dress looked better’ or ‘why don’t you wear the green, it matches your eyes,’ type of thing.” She took a sip of her water.
“That’s how it usually starts.”
Logically, she’d known that, but having someone else, a man at that, confirm what she already knew… that helped. She wasn’t sure how it helped, but it did. The more she talked, the easier it got to tell him everything. “Before I knew it, he was telling me what to eat, who to see…” She lifted one shoulder. “You know, the usual shit.”
“Baby girl, let me tell you,” his focus was entirely on her, “a real man, fuck, never mind man, a real person, doesn’t treat someone they are supposed to care about like that.”
She knew that, or at least she had known it, before chip by chip, piece by piece, and day by day, Janek had picked away at her self-confidence and everything which made her, her.
“How did you get away?”
