"Yes."
"Then let me make breakfast."Her voice firmed, gaining an edge of the confidence she must have carried when Norman House was full of guests waiting for her to feed them."Please.I need to feel like I'm paying you back for something.Before the fire, I'd be up right now, getting everything ready.Making sure the kitchen was stocked, the tables were set.This feels normal.This I can do."
He met her eyes and saw the need there, raw and honest beneath the words.She wasn't asking permission to cook.She was asking him to let her feel useful again, to let her prove to herself that she still had something to offer besides grief and loss.
He knew that feeling.Knew it in his bones, in the way his hands needed something to hold, something to fix, whenever the world felt like it was spinning out of control.
"Deal," he said."I'll supervise your use of my highly questionable pans."
Her shoulders dropped a notch, tension releasing."Show me what we're working with."
He opened the fridge and did an honest inventory out loud.Eggs.The bacon, which was still good according to the date.A green pepper that had seen better days but wasn't actively threatening anyone.An onion in the vegetable drawer that he'd forgotten about.Bread in the freezer, butter on the counter, and that was about the extent of it.
Her expression stayed thoughtful, assessing, not judgmental.She was running calculations in her head, he could tell.Sorting ingredients into possibilities.
"Okay," she said."We can work with this.Eggs, toast, and if that onion isn't horrifying when I cut it open, some kind of bacon omelette situation."
"High expectations."
"Desperate times."She set her coffee aside and reached for a pan from the hook above the stove."You sit.I've got this."
He didn't sit.Not right away.He stayed where he was for a minute longer, leaning against the counter with his coffee warming his palms, and watched.
She moved around his small kitchen like she'd been doing it for years instead of hours.She asked where things were, paused to file away the answers, and then didn't ask again.Eggs were cracked one-handed into a bowl with the practiced ease of someone who'd done it ten thousand times.She whisked them with quick, efficient strokes, adding a splash of the milk she found in the back of the fridge.
The onion made her eyes water when she cut into it.Her nose wrinkled, and she blinked rapidly, but her rhythm stayed steady, the knife moving in clean, confident arcs.The pepper joined the pile of diced vegetables, and then the bacon hit the pan with a sizzle that filled the room with the kind of smell that made his stomach clench in anticipation.
The warmth spread through the kitchen slowly, low and steady, like the house itself was waking up.
"You don't have to pay rent in eggs," he said.
"Too late."She bumped him with her hip as she moved past him to check the toast.The contact was casual, easy, like she'd done it a hundred times."You rescued me from a hospital, a fire, and my own brain on an endless loop.Take the breakfast."
He huffed out a laugh that surprised him."Yes, ma'am."
By the time she set a plate in front of him at the small table by the window, his stomach had remembered it existed with a vengeance.He sat.She hesitated with her own plate, still standing, like she wasn't sure she belonged at the table.
"You like hot sauce?"she asked.
"Yes."
She went straight to the right cabinet, pulled the bottle down without searching or second-guessing.He didn't remember telling her where he kept it.
They ate in easy silence for a while.The omelette was good.Better than good.The bacon was crisp, the eggs were fluffy, and whatever magic she'd worked with the dying pepper and the forgotten onion made them taste like something from a real kitchen instead of his bare-bones bachelor pantry.
The chair across from him had never looked like it fit until she was sitting in it.Like the house had been waiting for someone else to arrive before it could settle into itself.
"You're easy to cook for," she said eventually.
"How's that?"
"You don't complain."She forked another bite of eggs."You eat everything on your plate like your mother raised you right."
He lifted his fork in acknowledgment."She'd haunt me if I didn't."
"I'd like to send her a thank-you card," she said.
"She'd frame it."
