Free Hot and Cold by Paige Notaro

CHAPTER ONE
     
    When things are going good with your man, there’s nothing better than a night out in a nice, low-key steakhouse. Some people like elegant candle-lit things for a date night. Not me. I’ll take a noisy, packed place any day.
    A full house makes you feel alive. It makes your love glow all the brighter to keep up with what’s around. It gives you and your guy the energy to chatter the night away, to see if you can’t find just one more way your hearts beat in sync.
    When things are bad though, a place like that takes the silence at your table and turns it deafening.
    Sean sat across from me, giving his undivided attention to the steak he was hacking on his plate. I gazed at his trim crown of blond hair, waiting second after second for his eyes to lift, to find mine. He just forked in chunks of meat and chewed without looking up.
    Even angled down, his face looked gorgeous as ever. It made his inattention all the more hurtful. He was an amazing fighter in the ring, but this was the first time I noticed how the discipline even made it to meals. Even the high lines of his cheek and the broad cut of his jaw did their work fluidly.
    Less than a dozen tables filled the sidewalk patio, but we were packed in like sardines. Voices and laughter poured out around us like steam. The sounds probably made it all the way to the lower levels of the high-rise apartments towering above.
    Every moment we didn’t talk felt like agony. I had the urge to just blurt something out, but I’d been doing that all night. And also, the last time we went out. I couldn’t keep dragging him to the dance floor.
    Sean glanced at other tables, still not noticing me. He had on a sea-blue polo and wrinkled khakis, the exact same thing he had worn when we went out last week. I wasn’t expecting him to debut a fashion line for me, but he used to mix it up. I had nothing else to do but notice these things.
    I knew the crazy romance usually flickered out after a while. We’d been dating the whole fiery summer. Maybe it was just the cooling Detroit August bring us down with it.
    But this didn’t feel like the end of the beginning as much as it did the other way around.
    I couldn’t handle it anymore.
    “Did they do your steak right?” I asked.
    “Yeah,” he said, giving me the barest shot of his green eyes. “It’s fine.”
    “That’s good. People say this place messes orders up more than usual. Just making sure that didn’t happen to you. I know you need that protein after the big fight.”
    “Mmm.”
    Sean loved talking about his MMA stuff. Now, he took a sip of beer and stared past me at another table. I shoved a piece of grilled chicken in my mouth and waited hopefully.
    This rosemary chicken was one of my favorite dishes in all of Detroit. The breast meat came so tender, and I loved the bursts of garlic and thyme. Now I shoved it down - as if eating faster would spur Sean to action.
    It didn’t.
    I took a deep breath and asked, “Have you tried that steak au jus?”
    “Nope. Sounds fancy.”
    “Yeah, that’s what they want you to think. I guess it sounds better than pouring heated blood over your cut.”
    That finally, finally got him to look me full on. “Sounds intense,” he said.
    “It’s flavorful. You’d like it. It’ll get all that testosterone whipping into action.”
    I bared my teeth in a tiger growl. Sean just gave me a polite little smile.
    “Yeah, maybe. I’ll try it when I go out again sometime.”
    When I go out . Not we .
    No, that was too much. I was being full on paranoid now. He went out with his friends almost as much as he did with me. He’d see them before he saw me again.
    Sean started to tuck back into his meal. I tried to keep the sand from slipping through my fingers.
    “I’m thinking about what I should cook for the Cordon Competition,” I said. “It’s coming up so fast.”
    “Oh yeah,” he said. “That’s soon.”
    Soon. It was next Sunday. He’d known the exact date a month