Sliced Trees and Dead Words

31 - A man who cooks.

- LUNA -

Wolfe just kissed my cheek, and I can still feel the spot burning with his soft lips and scratchy beard as I emerged into my kitchen to see Siella playing innocent stirring Wolfe's sauce (even though she is the worst cook ever and could probably make water taste like shit doing nothing other than swirling a wooden spoon in a saucepan), and my parents sitting at the dining table looking more stern and serious than I'd ever seen them.

I can handle my parents. They know I'm doing well in life, even if I'm not married or popping out a few messy and energetic babies like all my cousins are. Wolfe, on the other hand, has no idea what he's in store for, and there was no way to prepare him considering the ambush he just sprung on me in the hallway. He's evil. Gorgeous and sweet as anything, but evil all the same. Especially when he draws attention to his erect penis right in front of me after talking about how many ways he's imagined having sex with me . . . with my sister in the next room and my parents on the way, so having no way to act on it.

I should have told him they were coming. It honestly just escaped my mind as I was working all day and speaking with Nella, who came in on her day off just for that very reason. She knows me better than anyone, and she saw how I was with Wolfe last night—completely smitten and instantly remorseful for it. She knew I would need to talk it through to make sense of it.

I was attracted to Wolfe, there was no denying that. He was beautiful, generous and considerate, and the way he cared for Medusa and me both when we were in need—me when I was drunk, and Medusa when she was hit by that asshole and his car—was single handedly the most sexy thing I've ever seen in a guy. I already feel so supported by him, with the work I do and why I choose to do it, in a way that not many other people understood, especially my parents, who almost had a fit and started praying to the Madonna to protect me from my own reckless stupidity in allowing homeless people into my workplace to threaten my livelihood with their alleged (and unfounded) dangerous and criminal ways.

Nella told me she understood why I was hesitant with Wolfe seeing as he is obviously still new and unknown, and because I would likely be feeling guilty for entertaining the idea of giving Wolfe a chance when I couldn't ever do the same for Dalen, who everyone knows was in love with me from the very beginning.

She also suggested that there is a possibility that whatever we have between us may only exist because we've been forced into meeting and knowing each other through the worst of circumstances, and a lot of them in very quick succession, which may very well be the part that scares me most. What if I'm actually only attracted to him because I'm in a state of emotional peril, and know that he is sharing that same vulnerability that I am? That, at a time such as this, when we're both faced with such an immense loss, we're gravitating towards each other because we both share the same grief?

I don't even know that it is my fear of betraying Dalen that is getting in the way of me telling Wolfe the truth, so much as it is all of these other factors now. Guilt I probably could have come to accept and move forward from in time; but these other doubts are a lot more complex than all that, especially when I haven't even really had a chance to process Dalen's death in the first place with how quickly everything has happened since then.

I need time to work it all out and get back in control, but I know that isn't going to happen tonight with my parents aggressively staring at both Wolfe and myself as we enter the room. With his natural sweetness, Wolfe reached for the small of my back to relax and guide my reluctant ass forward, which under any other circumstance I would have adored and welcomed entirely. But with Papà's eyes focussed on his every move around me, I had myself regretting my brief wish that he hadn't. It didn't last long. That's how good Wolfe's hands feel.