“The Easter thing.” He cut her off, still not looking at her. “I shouldn’t have reacted like that. You didn’t know.”
“Know what?”
His jaw worked as silence filled the room again.
“I used to be someone else,” he said finally. “Someone who performed, who let people turn him into… a character rather than a person. That is not who I am anymore, but it felt as if you were seeing me that way.”
Her chest ached as she thought about the unused stage at the tavern and the voice that had made her cry in the moonlight.
“I wasn’t trying to make you into a character,” she said softly. “I just thought that the kids would love you, and?—”
“I know.” He finally met her eyes, and the look in them stole her breath. “That’s what makes it worse. You meant it kindly, and I still threw it in your face.”
“Ben—”
“I’m not good at this.” The words came out rough, almost reluctant. “I’ve been alone a long time. By choice.”
“Okay.”
“But you keep…” He made a frustrated sound. “You keep showing up, smiling at me and bringing me food. Do you have any idea what that means? What you’re doing?”
She shook her head slowly.
“To most Others,” he said, stepping closer still, “the offer of food is significant. It’s… an invitation. A promise of care. A sign of interest.”
Interest.The word hung in the air between them.
“Oh.” Her face was on fire. “Flora didn’t mention that.”
“Flora knows exactly what she’s doing,” he said dryly. “Which is why she keeps telling you to feed me.”
“So all this time, when I was just trying to be neighborly…”
“You were unintentionally proposing a relationship.”
“Oh God.” She buried her face in her hands. “I am so, so sorry. I never would have?—”
“It’s all right.”
“No, it’s not.” Her muffled voice was full of mortification. “This is worse than the bunny food. First, I accidentally insult you,then I accidentally propose, and then I get drunk and compare you to a giant rodent who hands out chocolate eggs. I’m a disaster.”
A low sound rumbled in his chest. When she finally looked up, she realized he was laughing. Not a full-throated laugh, but a quiet, rusty sound that transformed his face, softening the hard edges and crinkling the corners of those blue eyes.
“It’s… refreshingly honest,” he said. “If nothing else.”
“I’m pretty sure ‘refreshingly honest’ is just a polite way of saying ‘a complete train wreck.’”
“A very appealing train wreck.” His voice went deep and low. “Which is part of the problem. My brain understands that you aren’t doing these things deliberately, but the Other side of me, the part that is driven by instinct, doesn’t care about intent. It just smells sugar and vanilla and a delicious little female who keeps feeding it, and it wants to…”
He trailed off, looking away from her again, a muscle flexing in his jaw. He stood so close she could feel the warmth radiating from his body, and she realized with a jolt that he wasn’t just uncomfortable. He was restraining himself.
“Wants to what?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.
His head snapped back towards her, blue eyes intense and burning. “Take what you’re offering.”
Heat pooled deep in her belly, a slow, languid warmth that had nothing to do with embarrassment. She should be scared. Or at the very least, she should back away. But she didn’t. She held her ground, her gaze locked with his, feeling something ancient and powerful stirring between them.
“You’re not offering,” he added quickly, as if he had to remind them both. “I know that. It’s just… complicated.”
