Slasher: Devil's Rose #10

Chapter 8: Jax Easton

"Do you want something to eat?"

"Slasher, what are you talking about?"

"You aren't hungry?"

Lavender shakes her head up at me, grinning brightly.

"I could eat," she replies with a chuckle, "but you don't need to feed me."

"If we're going to continue doing what we're doing, we're gonna need fuel," I tease, trying to brush off my real concern.

I don't know when she ate last, and I want to make sure that she's not feeling hungry. Especially if she's staying the night and not going to be going home to make herself something.

"Do you want to continue doing what we're doing?"

"I open to wherever the night takes us," I broadly confess.

"Me too," Lavender agrees with a nod.

"So, what do you want to eat? I have pizza."

"Oh, yeah, that sounds good."

And then I hear her stomach grumble.

"You are hungrier than you let on," I declare, and I can feel my eyebrows scrunching.

"Slasher, I'm alright. But yeah, I'm hungry."

"I also have more food that I'll put together too. I'm sure you found the bathroom when you were snooping earlier so you can go clean yourself up while I get food together. Feel free to go into my room and grab other clothes to wear."

She doesn't say anything at all. Instead, she does as I've asked her and leaves me to clean the island counter and get food for us. I grab pizza, strawberries and blueberries, cucumbers, potato chips, and water which I think should be enough. 

If she wants something else, I'll tell her that she's free to grab whatever she wants. I'm not going to stop her. 

I hear her footsteps coming down the hall just as I finish taking the pizza out of the oven where I heard it. She looks at the spread of food before looking back up at me, with what seems like tears in her eyes.

"Ignore me," she croaks, waving her hands in front of her face adorably.

"What's wrong?" I urge while stepping around the counter and toward her small yet strong form.

"Nothing."

I hold her hip with one hand and tilt her head up with my other.

"Tell me."

"No one has ever done anything like this for me. When I saw you, everything about you told me that you're a hardass and that you aren't gonna be a guy I spend more than twenty minutes with. And yet, here you are, doing this for me."

"Only for you. I'm a hardass ninety-nine percent of the time, but since we're being honest with each other, I want to be that one percent with you."

I lean down, pressing my lips to hers in a gentle kiss.

When we pull away, we hold each other's gaze, letting the world around us melt away.

"We have to take whatever this is slow," Lavender announces.

"And figure it out along the way."

"Exactly."

"For tonight, we can just not be anything," I add.

"We exist together."

I kiss her forehead and guide her into the kitchen to let her eat.

As she talks to me about her complaints about something related to a show that I don't even know, I notice the clothes that she's wearing. It's one of my biggest hoodies and boxers that I wear to bed. I haven't let a woman wear my clothes since my high school girlfriend, and she broke up with me after four months to date some guy in the debate club.