“Every day. I seriously can’t get enough of...my man.”
Her eyes widened. “Every day? Damn.”
I backtracked fast. “No, noteveryday, every day. It just—uh—feels like that. Because, you know...you...feel it for a few days after it...happens?”
Sarah nodded, satisfied. “Well, you seem happy, Lilly, so I’m happy for you. I know I was kind of suspicious at first, but I’m glad you found your person.”
Her words slipped past my defenses and split something open inside me. Because if this was what it meant to ‘find your person,’ then I had never felt more lost.
I smiled for her anyway, stretched thin and failing to touch my eyes, but beneath it, I could feel the hollow ache of it all—the irony of running so far from one kind of loneliness only to stumble headfirst into another. A loneliness quieter, trickier, because this time it was dressed up in vows and paperwork, in the illusion of companionship.
When I finally staggered home that night, the hospital smell had finally surrendered to the much more glamorous odor of exhaustion. I was used to walking into absence. What I wasn’tused to was light spilling from the kitchen and the faint, rich scent of butter browning.
I froze in the doorway. Khalifa stood at the stove, sleeves rolled to his elbows, moving with casual precision. There was a cutting board with a perfectly seasoned steak waiting, a pan already hissing softly on the burner.
“Um...hey,” I said, my voice strange in the domestic air.
He barely glanced over his shoulder, flicking a knob to lower the heat. “Hi, Lillian.”
I stepped further inside. “I haven’t seen you in a while.”
He shrugged without looking up, sliding the steak into the pan where it sizzled loudly. “You leave before I get up. You come back after I’m already asleep.”
“Yeah, my schedule’s been hectic.”
He didn’t answer, just pressed the back of a spatula against the steak, the smell blooming around us.
“What are you doing?” I asked finally.
“Cooking dinner, obviously.”
“Why?”
He turned then, arching an eyebrow like he couldn’t believe he had to explain the concept. “People need to eat. And I’m going to assume you can’t cook.”
I glared. “You assume correctly. I was too busy being a child prodigy to spend time in the kitchen.”
He shook his head and plated the steak, mashed potatoes, a handful of greens, and slid it across the island toward me. “Sit.”
“You didn’t need to cook for me,” I said immediately.
“Sit down and eat, Lillian.” His voice cut cleanly through the clatter of the pan—no anger, just command.
I hesitated, then tossed my bag on the couch and sat. The plate was warm against my hands, the steak glistening like something out of a restaurant.
“Thanks.”
“No need to thank me,” he replied dryly, settling into the chair opposite me with his own plate of tofu and vegetables. “I’m not interested in dealing with your unavoidable death from starvation or heart failure because you either don’t eat or eat junk.”
“Only you could turn a kind gesture into something rude,” I muttered, stabbing my fork into the salad.
He didn’t look up, didn’t even slow down, just kept cutting his tofu into neat squares.
I took my first bite, repressing the moan that threatened to leave my throat.God, it was good. Juicy, garlicky, the kind of steak you dreamt about when you were working a double shift and eating cold granola bars between deliveries.
The quiet dragged its feet awkwardly. I hated how much I needed to fill it. Finally, I said, “How was your day?”
His head lifted. “What are you doing?”
