Things We Burn Read Online Anne Malcom

Categories Genre: Alpha Male, Contemporary, Sports, Virgin Tags Authors: Anne Malcom Advertisement1

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It was a pretty promise. A lovely one.

But nonetheless, the reality remained… I would lose Kane.

Maybe not to the grave, like my most recent fear. But a small, intuitive voice inside me told me I would lose him.

One way or another.

Twelve

Kane healed quickly.

At an almost superhuman rate.

“Babe, my body is used to trauma,” he said when I commented on how impressive it was to have him moving around like normal in less than two weeks. “Healing physically, I’m fucking aces at that. Emotionally … I’m still workin’ on that.” His tone was teasing, but I didn’t miss the undertone to it.

He hadn’t been trapped in my apartment, per se. After the beer pilgrimage, we left every morning to get coffee together at my favorite café. The first few outings were a circus, paparazzi, strangers on the street recording us with their phones. I felt suffocated, trapped.

Even Kane, used to the attention, had a rigid jaw and an uncharacteristic scowl on his face. He’d almost gotten in a fight with someone who made it past Mike and got too close to me.

I hadn’t read the news since Kane’s accident, didn’t look at the articles about me. There were many. It was a phenomenon, according to Kiera. Us as a couple. It was now ‘lore,’ she said, whatever the heck that meant.

But the internet moved quickly. The story of our relationship died down, the focus on Taylor Swift being in town. I wanted to send her a box of chocolates to thank her.

We got to the point where Mike didn’t have to follow us everywhere. We could get coffee without being harassed, go grocery shopping together without camera flashes going off. We resumed benign tasks I either had avoided or didn’t do all together. But with Kane, I loved it.

I couldn’t take any more time off from the restaurant, despite Heidi’s understanding. The control freak in me wouldn’t allow it.

So I went back.

And Kane still came to pick me up. Every night.

Not on the bike, though. He drove an SUV and grumbled about it every night. He spent a lot of his days inside reading—he was cleared for the gym but certainly not the more extreme pastimes he enjoyed. We had more sex than ever. That took the edge off but didn’t help entirely.

I could see it in him, a restlessness. Kane was not one to be confined. He was not designed to live a normal life. He couldn’t be content getting coffee, grocery shopping, reading, watching me cook. Granted, we were having adventurous sex, a lot of it, but he needed more.

I understood it. It scared me. Because although I didn’t have a traditional life, I had a routine, roots here in New York. My restaurant was my home. It was what fed the beasts inside me. I couldn’t leave it. Not even for Kane.

And Kane couldn’t leave his nomadic, thrill-seeking life.

Not even for me.

Something I was unable to deny for much longer. It was growing between us, like a tumor, that truth.

On top of that, Heidi had been capitalizing on the restaurant’s fame. The constant paparazzi, the now three-year waiting list. It was already popular, but this was new heights.

So when Gerald DuBois was in America filming his documentary and wanted to come cook with his former protégé for a night, she couldn’t say no. She didn’t ask me because she assumed I’d be thrilled. I had said nothing but positive things about my time at his restaurant, the few times I was asked when I was younger. I’d done that because I thought that’s what I needed to do in order to escape his wrath, to prevent him from blacklisting me in the culinary world. That was then.

Now, I said nothing, feeling immense guilt over those lies, wondering if I’d influenced some young girls to want to work with a predator. It was a weight I carried with me everywhere.

I hadn’t told Kane about Gerald, there was no point. He was going to be here for one day, one night. In my kitchen. The thought made my vision tunnel. The kitchen that I had worked myself to the bone to earn. The place that I made safe for everyone who worked there. It was clean in every sense of the word, and I was proud of that.

His presence would sully it. Tarnish it in a way that I couldn’t wipe away.

If I let it, I reminded myself. I wasn’t some naïve, powerless nineteen-year-old anymore. I had become somebody. And he knew it. Perhaps it pissed him off, but he wasn’t a danger to me.

If Kane knew he was here, there would be plenty of danger. He’d spoken about how hard he worked to contain the anger inside of him. He was intense about me. Possessive. Though he was progressive, a feminist, I knew that the primal side of him wouldn’t be able to hold back, wouldn’t hear reason if he knew about Gerald.


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