“My pleasure.” He was staring at me funny.
“What?” My fork froze.
“I don’t think you’re alright,” he said quietly. “What do you need?”
You, I wanted to say. For this all to be over. To rewind the last several months and pretend he hadn’t walked away from our potential. For Sarah to have stayed in the grave and not come between us like this.
I swallowed hard and shoved those words and feelings down deep. “Nothing. The food is helping.”
“Liar,” Ethan said softly.
Damn shifter senses. “I know shifters can be mother hens, but there really is nothing to worry about.”
His eyes widened in mock outrage. “Mother hens?”
“Yes,” I grumbled. “You have enough to worry about with your own people. Rowan and Evie can help if I really need someone.”
“Liar,” he said again, his voice quiet and probing.
“I’m not lying. They would help.”
“But you won’t ask them.” He scooped up the last of his pasta.
I wouldn’t, but he didn’t need to know that, so I stayed mulishly silent.
He chuckled.
“Did you need something tonight?” I realized I hadn’t even asked him why he was here.
When I felt his presence at the door, I hadn’t even cared. I wanted to see him, spend time with him as we had in the past.
His brow furrowed. “She threw my cookies away,” he blurted.
I stopped chewing and stared. While a big part of me wanted to rage at the bitch throwing away homemade cookies, it wasn’t my right to be angry. I was a woman who’d given someone else’s significant other homemade food.
And given it to a shifter, nonetheless, which was the equivalent of taking my shirt off, shaking my boobs at him, and moaning, “Take me, you big handsome man.”
Shit. I’d fucked up and hadn’t even realized it. “Oh.”
Ethan set his bowl down and shifted, sighing as he settled deeper into the chair. “I just realized it,” he said gruffly.
“Me too.”
Our eyes met. “I didn’t think.”
“I didn’t either,” he admitted. “Taking food from you seems so natural.”
“That’s because I feed you all the time,” I said, wincing when I once again gave too much away.
He should have called me out on it the first time I said too much, but like me, I think Ethan didn’t want to shatter this time together. Since he was here, I could try to begin the unraveling of the spell I’d taken. But I could wait a little while, enjoy him a little more before the real world intruded once more.
“Want some cookies?” I asked.
Ethan poured us both another glass of wine. “You stay,” he commanded. “I’ll get them.”
He brought back a plate filled with each variety and let me choose first. I took a couple of chocolate chips and one sea salt and caramel.
After eating a few, Ethan spoke. “What is this, Moira?” His voice was soft. “What were we? Why do I feel like we were far more than friends?”
