Southern Secrets (Southern 7)

He chuckles. "I’m going to say you aren’t a morning person." His smirk irritates me. Not because I don’t like it but because I like it too fucking much.

"I’m a morning person,” I lie to him. I have never been a morning person in my whole life. You can only talk to me after at least one cup of coffee, and one must ease into it. It’s why Quinn makes me start at eight instead of seven. I fold my arms over my chest. "I just don’t get the whole cooking at six o’clock thing." My feet move on their own as I walk into the kitchen and see the bacon cooking in the cast-iron pan. "Like the sun isn’t even up completely yet." I grab a coffee cup and walk over to the pot, pouring myself a cup. I bring it to my nose and smell it. "Nothing like the smell of coffee in the morning," I say, taking a sip of the hot coffee.

"You drink it black?" he asks, grabbing the fork and flipping the bacon over.

"Yeah, I ran out of milk one day, and well, it just stuck," I say. "Besides, that means I never have to be disappointed." I take another sip.

"How do you like your eggs?" he asks, and I look at him.

"Cooked." I laugh at my own joke, and he fake laughs, walking to my fridge and taking out the eggs. The way he does it makes it seem as if he’s been doing this for a long time. I don’t know why this bothers me so much. The last thing I want is to expect him to do it for me. Did that once and never going to do that again.

I learned a while ago that you can never count on anyone but yourself. I’ve also learned to never expect anyone to do anything for you. "You don’t have to do all of this." I point at the stove, and I suddenly get a whiff of something baking. "What’s in the oven?"

"You had some biscuits in the freezer," he says, opening the oven, and I can see they are golden and almost ready. "It’s the least I could do. Not only did you give me a place to sleep but you also bought me dinner."

"That’s where you are wrong." I point at him. "I picked up dinner for myself and bought you one because you busted your ass for me."

"You can spin it any way you want to," he says, grabbing the empty plate beside him with paper towels on it. He places the bacon in the middle of the plate and turns back to grab another pan to do the eggs in. "The fact is you did me a huge favor last night, actually all day, and this is the only way I know to repay you."

I can think of something else you can do, my head says, and I bring the cup to my mouth to make sure I don’t vocalize that thought. "Well, I guess I should say thank you." He just nods his head. "Where did you learn to cook?" I could go and sit down on one of the stools at the island. I could sit at the table, but instead, I choose to stand beside him as he leans against the counter, listening to him talk.

"When I turned sixteen, I was hired as a busboy for a small diner," he says, cracking the eggs in a bowl. "Busboy soon turned to cook when he showed up and was drunk." He shakes his head. He comes over, grabbing my hip as he reaches for a paper towel. My hip feels like it’s been scorched by his touch.

"Really?" I ask, and I find myself always entranced by his stories. I always want more. I could sit and listen to his stories for hours. Last night I was dead tired to the bone, but I sat down, and I wanted to hear more of the story. I wanted to ask him what he did after that. I wanted to ask him where he slept the next day. I wanted to know it all, and that fact in itself scared me straight to my core.

"Yeah, he stumbled in there," he says, adding milk to the eggs, "and then fell on his ass when he walked into the kitchen." He laughs. "I was shocked because he was a big man, but instead of getting up, he lay there in the middle of the kitchen snoring." He opens the drawers, looking for something; I watch the muscles in his arm flex every time he pulls a drawer out.

I’m like a fucking schoolgirl. I avoid looking at him and look out the window to see that the sun has officially risen. Two birds fly together into the trees. "No one knew what to do." I turn back to Asher and see him whisking the eggs. "Waitress asked me if I knew how to cook eggs. I lied and said yes." He pours the eggs into the pan and slowly whisks them. "I had no fucking idea how to cook shit. The most I knew how to do was pour water into a ramen cup." He takes his time whisking. "So I learned pretty fast, and apparently, the eggs were not horrible, so they hired me to be the morning cook."