“Do you trust me, sweet girl?”
I don’t know why I sit when he ushers me to the nearest chair. Or why I’m still sitting there when Kai comes back with the med kit.
Bastian uses his knuckle to tip my chin back. “I asked you a question.”
I stare up at Bastian, the man who used to be my professor, my stalker, and now…
“I trust you.”
Bastian peers down at me for a beat. Whatever he sees in my eyes satisfies him, because he nods and then looks over at Kai. “And you?”
Kai stares back at him, tilting his chin up a fraction. “I wouldn’t let you touch her if I didn’t.”
Bastian smiles, trailing the knuckles of his other hand down Kai’s jaw.
“Nor should you,” he says.
Then he cocks his head toward the kitchen. “Fetch me some ice, boy.”
Chapter 57
Kai
I do trust Rooke—and what that says about me, who the fuck knows—but my jaw clenches until it aches as I watch him pierce Haven’s ears.
What disturbs me even more is how fucking turned on I am by the time he’s done. I don’t know if it’s the black nitrile gloves he put on, or his steady hands as he swabs Haven’s earlobes with an alcohol pad, or how he distracts her with a random anecdote as he slides the needle through her numbed skin without her even noticing.
Haven reaches up to touch the butterflies glittering in her ears, but Rooke bats her hand away. “The only thing touching your pretty ears for the next week is saline solution.”
She grins as she jumps up from her seat and rushes to the bathroom mirror to inspect herself. The look she throws me on the way is nothing short of sheer joy.
I’m instantly jealous I couldn’t make her that happy—until I hear her squeal in the bathroom. “They match perfectly, you guys!”
When I look back at Rooke, he’s watching me with a blank look. “You’re upset,” he says.
I rub a hand over the back of my neck. “She’s so happy.”
“My gift is meaningless without yours,” he says. “That necklace you gave her…”
Rooke smiles fondly at Haven. Then he heads for the kitchen, giving me a rueful shake of his head as he passes. He peels off his nitrile gloves and tosses them in the trash, opening the fridge as I follow him inside.
“Breakfast?” I ask, desperately hoping he says yes.
Haven’s idea of food is a bagel with cream cheese.
I can’t cook. Never learned how. But Rooke’s been teaching me the basics these past few weeks. He gets very intense around food—lecturing me about flavors and textures and nutritional values.
Broccoli triggers the fuck out of him, for some reason. I only mentioned it once in passing, and he nearly snapped my head off.
“And a real cup of coffee.” He pauses, holding a carton of eggs, glancing over at me with an almost apologetic look on his face. “No offense.”
“Need a fucking PhD to work that thing,” I mutter, shaking my head. “Instant’s just as good.”
“Take your frustration out on the chopping block, boy,” he says, using his chin to point out the veggies stacked on the counter.
I start chopping some spring onion the way he showed me, watching him work whenever it didn’t put me at risk of losing a finger.
Rooke in the kitchen is just fucking surreal.
