Page 31 of Crowe
Noah
I woke up to the sound of someone moving around in the apartment. For a moment, I didn’t move. I just lay there taking stock of my surroundings. The soft weight of the blanket, the gray early light coming in through the curtains. I ran a quick inventory the way my therapist had taught me.Where am I? Am I safe? What’s true right now?
I’m back at Three Bears HQ. Jackson’s in the kitchen. Safe. I’m safe.
I let out a slow breath and stared at the ceiling.
Six months of therapy, and I still did the inventory most mornings. My therapist said that was okay. That eventually, mymind would learn I was safe. I was sure she was right, and it would take time, but it sure didn’t hurt to have Jackson nearby.
I could hear him out there. The low clink of a pan. The beep of the coffee maker as it finished its cycle. Just a normal day with a man making breakfast like it was something he’d done in this kitchen a hundred times before, even though he hadn’t. It was scary how normal being with him felt after only a few days.
I stretched out my body and then got up, tossed on the sweats I’d worn last night, and made my way to the kitchen.
He was standing at the stove in yesterday’s jeans and a clean t-shirt, a dish towel tossed over his shoulder. Eggs were already going, a small bowl of diced peppers and onions waiting on the counter beside him. He poured hot water into a cup and slid both it and the tin of tea bags over towards me.
I crossed to the counter and picked it up.
“Morning,” he said, still facing the stove.
I picked a flavor of tea and put the bag in the water. “Morning.”
I leaned back against the counter and watched him work. He cooked in a slow, methodical way, which made me think of him taking the time to separate out the different shapes of the jigsaw puzzle.
“Did you sleep good?” I asked.
“I did.” He nudged the peppers into the pan. They hit the skillet with a hiss. “You slept through the night.”
I had. There were no nightmares. No waking up cold and disoriented with my heart hammering and expecting to find that I was locked back up in that basement. Just sleep. Deep and uninterrupted until the smell of coffee pulled me out of it. “Yeah,” I said. “I did.”
He glanced at me briefly. Something on his face that wasn’t quite a smile but was darn close. “Good.”
He plated everything without ceremony and carried both plates to the small table by the window. I sat down across from him, and we ate.
Outside, the city was doing its morning thing. There were distant sirens, the long groan of a delivery truck making its rounds, a bird, maybe a pigeon, or it could be a dove; it was hard to tell from this far, sitting on the ledge across the way doing absolutely nothing but watching the people below. I’d found the rhythm of it calming when I stayed here before. I still did.
Houston had been too much for me, but Vesper was just the right amount of busy.
“Julius and Mika stocked this place well,” I said, spreading jam on a piece of toast. “This is homemade jam. The kind with real fruit.”
Jackson let out a little laugh. “Yeah, he gets it at the local Farmers Market. Drags Hawk there every weekend if you can imagine.”
I tried to picture the big man browsing through tables of baked goods and homemade crafts, but I just couldn’t do it. “I think I have to see that in person.”
“Food is Mika’s love language. He loves to feed people,” Jackson said.
“I noticed.” I smiled down at my plate. “They also put a plant on the windowsill.”
“I saw.”
“And the throw on the couch.” I glanced toward the living room. “Mika made that, didn’t he?”
“Probably.”
“They went to so much trouble to make it cozy for me.” I shook my head a little. “I don’t know why that gets me.”
He looked at me across the table. “Because it means someone was thinking about what you’d need before you got here. That you weren’t just welcome, but wanted.”
I sat with that for a second. Outside, the bird reconsidered its ledge and left. “Yeah,” I said. “Exactly that.”
