A quick hunt through the cupboards turned up a slightly stale roll and a jar of preserves with smears of butter mixed in with it.
Not promising, but he could work with it. He found a frying pan in the cupboard, so dusty that it was obvious that Jacob wasn’t the first person to live there who didn’t cook. Simon wiped it out with a wad of paper towels and put it on to the stove, clicked the gas on, and left the metal to heat. Then he grabbed the corned beef and peeled the can open.
What had he seen in Jacob to start with? The man was a liar, a coward, and a slob—and he’d only hidden one of those things from Simon. His only virtues were a tight ass and a straight cock. As angry as Simon had been over being made to look the fool, maybe he’d been the one lying… to himself.
He dumped the corned beef into the pan and crumbled it. Then he added salt and a handful of silvery onions and wet red peppers to the simmering meat. While the grease melted, he sawed the roll in half and shoved it in the oven to toast the stale out of it. The smell of hot bread filled the kitchen.
“You cooking?” Jacob asked behind him.
Andadd that he was a mooch to his other sins. Simon flipped the corned beef with a spatula and glanced over his shoulder to catch Jacob tugging a worn T-shirt over his head. His ribs were a mess. The bruising had stained out into the surrounding skin, but the red had started to cool into muddy blues along the edges.
He was a train wreckbeforetaking into account that he was a criminal, and Simon still wanted to kiss his bruises and breathe in the smell of his skin.
“I missed dinner saving your ass,” he said.
“And I said thank you.”
“Actually no. You didn’t.”
Jacob flashed him a quick grin. “Consider it said, then.” He pointed with his chin at the pan. “Your hash is burning.”
It was. The meat had blackened around the edges of the pan. “Fuck.” He swung it over onto a cold burner and wrapped a dishcloth around his hand to pull the bread out from under the broiler. The roll lost its crisp shape as the juice sank into it. He piled the hash on both halves and added the dried-out cheese slices.
“I mean, I am,” Jacob said. He boosted himself awkwardly onto the counter, still babying his injured hand by not putting weight on it, and leaned his shoulder against the wall. “Thankful for you saving my ass. You know.”
He could feel the sting of the hot metal through the dishcloth as he shoved the pan back under the heat.
“Why did you call me?”
“Told you.” Jacob shrugged. He poked dubiously at the last slice of cheese. “They had my phone. Yours was the only number I could remember off the top of my head.”
“And what if Syntech had been behind the hit?”
Simon pulled the pan out, shoved it onto the stovetop, and folded the dishcloth over the edge of the oven door when he was done.
“Didn’t have a choice,” Jacob said. “Didn’t matter if they were. I knewyouweren’t involved. You going to eat both of those?”
Someone else might have called that trust. Simon glanced down at the overpiled sandwiches.
“You have any plates?”
They were plastic and from Ikea. Simon slid the food onto the colored dishes and grabbed a fork from the drawer. His stomach growled as he dug into his sandwich and carved out gloopy, neatly squared chunks of meat, cheese, and bread.
Jacob made an orgasmically appreciative noise as he chewed on a mouthful, finally swallowed, and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. He tucked his foot up under him and then hissed and rearranged his legs. Balancing his plate in one hand, he rubbed his thigh with the other.
“So, do you still need me?”
Simon knew what he meant, but for a second, he let himself dwell on the notion of what it would mean if… if the lying, mooching, slobbish waste of space had meant something else. It felt too good to think about it, considering everything else between them.
“Maybe I should ask that question,” Simon said. “You’re the one who got kidnapped.”
A shrug and another mouthful of sandwich. “I have a fake ID and a hideously suburban home to hide out in over Christmas. I’ll be okay. The data transfer will be done in a couple of hours. Everything I got from Syntech is on there. After that….”
Simon’s jaw felt stiff, as though that were some sort of terrible surprise. He ignored it and spat the words out precisely. It had felt the same when the doctors told him his shoulder was ruined—as though if he didn’tsay“I understand,” it might not be real.
“Then I guess, after that, we’re done. You can do what you want.”
Jacob left half the sandwich on the plate and rubbed his greasy hands on his jeans. “I guess.” He slid off the counter, caught his weight on his unbruised leg, and hesitated. “Look, I… had a good time, you know. If I hadn’t gotten caught that night in Syntech, who knows.”
