Flawed (Ethan Frost 4)

“It was a new grill. I was just getting the hang of it.”

“Yeah, well, this is a new kitchen to you, so I figure it’s better not to take chances. Besides, think of this as a thank-you dinner. You shouldn’t have to help prepare your own thank-you meal.”

“I certainly won’t argue with that. But this is the second time you’ve mentioned thanking me in the last five minutes and, to be honest, I’m a little fuzzy on what I did that deserves both a kiss and a homemade meal.”

“Chloe told me what you did.”

“What I did?” Alarm bells go off in the back of my head. “What exactly did my sister tell you?”

“You’re seriously going to play dumb about this?” She shoots me a look, and when I still don’t say anything, she sighs. “Fine. I know you created bots to help you find wherever the video is posted and destroy it. I’m pretty sure all that work deserves more than a thank-you meal, but I’m broke, so it’ll have to do.”

Jesus. Is she kidding me with this? Frustrated and more upset than I should be by her logic, I end up snapping out, “You don’t need to thank me for that.”

“What?” She looks flabbergasted. “Of course I do! It was a really nice thing—”

“No.” I take the carton of mushrooms from her and slam it down on the counter so hard the bottom crumbles. “You don’t. You really, really don’t.” My fists are clenched now, a rage I wasn’t even aware I was feeling welling up inside me.

“Don’t you get that you’re the victim here? You’re the one whose trust was abused and you’re the one who was violated by that ridiculous fucktrumpet of a wannabe man. You don’t need to thank me for doing what anyone with an ounce of human decency should do. No woman should ever have to thank someone for that. I don’t know what the hell is wrong with the world that everyone seems to think the more vulnerable a woman is, the more she’s fair game. So don’t you dare thank me for trying to even the playing field for you a little when the media and everyone else in the world seems to have forgotten that.”

I’m not a violent guy, but when I think about what Alexander did to her by releasing that videotape or what Brandon did to Chloe just because he could—while I did nothing to stop it—I want to hit something. I want to plow my fist into the wall again and again and again, until the rage and hate and guilt are so buried in physical pain that I can’t feel them anymore.

For long seconds Tori doesn’t say anything, and neither do I. Part of me is afraid I just offended the hell out of her—after all, the last thing she needs is to be told what to do by a man who profited from letting his own sister’s rapist off the hook. I might not have known about what my parents had done, but that’s never been a very good excuse in her opinion. Or in mine. I should have known what they’d done to Chloe. More, I should have stopped it.

I wait for Tori to call me on it as she always does, to tell me all the reasons she doesn’t buy my bullshit, but in the end all she does is hand me a small basket of cherry tomatoes and say, “If you really want to help, you can wash these.”

For long minutes she doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t really even look at me. But there’s something in her voice—in the way she holds her body—that tells me I’ve passed a hurdle I didn’t even know I was running toward.

It’s a surprisingly good feeling, despite all the negative ones still crawling around in my belly. Which is why I take the tomatoes without another word and start doing as instructed.

I’ve washed about half of them when Tori suddenly giggles.

“What?” I ask, wanting to be let in on the joke.

“Fucktrumpet?”

Now I’m laughing with her. “I don’t know. Some Scottish guy I follow on Twitter used it the other day and I pretty much thought it was the best insult I’d ever heard.”

“Are you kidding me? It might be the best insult ever invented. Certainly since Shakespearean times.”

“That’s pretty much what I’m thinking, too.”

For long seconds, we just stand there grinning at each other. The sudden camaraderie feels strange, but it also feels good. Really good. So much so that when she finally breaks eye contact and turns away, I can’t help missing it a little.

Especially since, as we stand there working in surprisingly companionable silence, I can’t help thinking about Chloe. About Alexander. About Tori and the mess her life has become overnight. Despite our less-than-harmonious past, I would help her out in a heartbeat if I thought she’d let me. But I know her well enough at this point to figure out that if I flat-out offer her money she’ll bite my hand off—and probably savage the both of us in the process. Which is why I’m working another angle in my head, even as I try to figure out how to broach the subject to her.

“What’s up?” she asks, after plopping the freshly washed and trimmed asparagus on the counter next to the other vegetables. “Why do you have that look on your face?”

I have no idea what she’s talking about. “What look?”

“Like you just sucked on one of these.” She brandishes a large lemon at me before bumping me out of the way at the sink so she can wash it, too.

“Lemons aren’t as bad as people think,” I tell her in a conversation change so blatant it could be seen from space. “You should try sucking on one sometime.”

“Yeah, well, I would, but I prefer sucking on other things.”

>

My eyebrows hit my hairline at that—as I’m sure she intended them to—but Tori just shakes her head at me, her mouth twisted into an amused smirk. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but I was referring to Jolly Ranchers.”