He owed her a few more pieces of himself.
“No. Not much. My dad worked and my mom was home until I hit high school. She wanted us to be the perfect white-bread family from the television show reruns she watched every day. Mostly she made sure we sat down to meals on a regular basis, even if we didn’t talk to each other any other time of the day.” His dad hadn’t been the “toss the ball around in the yard” type. He worked too hard.
“Did you ever help her in the kitchen?” Maylin lifted the cover on the Dutch oven, releasing a big cloud of steam. Reaching in with mitt-covered hands, she pulled out the cake pan and immediately flipped it onto a clean cutting board. A smooth, white circle fell flat on the board. She re-oiled the cake pan, poured more rice batter into it, and back it went into the Dutch oven. Then she returned to the stuff on the cutting board and rolled it with nimble fingers. Using a sharp knife, she cut it into half-inch-wide segments and dropped them into a bowl of water next to the sink.
He still had no idea what they were. “No. I was kind of a prick as a kid. Never occurred to me to do anything but my chores. And them only because I had to.” He’d been ungrateful.
“You were young.” The kindness she gave him was more than he deserved.
“I’ve had plenty of time to wish I’d been a better kid.”
A pause. “They’re gone now?”
“Yeah. Car accident when I was a freshman in high school.” And hitting the foster care system at that age had been a bitch.
“I’m sorry.” How was she still so sincere? So empathetic without smothering him with pity.
God, he didn’t want her pity.
“It is what it is. I was lucky to get foster care. Not gonna lie, though, it’s hard enough for young kids. No one wants you when you’re almost old enough to care for yourself. Especially when you’re angry at the world and not worth the trouble.”
“But someone did, I hope?”
He considered, sifting through old and bitter memories. The whole sharing thing was coming easier than he’d thought it would with her, but it still wasn’t what he’d call easy. “Somebody kept me because it was the right thing to do. And they gave me some good perspective on life. But I wouldn’t say there was more than that.”
His foster family hadn’t kept in touch once he’d turned eighteen. Not even letters during basic training.
“So this team is your family now. You watch out for them, make sure they all get out of danger before you do.” Maylin was still busy working with her batter, steaming those...things. Her other pot simmered and filled the kitchen with an incredibly delicious smell, some sort of soup. He wanted her to be a part of his life more than he’d ever wanted anything else. His team was family. She’d become more.
“Don’t tell them.” None of them were the sort to say that kind of thing. Part of the reason each of them functioned in the team was because, while they’d lay their lives down for each other, they also understood not to waste those lives. To go on if they had to. “But yeah, I guess so. We’re there for each other. Most people with actual families don’t fall into this kind of work.”
“Families by blood. You all are an actual family too, by choice.”
He didn’t argue with her because it resonated with him. Truth. Even if there were some complications in there.
“You’re all good people.” Maylin was setting out bowls and filling them with those white segments unraveled.
Well, shit, she’d made noodles from scratch.
*
“Whatever is going on in the kitchen, it smells like heaven!” Marc called from the front door.
Maylin met Gabe’s brooding gaze and smiled, hoping to lighten up the dark place he’d gone to. “Perfect timing.”
His answering lopsided grin tugged at her. “Yeah.”
She busied herself ladling clear broth from her pot into each bowl of noodles, making sure each of them had a good helping of the ground pork and vegetables she’d included. Ho fun soup was one of her favorite comforts, and considering the confused state she’d been in when she’d woken, comfort was definitely on the menu.
One phone call last night and their fortune had changed. All they needed to do was actually find An-mei and they could get her back. Nothing should’ve dampened that hope.
But she teetered back and forth between wanting to hug Gabe and to put as much distance between them as humanly possible.
When he’d brought her inside and told her about Harte’s call, he hadn’t expected everything to have been repaired between them. If he had, they would’ve been finished. But it was because he’d understood it didn’t erase her feelings, the break of trust, that she was struggling to decide what they were now.