I smile against his skin. “Starving. You cooking? Because you promised me that days ago and I’m still waiting.”
He laughs. The vibration moves through his chest into mine.
“Tonight, I deliver.”
Neither of us moves. Outside, the tide keeps pulling.
15
NATALIA
I watchhim move around my kitchen like he owns it.
Johnny’s got the island covered in ingredients. Tomatoes on the cutting board. Italian sausage thawing in the sink. Spices pulled from the rack above the stove that I haven’t touched in two months of living here. He’s commandeered all three of my pots, moving between them with a confidence that doesn’t match a man who can’t remember his own name.
His sleeves are shoved to his elbows, forearms flexing every time he reaches for something, and my brain keeps short-circuiting back to earlier. The grip of those arms when he pulled me under him. The way his hands felt when they stopped being polite.
I drag my eyes away before I embarrass myself.This is dinner Natalia, act like you’ve been somewhere.
“Do you actually know what you’re doing?” I ask from my stool at the island. “Because I don’t want to get my hopes up.”
He glances over his shoulder. “Honestly? No. I have no idea what I’m doing.” He turns back to the tomatoes and startschopping, the knife moving fast, confident. “But I know how to do it. Does that make any sense?”
“Procedural memory.”
“Bless you.”
I scoff. He grins without turning around.
“It’s stored differently than regular memories,” I say. “Episodic memory, the kind you lost, lives in your hippocampus. But skills you’ve repeated thousands of times get encoded in your cerebellum and basal ganglia. Separate systems entirely. That’s why you can chop tomatoes like a line cook but you can’t remember where you’re from.”
The knife pauses. Just a fraction of a second, his shoulders drawing tight, before he’s chopping again.
“Your hands are basically running on autopilot,” I say. “The rest of your brain just hasn’t caught up yet.”
He sets the knife down and turns around. Leans against the counter, arms folded, signature smirk firmly in place.
“What?” I say.
“You just dropped ‘basal ganglia’ into a conversation about cooking dinner.”
“It’s relevant information!”
You gave me a neuroscience lecture.” His smirk widens. “Over pasta sauce.”
“It was abriefneuroscience lecture. And you’re welcome.”
He laughs, and it lands somewhere south of appropriate, and I take a very deliberate sip of my water. But then his smirk fades into something softer. “Seriously, though.” He tilts his head. “Your coursework, the way you patched me up that first day, and now you’re dropping neuroscience over pasta. What are you going to do with that degree, Nat? What’s the endgame?”
“Nothing really.” I shrug, aiming for casual, landing somewhere closer to defensive. “I just think it’s interesting and it’s something I do to pass the time.”
“Nat, that’s not passing the time. Passing the time is sudoku.” He shakes his head. “That’s kind of amazing.”
I pick at a chip in the countertop. No one’s ever been impressed by what’s between my ears before. My face goes hot at the unexpected praise.
“How long have you been doing this?” he asks.
“The coursework? About four months. But I’ve been interested since I was a kid.”
