Jae rolled his eyes, carrying the cutting board to the stove. He gingerly placed the sliced onion inside the chicken with an exaggerated look of disgust.
“So, did you open a gym in Florida too?”
Jae tilted his head to look at me. I must have surprised him by the change of subject because he took a second to respond.
“No. I wasn’t working actually. Nox was pretty much my only priority.”
“Oh,” I mumbled.
“But, when he got his next assignment, I had to make a choice: follow or return home.”
“And you chose to follow.”
He nodded. “Yeah, it didn’t feel right to leave him. And maybe it was selfish, but we were finally close again and I was scared to lose that if I moved back home.”
“Is this the first gym you’ve opened, or had you opened one when you moved back east?”
“I helped my dad set up his gym when we moved to Harrisburg. But this is my first time doing it completely on my own.”
“That’s really big, Jae. I wish I could be there for your opening.”
Jae smiled at the praise and nodded. “Yeah, me too.”
Jae moved to the sink to wash his hands, and I quickly finished what I was doing with the potatoes to finish prepping the chicken.
“What else have you been up to the last five years?”
Jae blew out a breath, leaning back against the sink to watch me.
“Honestly, not much. Just…life.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Really? What about any relationships?”
Jae chuckled and nodded. “Okay. Yeah. I did have a couple relationships.”
“Anything recent or ongoing?” I asked with interest.
“Nah. The last relationship I had was a little over a year ago now.”
I nodded, cocked my head to study him. “Wait, so right before you moved to Florida?”
Jae’s nose scrunched as if he wasn’t happy about it. “Yeah. We’d been dating for about six months when I got the call from Nox. It was a no-brainer that I was going to go down and help him, and I didn’t think it was fair to Alana to keep up the pretense of a long-distance relationship that I wouldn’t really have the time for.”
“Does Enoch know?”
Jae’s mouth flattened to a tight line as he shook his head.
I hummed and gestured for him to move aside so I could wash my hands.
“What about you?”
“What about me?” I asked with a raised brow, taking the towel Jae held out to me to dry my hands.
“Have you dated anyone?”
My brows rose, studying his face. Did he really not know? Or was he playing coy, trying to fish out the details so he didn’t have to admit that Enoch had told him?
When his brows furrowed with confusion I asked, “He didn’t tell you?”
