“You have a fan,” I whispered.
Knox glanced over his shoulder. The woman quickly pretended to read the sodium content on her soup. “She’s probably wondering if I’m going to rob the place.”
“She isnotwondering that. She’s wondering if you’re single.”
“She could be a grandmother.”
“You’d be surprised. Hope springs eternal in the canned goods aisle.”
We turned into the produce section, and I grabbed a bag, heading for the apples. The Honeycrisps looked perfect, firm and golden-red, and I started picking through them, pressing my thumb gently against the skin to test for that satisfying snap.
Knox stood beside me, watching.
“What?” I asked, glancing up.
He shook his head once. A small movement. “I don’t remember the last time I had a fresh piece of fruit.”
I paused, an apple halfway to the bag. “They didn’t serve you any?”
“Everything came out of a can.” He picked up a Honeycrisp and turned it over in his hand, studying it like it was somethingrare. “Pretty sure the kitchen staff’s secret ingredient was sadness.”
“That, and a complete disregard for human taste buds.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. He set the apple back down, carefully, like he wasn’t sure he was allowed to touch it.
And something about that small, careful gesture cracked open a door in my chest that I wasn’t ready for.
Because it was just an apple. A Honeycrisp sitting in a pile of a hundred identical Honeycrisps. I’d grabbed them a thousand times without thinking. Tossed them in a bag, tossed the bag in a cart, moved on. I had never, not once, considered what it would feel like to go years without the simple, stupid privilege of choosing one.
I put three more in the bag and dropped them in the cart. “Well, your taste buds are in for a serious wake-up call. I can dice these up, grill them in butter, and sprinkle them with cinnamon.”
His eyebrows lifted. “You’ll hand-feed them to me? Naked?”
“That goes without saying.”
I winked at him, and the smile that broke across his face could’ve powered every fluorescent bulb in the building. Full, unguarded, and so rare that I wanted to photograph it and frame it on the wall.
He followed me to the potato section, his stride easy and unhurried, though I noticed the way his eyes still tracked every movement around us. Old habits. The kind that years of watching your back didn’t let you shake.
“Do you like mashed potatoes?” I asked, holding up a russet. “Diced? Baked? Twice-baked with cheese and bacon?”
He gave me a look. “Refer to our previous conversation about the cans.”
“Right. The sadness cans.”
“The sadness cans.”
I laughed and dropped several potatoes into a produce bag. “Okay, well, I want to make you a really nice dinner tonight. We could do steak. Salmon. Pasta. What’s your favorite food?”
Knox paused.
It wasn’t a dramatic pause. It wasn’t for effect. He just stopped, his hand resting on the edge of the cart, and something shifted behind his expression. A flicker of something that was there and gone so fast, most people would’ve missed it.
Then he shrugged. One shoulder. Casual. “I honestly don’t know anymore.”
I don’t know.
He said it the way you’d say,I think it might rain later. No self-pity. No bitterness. Just a fact. A small, matter-of-fact observation about his own life that landed in my chest like a brick through a window.
