The Heartbreaker of Echo Pass - Maisey Yates Page 0,64

guy that you slept with. And he couldn’t have made it more clear that he’s not ready for more.

It was true. He’d tried to warn her off, in basically every way, and she hadn’t listened. Because she had been so certain that she knew, absolutely, what she was doing and what she wanted.

And on the one hand, she had. On the one hand, it had been amazing. On the other hand... Complicated. Painful.

She paused in front of the cabin door. She just didn’t quite know what she was going to get, not with Griffin. Not really ever. But there was no turning coward now. The thing was, she had done the brave thing, and so had he. Now there was just the fallout. And she wondered what the fallout would be. If he would regret telling her. If he would regret touching her. Well, she’d been ripping the Band-Aid off a lot the last couple of weeks. Might as well do it again.

She pushed the cabin door open, and saw that Griffin was already up. He was at the woodstove, wearing only jeans, cooking something in a skillet. Bacon.

“I... Didn’t know you cooked.”

“Of course I cook. I mean, minimally, but bacon is not beyond my reach.”

She stood there, awkward. “Good morning,” she said.

“Morning,” he said.

“I don’t really know what the protocol is for this. I mean, virgin. Until recently.”

He shook his head. “I have no idea. But there’s bacon. So I figure, we can have some of that.”

“Yeah. That sounds like a plan.” In the absence of clarity, she would take bacon. Well, truth be told, she rationalized to herself as she watched Griffin, muscular and compelling, standing at that woodstove and cooking. As she watched his skin, his muscles, his movements. She did have some clarity. She didn’t regret last night. Not even a little bit. She had wanted it, and she had wanted him. And what had happened had been more than she’d bargained for, sure. But if she was truly honest with herself...

She had known. She had known that he was a man with unspeakable pain at his core. He hadn’t been dishonest about that, not in any of their interactions. He practically bled grief. He had also been a brilliant, desperate lover, who had woven fantasies around her that felt like they’d always been there. He created desires and satisfied them just as quickly. And standing there even now, she was filled with the strangest sense of satisfaction combined with a hollow, aching need for more.

What was clear was that she cared about him. Was that she had enjoyed last night. Was that his body matched hers in a very specific way.

What was clear was that she wanted to be standing here, watching him cooking bacon. She wanted it more than anything in the world.

“It’s so unusual that someone cooked breakfast for me.”

And some of that was that she tended to jump in and help, even if breakfast was already going by the time she got into the kitchen. But she wasn’t going to. Not now. Instead, she took herself to his bed and curled up at the center of the mattress, waiting for him to finish. And when he did, there was stove top coffee, eggs and bacon. And he brought them to her.

“There’s no call for you to wear clothes while you’re inside,” he said.

“I’m not sure about eating naked.”

A smile lit his face up, and she realized that she had never seen that. Not really. It seemed to surprise him as much as it surprised her. “Why does eating make it a problem?”

“It just is,” she said. “I mean, the risk of bacon grease burns alone...”

“I would never let that happen.”

“You can’t protect me.”

The words hovered between them, and suddenly felt leaden.

He cleared his throat. “I mean, suit yourself.”

“You still have your jeans on.”

“What’s good for the goose,” he said. “If you’re wearing clothes, so am I.”

She weighed that, but lay out on her stomach, still fully clothed, holding a piece of bacon. It was the strangest thing, but she felt younger. And it wasn’t that she felt light or unburdened, because there had been some pretty hefty weight shared last night. It was just that her world felt freer. Her world felt like it was this room. This moment.

“What are your plans for the day?”

“Well,” she said slowly. “There are things I could do back at the apartment. I need to talk to my brother about the fact that I’m moving out.