Between Here and the Horizon(66)

Her eyes widened. “I love steaks with mac and cheese.”

“Mmm, I know. So do I.”

“Can we have it for dinner, too?”

“Oh boy.”

So that was it. A quick trip to the store later, and Amie and I were in the kitchen with the necessary ingredients, making the dinner Sully had requested: steak with mac and cheese à la Amie.

Later, when I took over his food, Sully lifted the lid off his dinner and arched an eyebrow so reminiscent of Ronan that it took my breath away.

“Why, may I ask, is the mac and cheese green? And why is the steak…in the shape of a rabbit?”

“It’s not a rabbit. It’s a Velociraptor. You can’t tell because it’s not cooked yet. I didn’t want it getting tough on the way over here.”

Sully frowned some more, staring down at the food. “I’m sensing you had help preparing this meal.”

“I did. My sous chef is excellent. Five years old. Loves the color green, and dinosaurs. She’s very sorry you’re sick, and she hopes you get better soon.”

Sully leaned against the counter and sighed heavily, crossing his arms over his chest. “Is this some cheap ploy to get me to fall in love with my niece and nephew via the medium of food? Because it’s not going to happen. I’m impervious to cuteness.”

“I’m sure you are. I am sure you are, buddy.”

Over the next week, that didn’t stop me from enlisting Amie’s help with the rest of Sully’s meals. Monster Brains (clam chowder, with biscuits), Putrid Pot Pie (turkey and sweet corn—Amie didn’t like the corn.) Seasick Stew, which, according to Amie was meant to look like vomit. Thankfully, it looked more like another chicken casserole, but Sully still laughed.

My two or three hour-long visits to his place in the evening were becoming less and less stressful and more enjoyable with each passing day. Miracle upon miracle, the edge wore off Sully. It was an interesting thing to watch. He flirted like a fiend, and he was still sharp as a whip with his comebacks, but the hostility was gone. He would text me once or twice a day, and surprisingly I would rarely want to kill him because of the contents. Rarely. There were still times when he sent something so barbaric and over-the-line that I considered telling him to go screw himself, but for the most part he was behaving himself.

On Friday, seven days after he came home from the medical center, I let myself into the lighthouse, and Sully handed me a mug of coffee. “Big and black, just how you like it,” he said, grinning.

“That doesn’t even make sense,” I told him, taking the coffee and drinking deep.

Sully smirked, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “Doesn’t it? I’ll let you think about that for a while. What terrible creation have we brought over with us today, then?” he asked, waggling his eyebrows at the box I had set down on the coffee table.

“Why don’t you come see?” I picked it back up again and went into the kitchen, searching for plates. Sully hobbled after me, still bracing himself, doing his best to minimize the pain from his ribs, which was still constant and grating.

“Damn it, woman. I’ve already had my workout for the day. I don’t need to chase you around the entire house, y’know.”

“You call showering and getting dressed a workout?”

“I do. And wiping my own ass. Do you have any idea how painful it is to twist and wipe right now?” He demonstrated for good measure, twisting his torso, and then yelped when his ribcage pinched.

“Serves you right.”

“Just open the damn food, Lang,” he grumbled, holding his hand to his chest, as if that would stop the pain.

I opened up the Tupperware and showed him what Amie and I had made just before I left the house. “This is her favorite meal,” I told him. “She said she wanted to make it for you so that you’d finally get better. I explained that broken ribs took a little longer to mend than a week, but she seemed fairly convinced this was going to do the trick.”

Sully considered the meal: pancakes, drowning in maple syrup. Chicken and apple sausages. Eggs, over easy, still hot from the frying pan. He sighed, leaning back against the kitchen counter. “Our mom used to make this for me and Ronan nearly every day whenever we were on vacation,” he said quietly. “She called it the sunshine scramble.”

I bit my lip, not sure if I should say anything. What the hell, though. It couldn’t hurt to tell him the truth. “Amie calls it that, too. Ronan used to make it for her.”

Sully stared at the food some more, shifting and twitching like he was extremely uncomfortable.

“Well. Fuck.” He ran his hand back through his hair, and left it there at the base of his neck, his lips pressed into a tight white line.

“Let’s just eat, Sully. It doesn’t have to be a thing.”

“No. You’re right. It doesn’t.” He still looked like he’d had the wind knocked out of him, though. We sat and ate in silence. When we were done, Sully did something that surprised the hell out of me. He stood up, and then he reached out and took me by the hand, making me stand up, too. I thought he was going to escort me out of the house or something—he’d been broody and silent ever since I’d shown him the food—but instead he raised his right hand and he brushed my hair back behind my ear, giving me a complicated smile.