I frown. “Fine.”
As much as I hate to admit it, Cain is right. I can’t go outside. Not unless I want to be blown away or get hit by a flying branch. But how am I going to eat, then?
“Just sit tight,” Cain tells me. “Dinner will be ready in a bit.”
As I watch him go back to the kitchen, I grimace.
Great. Just great.
~
“How is it?” Cain asks me after we spend the first three minutes eating in awkward silence. I’ve been trying to pretend that Cain isn’t sitting on the bar stool next to mine.
And failing.
“Good,” I answer.
It’s not a lie. The Bolognese sauce is tasty, and the pasta is perfectly cooked.
“But?” Cain asks.
“Nothing,” I answer in an annoyed tone. “I’m not the pampered princess you think I am. I can eat food prepared by someone who hasn’t been to culinary school without complaint.”
“Admit it, though. Most of the food you’ve eaten has been prepared by people who attended culinary school.”
I eat another forkful of pasta and shrug. “I suppose it’s possible that some of the people who work at Domino’s went to culinary school.”
He frowns. “You do know there are better pizza places in DC, right?”
I give him a puzzled look. “How can I when I’ve lived such a sheltered life?”
Another frown, but this time he says nothing.
We spend the next few moments eating in silence again. I wonder what he’s thinking. Is he trying to imagine how I was as a child? How I grew up?
I wonder how he grew up. How was he before he joined the army? I don’t know. I hardly know anything about him.
“Where did you grow up?” I ask him curiously after drinking some water.
I would have wanted some wine, but I feel like I can’t trust myself with alcohol right now.
“A small town in Iowa,” Cain answers. “Small apartment. Nothing as fancy as your palace.”
This time, I frown. “You know, I might have grown up in a big house, but my life wasn’t perfect.”
“No?”
“I was kidnapped when I was eight.”
There. I’ve said it. I didn’t really want to tell him. It’s not something I like telling people. But I wanted him to change how he thought of me.
Cain grabs his glass of wine and takes a sip. “Sorry to hear that.”
Great. Now I’ve just made him feel sorry for me.
“And my mother and I didn’t have a great relationship,” I go on because I don’t want to say any more about my kidnapping. “We didn’t have those conversations mothers and daughters usually do. I feel like she expected too much of me and nothing I did was enough to make her happy.”
“It’s not a child’s job to make her parents happy,” Cain says.
True. But I didn’t know it then.
“Anyway, she and I argued a lot. Grae would always come and break us up.”
“He seems to care about you a lot,” Cain observes out loud. “But what about your other brothers? You aren’t as close to them?”
“Adam and Theo?” I pause to remember them. “Well, Adam was always so serious. And Theo? He used to be mean to me. Played pranks on me all the time.”
I remember how he replaced my toothpaste with chili paste one time. I couldn’t stop crying and I had to finish four cups of yogurt just to get rid of the taste, which gave me a bad stomachache. I haven’t used red toothpaste since.
“But I know they both care about me in their own way. And I care about them, all of them. I don’t know what I’d do without them.”
“Yet you joined the FBI to get out from under their wings,” Cain tells me.
I wipe my mouth with a napkin and look at him. “I did not.”
The twitch of his eyebrows as he refuses to meet my gaze tells me he doesn’t believe me.
“I already told you why I joined the FBI,” I tell him.
He shoves another forkful of food inside his mouth, chews and swallows. “Who said you could only have one reason?”
I sigh as I pick up my fork. “Fine. Maybe that played a bit of role.”
Cain says nothing. He lifts his bowl close to his mouth and rakes the spaghetti noodles inside. When he puts his bowl down, it’s empty.
My eyebrows go up. He’s done already? How did that happen? I’m pretty sure he had more than I did, and I pride myself on being a fast eater. I had to be to compete with my brothers, Theo especially.
Oh, well. It must be because I was talking more than him.
“How about you?” I try to get him to talk as I continue eating. “Why did you join the army? What or who were you trying to escape?”
“Life,” Cain answers before drinking his wine.
“Right.” I nod. “You don’t have any siblings.”
Cain sets his empty glass down. “Actually, I have half-brothers.”