Chasing Euphoria

Chapter Seventeen

Cassie

"Enjoy!" Landon exclaimed proudly as he placed our meals down on the table.

Every day since I started staying at his apartment, he had been trying to teach me how to cook and it didn't go too well. Tonight was the first night he had allowed me to simply sit back and learn rather than being hands-on. I say learn, but it was more me watching intently, wondering how he managed to be so good at cooking recipes I had never heard of.

"Who taught you this one?" I asked, taking my first bite into the chicken with a subtle hint of lemon.

"Hailee," he said. "She learned from my mom and then taught me when I was older."

Whilst being in his apartment, I didn't learn as much about him as I thought. As much as I wanted to learn. He wasn't close with his parents, but he was very attached to his sister who was now pregnant. That was it. He had little anecdotes to tell me, nothing too significant. I was surprisingly disappointed; I was hoping that living in such close quarters with him would make up for all the time we lost.

I still had a short while longer to get him to open up. Elle was staying at home for longer than expected, so Landon offered his spare room out to me for as long as I needed.

"It sounds like Hailee had to put up with you for a very long time." I teased as his mouth was full with the salad he claimed was a 'secret recipe'. He tilted his head to the side and put on the most unimpressed look as he stifled a laugh. "Come on, Christian, you know I'm only joking."

Calling him by his middle name was a second nature now. The more I said it, the less irked he would be by it.

"Well, you're not wrong. She had to deal with a lot of my shit during high school, I wasn't exactly the best behaved then." His voice was sorrowful and I could see the regret in his eyes.

"How so?" He never told me much about his high school days either. The only thing I knew was that he met Adrian there.

"Let's just say I got into a lot of trouble." He didn't look as though he was planning on saying any more, but my curious expression and putting my fork down pushed him further. "There was a lot of fighting. That's the only memorable thing."

At first glance, you never would expect Landon to be a fighter, hell, it was a shock to me when he said it now. Don't get me wrong, he absolutely had the body to do so, but he was always smiling and approachable, not someone I would fear. Then, the more I thought about it, the way he fought Liam was more than some scrappy thing. He came out with the only damage being on his knuckles and Liam... I heard he wasn't good at all.

Landon's demeanour around me was as though he would never hurt a fly. Too caring and kind to be someone who could hurt someone else without a second thought.

"Hailee and Adrian pulled me out of my bad habits and I eventually learned to control it. Other than with Liam, but that's self-explanatory. Asshole." He sipped his drink as though it was no big deal.

I admired the way he talked about his sister, I was an only child growing up, so I missed out on the sibling bond everyone had around me. The closest I had were a few cousins, not the same thing at all. My friends back in Vancouver often complained about their brothers and sisters, but when they were telling stories about the good times, I longed to have it too. The arguments would be worth it in the end.

"Enough about me, Cassie, don't you want to tell me about your family?" He prompted after taking the last bite of his meal.

"You know about my family."

"No, I know your dad is borderline crazy, that's it." He sighed. "You know plenty about me, it's only fair."

My mind was blank. The question caught me off guard, I never expected to be explaining my family life to Landon because the stories were primarily a bit dismal. Life at home was understandably complicated and there was no doubt that he knew that, especially with how my father behaved. Still, he was right, it was only fair. He may not have told me much about his family, but it was more than I had talked about with him. Even so, I knew a lot about his friends from both him and Elle and he had been a lot more open than me when it came to personal things.