We stood that way for some time until he nodded, once. Just before he released me, he set his lips against the pulse in my wrist. Leaving me breathless, he turned to the counter, reaching for a bunch of carrots. “A knife.”
“Ye—” I cleared my throat. “Yes.” I reached over him and handed him an onion and a stalk of celery. “Can you dice these too? Knives are in that drawer.” I pointed. He had sidetracked me before I had the chance to grab one.
He removed a knife, pushed the chopping block over a bit, and then got to work. I watched him slice and dice, unable to help myself. The rhythm of his motions hypnotized me.
“You stare at me,” he commented out of the blue, as though he were commenting on the weather.
I shook my head, turning back to the task at hand. “I do.” I poured the flour into a ceramic bowl, added vegetable shortening, and then used a pastry cutter to work the mixture together. “Does it bother you that I do?”
“Only when I can’t figure out why.”
“It’s usually the same reason. You’re beautiful, Brando.”So damn beautiful that you make me ache.
He stopped the knife mid-chop. He stared at the carrot. “Nick had expressed some interest in you. He wanted to ask you out. Elliott didn’t say no, but he didn’t say yes either.” The knife sliced all the way through, splitting the piece in two.
“And you? What did you think?” I peeked at him from the corner of my eye. I couldn’t read him. He had gotten into the prepping, concentrating on each stroke of the knife. But I remembered our time out in the snow.
I had said Nick’s name, and just as I had done earlier, when he used those two words,tell me, something inside of him silently compelled me to explain.
Nick had been just a friend. Mostly just my brother’s friend. Not getting the chocolate from the pantry had caused me more heartache than the fact that he had been feeling up my sister, even after his supposed crush on me.
“At the time, I remembered you as a little girl. It wasn’t until the night out in the snow that something changed.”
“What was it?”
His movements slowed, the knife not as loud when it separated the pieces. “Me. You. Something in-between.”
“The stars,” I said, not meaning to.
As usual, he took his time answering. “Yeah. The stars,” he finally agreed. “You can feel me.”
Even though I could feel him, there were still times he took me by surprise, times when he casually said words that threw me for a loop.
“I can,” I said, my voice almost hesitant.
“Tell me—”
“I’d tell you anything.” Again, the words seemed to slip free without conscious thought.
He set the knife down—I heard the soft touch of metal against the counter—and then the heat from his eyes seemed to flow over me. For some reason, I found it hard to look at him.
He cleared his throat. “You feel me. But question me.”
The flour and shortening mixture started to resemble coarse meal, so I added an egg, cold water, vinegar, and salt, stirring it together. I floured the surface of the counter, poured out the mixture, and then rolled it out with an old wooden pin.
“Yes,” I sighed. “It’s not science, this peculiar nature, or whatever you want to call it. Well, I don’t think so. My grandmother, my father’s mother, I mean, was the one who had the stories. She never mentioned if the same…connection had happened to her.” I turned the dough, attempting to create a prettier shape with the pin. “I’m learning, Brando. But if I had to compare, I would compare it to falling in love. Just on a different level, perhaps. I’ve never been in love before you.” I huffed out a breath, blowing at the small tendrils of hair tickling my skin.
His hand came up and gently moved the pieces from my face. His fingers lingered, his eyes too, and this time I couldn’t tear my gaze from his.
“I’m still learning you, Brando. I can feel you, yes, like I’ve never felt another person before. Evenmyself. But it’s the small nuisances. Learning what you like and don’t. What makes you feel passion. What makes you feel rage. What drives your fears and settles your heart. That sort of thing.”
His hand passed over the pulse in my neck, the beat of it thumping like a doe in the presence of a lethal cat about to plunge his fangs into my lifeline. “What makes me tick,” he said.
“Yes,” I whispered. “You can say that.” Turning from him, I rolled the pin over the dough once more, concentrating hard. “Do you—” I bit my lip, shook my head. “Do you feel me?”
“Different. Though somehow the same.”
“The night we spent in the abandoned house, when you let me borrow your memories. You didn’t tell me.”
