Start a War (Saint View Psychos #1)(54)

She wasn’t beaming though. I frowned. It wasn’t enough. “Wait a moment. Please.”

I scurried back inside, pulling a tray of warm finger food out of the oven. I slid it all onto a platter and carried that back out to her as well. “Here.”

Her eyes widened. The two trays of food took up the entire tabletop. “This is enough food for a party. Are you expecting anyone else?”

“No. Just you.” I hesitated. “I have other choices. Soup? And for main course I have steak or chicken. I could cook fish if you prefer? I bought some, just in case…”

She cocked her head to one side. “Are you a feeder?”

I squinted. “What does that mean?”

She laughed. “It’s a love language. Feeding people brings you joy. Most often found in little old nonnas who bustle around their kitchens, trying to shove food into their grandchildren’s mouths. But apparently also found in handsome, twenty-something men.”

“I didn’t know what you would like. So I made everything.”

She reached out and took my hand. “Please sit down. We have more than enough food right now. I’m not fussy. I’ll literally eat anything. But I want to eat it with you, not with you running back and forth to the kitchen every few moments.”

I nodded. “I’m sorry. I’ve never been on a date.”

“You mean you’ve never been asked on one?”

“No. I’ve never been on one.”

She picked up a fork and speared a rolled-up piece of prosciutto. “How is that even possible when you look like that?”

I glanced down at myself. “When I look like what?”

Her laughter was so sweet. I liked it. I wanted her to laugh all the time, because it felt like it wormed its way inside me and chased away some of the darkness.

“Fishing for compliments, much?”

I hadn’t been, but I didn’t comment.

She picked up a napkin, running it through her fingers. “I just meant that you’re clearly very attractive. It surprises me that you haven’t dated many beautiful women. Did something happen? You didn’t even date in high school?” She smiled. “You would have been that dark, mysterious, broody sort of guy that all the girls love, even though you know he’s probably trouble, weren’t you?”

She was joking, but there was definitely an air of curiosity to her statement.

“I can’t remember most of my high school years,” I admitted.

She cringed. “Oh wow. Drugs or alcohol?”

I shook my head. “Neither. I have a condition that affects my memory. Sometimes it steals memories altogether, and sometimes it lasts for long periods of time.”

“Oh wow. That must have made studying difficult.”

“I was out of school a lot anyway. I had to work.”

“In your family business? How old were you when you started working there?”

“About ten. Maybe eleven.”

She nodded. “You didn’t even really get a chance to be a kid. I know I live in a big fancy house now too, but I didn’t always, so I do understand how it is. Not everybody has the luxury of getting a good education or completing high school when your basic needs are going unmet.” She glanced around the house. “Looks like you’re doing pretty well now though.”

“My parents own it. I just rent it from them right now, until I work out where I’m going and what I’m doing.”

“It’s beautiful.”

So was she. She was so incredibly pretty. I wasn’t sure whether I should say that or not. I wanted to. Because it was always my first instinct, to say whatever I was thinking. But that had not always served me well in the past. I didn’t like that I made people uncomfortable.

But it was what made me good at my job too.

I just didn’t want Bliss to see me that way. I was trying so hard to be normal. Living in a normal house, in a normal suburb. Getting a normal job, though that hadn’t worked out too well. But I would try again, even though real jobs seemed to pay a shockingly small pittance. Everything else I just wanted to leave behind.

I wanted to date a woman. I wanted to know what her skin felt like, soft and pliable beneath me in bed. I wanted to know what it would feel like to sink inside her body and have her welcome me there.

Scythe had all those memories. He kept them locked away from me, where I couldn’t reach them. I desperately wanted some of my own. Some he couldn’t take from me.

“So is it just you and your parents?” Bliss’s gaze flickered from the smorgasbord to my face. Her fingers hovered uncertainly over the food so long that I picked up one of my favorite hot pastries and held it out to her.

She bit into it, murmuring her pleasure at the taste.

I liked that. “I have two sisters as well. Ophelia is older. Fawn is younger.”

“What beautiful names.”

I nodded. They were. “I don’t see them though. Fawn left about a year ago. She wanted to make a clean break from the family and be her own person. Ophelia travels a lot. I never know where she is from one moment to the next.”

“You must miss them.”

“I do.”

I missed Fawn’s sweet innocence. And I missed Ophelia’s loud voice and constant action. I missed them because their absence left me the sole focus of my parents. In particular, my mother. Despite being a tiny woman of five feet two inches, my mother had her own ways of getting what she wanted.