“No, but— I don’t know how to explain. The rightness, like you said. The connection. I never feel more alive than when I’m plating a meal I’ve mastered. Seeing it tasted and savored is special, but there’s something even before that moment, when it’s just me and my finished creation.”
“Wow. Can’t wait for dinner tomorrow.”
She grinned. “I’ll try to live up to my own hype.”
As another hour passed and exhaustion grew heavier on him, they talked and talked. The Tylenol kept him mostly at ease.
At some point Ember went to Malachi’s favored, alpha-sized stuffed chair and gave it a push. It didn’t move. She stood back and glared at it.
A rumbling laugh filled Aaron’s chest. “I’d help, but…”
“I don’t need help to move a chair.” Ember shoved it again, then braced her feet and used her body weight to scoot it several feet closer to the couch. With a grin of triumph, she curled up there, looking even smaller than she was.
They talked favorite books, favorite bands, favorite films. She told him how Mike and Donna—her parents? Must be—had saidno puppybecause they didn’t believe she’d take care of one. At ten years old Ember had brainstormed a dog-sitting business to prove them wrong. They’d found three terriers in her bedroom along with doggie bowls and doggie beds, and they couldn’t put her out of business without breaking a sacred rule of the household: Ember’s space belonged to her unless she committed a crime there.
“Committed a crime?” He laughed.
“Just covering all their bases.”
“So did you get a puppy?”
“At the end of the week, my classmate came and picked her dogs up, and they decided one dog wouldn’t be such a big deal after all.” She set her chin on her knees, and her smirk hinted the punch line was yet to come. “They never found outIpaidherto let me borrow her dogs.”
“You were a brilliant ten-year-old,” he said.
“Dauntless is more like it.” She stretched her legs. “Tell me what you were like at ten.”
Ten. Before fifteen. Should be safe ground, though his inner boundaries were a little blurry at four in the morning after severe blood loss. “Feels weird going back that far.”
“Was it rough?”
“It was normal until— At that age it was normal. I did like animals. My mom had to put a moratorium on injured strays, because I’d bring home anything I found, not just a cat or a dog. There was a rabbit, a dove, even a snake one time with a track mark across his body. He survived.”
“You’ve always helped.”
“I, um… I heard what Mal said to you, earlier. But it’s not some noble thing, Ember. And sometimes I can’t. The dove died in my hands, and the rabbit wouldn’t eat and died too.”
“I’m sorry. Deaths are hard to hold at any age.”
He shook his head. Other memories were encroaching. Other death.
As if sensing his need for a subject change, Ember launched into a new story of herself as a kid. When he wasn’t forthcoming in turn, she volunteered another. She and Claire apparently did everything together from the time they met.
It wasn’t fair to ask when he hadn’t been able to say more about himself, yet one detail of her stories stood out too starkly to be ignored. “Can I ask you something?”
Taking up less than a third of Malachi’s chair, she yet managed to shrink further into it. Nutmeg blended with a tang of caution, but before Aaron could retract she said, “Why am I taking so long to explain who some of these people are in my stories?”
Aaron nodded.
She tucked her hands under her thighs. She held his gaze as if searching for something. “Poppy and I grew up in the system. Our folks were deemed unfit. As they should’ve been…a lot earlier than they were.”
Crap. He’d wanted to be wrong. “How old were you when y’all were removed from the home?”
“Poppy was nine. I was five.”
Five years old. Just a baby, sent to live with strangers. “Did it help to have a big sister?”
Her scent leveled as the conversation went on, nutmeg dominating again. Yet a hint of loss remained. “It helped to have Poppy.” She shrugged, then sighed. “I was the big sister, though. Poppy couldn’t be.”
