Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 90

Chapter 84: Care For A Meal?

Sedona’s POV

Dante came back the next day.

I hadn’t expected him to. He’d said what he’d come to say, had stood in the doorway and checked up on me like one would do a distance friend going through something bad, and I’d assumed that was the end of it-a visit, a moment of closure for both of us, the tying off of a thread that had been left loose for years.

Instead he appeared at ten in the morning with a paper bag that smelled like something had been cooked recently and with tender care, and knocked on the open door with his knuckle in the specific way of someone who wasn’t sure of their welcome but had decided to find out.

“I made soup,” he said. Not apologetically, not trying to fish for a comment of praise. Just a statement of fact. “I don’t know what you can eat right now. The woman at the nurses’ station said soft foods were generally fine, so I made soup. If it’s wrong, tell me and I’ll make something else tomorrow.”

I stared at him.

“Tomorrow,” I repeated.

He looked uncertain at the moment, this was the first time I’d seen anything like uncertainty on his face. “If that’s-I can not come tomorrow. I’m in Seattle for another week for the exhibition series and I have practice in the mornings but the afternoons are generally-” He stopped. “I’m overstepping.”

“You’re not overstepping,” I said, because he wasn’t, and because the soup smelled like something with actual herbs in it and my appetite suddenly seemed to have increased as I was way more interested in him giving me the home made meal, than figuring out what his presence here meant. “Come in, Dante.”

He came in, set the bag on the table beside my bed, and started unpacking it with care. A container of soup-chicken, from the smell of it, with something herbed underneath. A separate smaller container. A bread roll wrapped in a cloth the same way my mother wrapped bread rolls, which I noticed and didn’t comment on.

“You cooked,” I said.

“I cook. It’s something I do when I’m in a city long enough to find a kitchen.” He opened the soup container, tested the temperature with the back of his wrist, seemed satisfied.

“My nutritionist has opinions about what my body needs and I’ve spent fifteen years arguing with her about it, so I learned to just cook myself because then at least the argument is on my terms.” He handed me the container with a spoon. “Try it.”

I tried it.

It was good. Genuinely, specifically good-not the taste that came with a meal being heated in an oven, but actually freshly made soup that had layers to it, the chicken properly cooked, the broth with depth, something green and herby that I couldn’t identify but that worked.

Not *that’s wonderful* or *I knew you could do it* or any of the responses I’d been receiving, all of which I was also grateful for, but it barely covered the surface of what I was feeling. He asked how I felt about it, which was a different question, which was the question that went underneath.

“Scared,” I said, which I hadn’t said to anyone else. “Scared to believe it completely. I looked at the soup. “I’ve been disappointed enough times in the past few years that I’ve lost the reflex for hoping straightforwardly. I keep checking the hope for exits.”

“That’s reasonable,” he said, without trying to argue me out of it. “You can be cautious and still let it be good news.”

“That’s what I’m working on.”

“You were always methodical,” he said. “On a court. You planned three shots ahead, you didn’t commit to anything until you could see how it would develop. It used to drive me insane because I couldn’t read you.”

“You still beat me,” I said.

“Seven-five in the third after you cramped.” He looked at me steadily. “Not the same thing as outthinking you in something, that was a different thing entirely.”

I finished the soup. The smaller container, it turned out, held something with rice and very soft vegetables, which I also managed most of, which was more than I’d eaten in a single sitting in several days. He didn’t comment on how much or how little I ate. He just talked-about the exhibition series, about the particular demands of exhibition matches versus competitive ones, about Seattle as a city and how it felt different from the circuit cities he spent most of his time in-and let the eating happen at its own pace, without making it a thing.