CHAPTER NINETEEN
Icould smell the slightly burnt sourdough crust and the lingering smell of melted, gooey cheese as I traipsed up the stairs to my apartment. Whilst I was sure that there were other little pizza businesses that could give Frank’s a run for their money, I wholeheartedly believed that Frank’s was the best pizza in the world.
Some places used fancy ingredients. Ingredients that unfurled in your mouth, and with every bite, felt like you had just woken up in the heart of the Italian countryside. And some places,like Frank’s,felt a little more like home.Frank’swas waking up on a Sunday and huddling up in bed to watch old films.Frank’swas going out with your friends to celebrate their latest lacrosse match win.Frank’swas coming home after a terrible date in the knowledge that somehow, your day would probably still turn out okay.
I slipped my key into the lock and walked inside a little after midnight. The sight before brought an instant grin to my face as Thallor stood at the breakfast table, unmoving like a deer caught in headlights as he tucked intomypizza. Although utterlydelicious, Hawaiian pizza was so much more to me than just a pizza. It was a playbook, a guide, the foundation of my very person. It was a well-oiled strategy that had, up until that very moment, withstood the test of time.In order to avoid sharing pizza, one must first choose toppings that are universally hated.
“The day you find someone who likes pineapple on pizza, Quincey,” Esme had once said to me, painfully hungover and slightly dejected by sour fruit mixed in with string cheese, “is the day you find your soulmate. Hold onto him and never let him go.”
Maybe it was the stupid grin–the one stretched ear to ear that greeted me the moment I walked through the door. Maybe it was the flutter in my chest and the heat I felt coursing through my veins and up the side of my neck whenever Thallor got close, but all the lingering doubts that had crept into my mind during my date with Jude seemed to fizzle away into nothing. It was Frank’s that felt like finally coming home after a terrible date, but it was the Hawaiian pizza in the hands of my demon roommate that felt likecoming home.
“Hi there.” I smiled over at Thallor before closing the door behind me. I took a moment to whip off the death-trap contraptions of my heeled boots.I am never ever wearing those again.No one was worth the pain, and my Blundstones had never treated me like that. Not once. Notever.
“Hello, Sterling,” Thallor said as he looked me up and down. He said my name like I was something to be worshipped. Like I was something holy or reverent. Something to get down on his knees for.God, I wish you would.His eyes trailed every inch of my skin as I ambled over to him under the promise of pizza. My eyes darted between him and the pizza, to find him still staring. Watching me in a way that I didn’t think was truly possible when looking atme.I wasn’t sure what he was doing–checking me over for injury or just committing the rare image of me in amini skirt to memory, but either way, it had my stomach doubling over in knots.
I really did want to ignore it. Hell, I fucking tried to ignore it. I really did. But Thallor didsomethingto me. Something frantic and exciting. Something that made my insides come alive like fireworks–something that left my heart hammering in my chest and me stumbling over my own words. Mostly because my emotions seemed to gallop off in a hundred different directions. For one slow but fleeting moment, I allowed myself to be drawn in by that familiar smell of a campfire burning and the intensity of his gaze that seemed to heat my cheek in a similar fashion.
“How was your date?” Thallor asked through bites of melted cheese and vibrant red tomato. Given the way he turned his body to look down at his phone, I had the sneaky suspicion that he might already know.
“It was?—”
Awful. He’s awful and unpleasant, and more importantly, he isn’t you…
“It was okay.”
Thallor’s brows furrowed slightly as I picked up my own slice of pizza. I took a quiet moment for myself to bite into the salty molten cheese and the sweet, sour tang of pineapple before holding up my already bitten-into slice to his. If I had any hesitations about Thallor being well-suited to me, his instinctively tapping his slice against mine was answer enough. He was, well and truly, a male after my own heart.Now, that’s the type of cheersing that should be universal.
“Wait—” I observed his slice of pizza, then looked down at my box that still remained untouched. “You got Hawaiian too?”
Thallor’s cheeks burned red almost instantly. And then my cheeks did the same as Esme’s musings barrelled to the forefront of my mind. And for a second, that seemed to stretch infinitely, neither of us dared to utter a word. We didn’t remark on thetinge of coral that brushed each of our cheeks or the fact that we, so clearly, saw it reflected in the other person. Once Thallor had realised I’d actually asked him a question, he gave me a beguiled smile before shrugging. “Yeah, it’s your favourite.”
I gave him a quizzical look. “I mean, I know that. But you got me myown.You could have gotten whatyouwanted. You like the spicy pepperoni one, right?”
He shrugged again. “Pepperoni doesn’t taste nearly as good as the way your smile makes me feel when you open a box of Hawaiian.”
My heart jittered. I offered up a weary, shy smile in response, which screamed, ‘You didn’t need to do this. Why did you do this? Why do you keep looking at me like that?’
“Thallor, you really could’ve just gotten what you wanted.”
His gaze was on me in an instant, his tone deep and serious. “What I wanted was to make you feel better…to make sure you had a good night.”
“I—” I stammered before biting into another slice of pizza to avoid having to say anything else.
“I’m glad you came back, though. I wasn’t expecting you to.” He said it so matter-of-factly. But I could see the tick in his jaw as he waited for my response. Thallor watched for every detail, filtering through the minutiae of my behaviour for the answer to something. He took another bite of pizza as a piece of pineapple unceremoniously dropped to the cardboard box on the table.
“When were you expecting me?” I replied before biting into my own slice.
A blush rose up his neck and cheeks in renewed fervour as I looked up at him and smiled. He adjusted his standing position once, twice, three times as if the question itself had made him physically uncomfortable. My brows furrowed in confusion as I looked at him.When did I say I would behome?—
“Oh.” I giggled as he gave me another sheepish look. It was probably the first time I had ever seen Thallor act coy. Shy. Unsure of himself. “Gods,no. Absolutely not. He got so drunk off whiskey he didn’t even enjoy. I felt like I was caught in someDon Draperfever dream.”
“What a fucking asshole.”
“You were right. I hate to admit it, but you were. He was utterly insufferable. I don’t know what it was, but he was completely different from how he’d acted before. I suppose once he’d gotten what he needed out of me, he wasn’t interested.” I sighed. “And when I told him I was leaving, he got all aggressive and grabbed my arm…”
Jude’s behaviour would have been jarring even if my attack the previous year hadn’t happened. But ithad,and it’d left me sensitive to being touched or people crowding my space. The rest of the sentence trailed off as the room went painfully still. I wasn’t sure what I’d said, but in the absence of my chatter, I found the cold, eery silence suffocating. My breath caught in my throat as I watched the pizza drop from Thallor’s blackened hand.
His eyes had glazed over completely, and wisps of black ink coursed up his arm. Claws protruded from his fingers, and he seemed to grow several inches as I looked up at his hulking form. Where I’d found him mildly terrifying before, I now found him enthralling. Captivating. Beautiful. Whatever leftover air I had residing in my lungs seemed to escape me as I watched him.
