No one needed to know that.
* * *
I was waiting for Heath when he got back.
He had a key, I didn’t ask him how he got one since I hadn’t given him one.
Then again, I’d never locked my apartment before.
Nor did I have the three separate locks on it before either.
But that was before my ex had waltzed right up and kidnapped me.
But he was gone now.
And now I had all those new locks. As if someone else might waltz up and do the same thing all over again.
I didn’t think that was the case. But Heath was looking for something he could control, looking to put some order in this, so I didn’t say anything about the extra locks, the key, the fact I always had a babysitter.
“Hey,” I said, letting myself exhale with whatever small safety his presence offered.
There was pain in it, in his gaze. The way he braced when his eyes met mine. Jolted a little with both relief, presumably that I hadn’t been kidnapped again, and something hard and agonizing to look at.
Love.
That was it.
He frowned at me.
Or more accurately what I was doing.
He was in front of me in less than a second, mostly to do with the short distance between the front door and the stove, but also because he was Heath. He didn’t hesitate to cross the distance between us after a long absence.
Or what had become a long absence in this past month—a handful of hours.
When before all of this, we’d gone years.
“Baby,” he murmured, hand at my neck, searching my eyes.
I counted to five for the sickness from his touch to go away. It did. He chased it away. It was nice now. I just had to get through the horrific five seconds when it wasn’t him touching me.
He didn’t speak for a beat, his eyes running up and down me. I was used to this by now since it happened every time he saw me. He needed a moment. To touch me. To see me. As if he needed to make sure this was real.
I let him because I needed that too.
Even if sometimes—most of the times—I wished this wasn’t real, those moments when he held me in silence, in prayer, I was okay with it being real.
Then he jolted with the sizzling coming from the pan.
He moved me with a gentle touch to my hip that sent heat to my stomach and a chill to my bones. My body battled between its instinctive reaction toward Heath, and then its instinctive reaction toward touch.
I was tucked into his shoulder as he took over cooking.
“Baby, you shouldn’t be cooking this,” he said, voice hard.
“Why? You like steak.”
It was true. He loved steak. He told me this right after I’d told him I was a vegetarian. We’d laughed about it. It was pure, that laughter. Easy. I’d never appreciated just how rare and complex such easy laughter was.
It was lost to me now.
I might laugh again. Surely I would. But not like that.
Heath loved steak but hadn’t eaten it in the whole time he’d been here. Because most of my friends brought food. And my friends knew me. So all of the food was vegetarian, healthy plant-based.
Heath was the only one who’d eaten without complaint. Rosie and Lucy had protested loudly about the “health of their babies,” but they’d eaten it too.
For me.
I’d decided that Heath was not going to be doing that anymore.
“Baby, you spent an hour telling me, in detail, how a steak is produced, and what an animal has to go through for me to have my New York Strip,” he said.
“Yes, and I do not eat meat for that reason,” I told him as I moved from his arms to get plates and salad. I ate more out of habit than anything else, not hunger. I was never hungry. Most of the time I had to force the food down without retching.
But I did it.
Because Heath watched me like a hawk. As did the rest of them. Me not eating, me fading away to skin and bone—like I urged to do—would hurt them.
So I ate.
“I’m not going to deprive you of something you love because of my beliefs,” I continued, pouring us both wine.
Wine was something that I didn’t have to force down. I did have to force myself from chugging a bottle of it down in one sitting, though. It dulled everything beautifully.
Heath turned from where he’d gotten my eggplant bake from the oven, placing it down with an intense gaze.
Though all of his gazes were intense.
He placed both glasses of wine down and yanked me into his arms with a roughness that told me he’d forgotten about our unwritten touching rules.
I held my breath.
“Sunshine, the only way you’re gonna deprive me of something I love, the one thing that matters, is if you stop breathing,” he rasped. “And you’re not gonna do that. Not anytime soon. I’ll be making sure of that. So I’ll handle the eggplant and the cauliflower for the rest of my life, happily. What I won’t do is have you doing something that you hate. Like supporting the cruelty and brutality of the meat industry.”