The Outsider: Hard Knox Part 17

"I try to make it a habit not to ingest s.h.i.+t," I replied with a shrug. "Sorry."

"Thank G.o.d," he muttered before s.n.a.t.c.hing the gla.s.s off of the table. He ran it over to the sink and upended it down the drain. "I was dry-heaving the whole time I was making that thing. I don't know what I'd do if that was what you ate-slash-drank every morning-besides invest in a respirator, I guess." Reaching for the blender, he dunked it into the sink and rinsed it.

"I appreciate the gesture. Truly."

He squeezed what seemed like half a bottle of dish soap into the sink. "I'll let you appreciate the gesture of me making you breakfast when you actually eat what I make. So? What'll it be?" He glanced over his shoulder as he scrubbed the blender. "I don't have things like super greens lying around, but my fridge and cupboards are decently stocked."

Knox padding barefoot around his kitchen in his boxers, still s.h.i.+ny with sweat, while he threw open cupboards and perused the fridge had to make my top ten list of most unexpected, yet hilarious, scenes.

"How about toast and eggs?" I suggested, trying not to smile when he bonked his head on the edge of the counter and popped off a string of curses laced with colorful adjectives.

The look on Knox's face screamed relief. "Normal food. Thank G.o.d. I can manage that. When the word healthy came from Harlow's mouth, all I could envision was you throwing out all of the bacon, eggs, steaks, and hamburgers and replacing them with leeks and bok choy and other kinds of rabbit food."

I yawned, eyeing the coffee maker. "Please. Do I really seem like the kind of person who would force my ways on someone else?"

Knox slid the coffee pot from the holder, snagged a cup from the cupboard, and padded to the table. I tried to keep my eyes on the coffee, but it was a futile effort when Zeus incarnate was approaching in his underwear. I had to loosen the knot on my bathrobe when I noticed I was heating up.

"Do you really want me to answer that?" Knox set the cup in front of me, filled it almost to the top, and waited for my answer.

"No, not really, Mr. Suddenly Literal."

He smiled as he backed up toward the fridge. "I hope I grabbed the right stuff at the store last night. If it's not, I can run out and get something else." Knox pulled out a bottle of creamer. Flavored creamer. In the exact flavor I loved.

"Let me guess. Harlow?" I said as he slid the creamer onto the table.

"You'd think, but no. Worse." He swallowed as he went to pull out the eggs, like he was hoping I wouldn't press on . . . but I wouldn't have been me if I didn't press when others kept their fingers, toes, and eyes crossed that I wouldn't.

"And?" I circled my hand, waiting.

After setting the eggs on the counter, Knox wove his hands around the back of his head and gave me a sheepish smile. "And I might have noticed what you put in your coffee in the cafeteria before cla.s.s."

Knox had been watching me? Enough to notice what kind of creamer I poured into my coffee? He didn't strike me as the kind of guy who paid attention to details, especially when it came to women, so I wasn't sure if I should be flattered or suspicious. I chose to go with neither.

"Were you spying on me, Knox Jagger?" When all else fails, smart-a.s.s is always a sure thing.

"Not spying. Watching. Noticing. Merely observing. If I'd have been spying, I would have known if you used, like, a teaspoon of that stuff or half the bottle."

Popping open the creamer, I poured some in. "More like something right in between. I don't particularly like the taste of coffee, but I love the effects. This stuff makes the nasty, bitter, acidic taste tolerable." I poured until the coffee turned a creamy brown. Then I added a splash more just to be safe.

"Yeah?" He pulled a loaf of bread from the top of the fridge. "Maybe I should give that stuff a try, since all I see when I taste coffee is my mom, hungover, cigarette in mouth, a steaming cup of coffee in hand, and telling me I have to find my own d.a.m.n lunch money. The whole image kind of turned me off to coffee."

Another flash of vulnerability. Another moment when I didn't know what to say. Dig deeper? Offer a heartfelt, sympathetic smile? Make light of it with a self-deprecating story about myself? Or go with something else?

Standing, I wandered over to the cupboard with the cups. Grabbing the first one I touched, I slid the coffee pot out of the machine, poured a little more than half a cup, and took it back to the table to dump in creamer. I held the cup out for him. "Wanna give it a try?"

He gave it a suspicious look, then me, but he stepped away from the toaster to grab it. "Not sure this can erase sixteen years of bad memories, but what the h.e.l.l." Slowly lifting the cup to his lips, wincing the entire time, he squared his shoulders and took a drink. Then he took another. "s.h.i.+t. This doesn't taste anything like I imagined it would. I suppose the so-thick-it-was-mud type my mom drank, sprinkled with the cigarette ashes and a splash of whatever bottle she'd nearly emptied from the night before, would taste different, but this isn't bad." He held the cup in front of him, appraising it as though his entire worldview were s.h.i.+fting. "This is actually pretty d.a.m.n good."

I clinked my cup with his. "Never underestimate the power of an ounce or two of raspberry creamer."

"I can't believe I'm drinking raspberry creamer," Knox muttered after taking another drink.

I shrugged.

"The beginning of the end." He shook his head, glaring at the pink bottle of creamer on the table.

"Yeah, nothing like a little raspberry creamer in your coffee to smear the whole a.s.s-kicking aura you've got going on."

Even while he took another drink, he shot another glare at the creamer before turning to the stove and pulling open the drawer below it with his toes. He pulled out a saute pan, gave it a flip, caught it, and set it on a burner. He glanced back with an "Are you impressed?" glint in his eyes, so I shot a thumbs-up. Knox Jagger knowing his way around the kitchen was something I would have never thought I'd see.

"Scrambled okay?" he asked as he opened the egg crate.

"I like my eggs like I like my brain."

"Since I don't know how to make demented eggs, think scrambled will fly?"

"Just make my eggs already, funny man," I mumbled into my coffee cup.

Knox chuckled as he cracked egg after egg into the pan. Either he thought I could throw down some serious egg-age, he was inviting Sinclair's starting line over for breakfast, or he was like Gaston in Beauty and the Beast and could eat five dozen eggs. I guessed he was roughly the size of an ox . . .

I cleared my throat and diverted my gaze to keep from running my eyes all over him for the sixteenth time that morning. "Clearly I've been wearing the wrong attire to the gym."

Knox extended an arm out at his side as he looked at his "gym attire." "This is more what-I-hopped-out-of-bed-in attire."

"You work out right after you wake up? Like right after?" The thought of rolling out of bed and bounding into jumping jacks made me queasy.

"My fists are pounding that thing before my eyes are even all the way open." He snagged a spatula from a utensil-stuffed jar on the counter and mixed the br.i.m.m.i.n.g pan of eggs.

"Why?" I angled toward him.

"That's the time of day I need to hit something most."

"First thing in the morning?" I glanced out the back slider. The sun was all of the way up, but I couldn't shake the picture of Knox from earlier. "When most people are barely lucid and able to do anything other than drool, you feel the most rage and good old-fas.h.i.+oned testosterone?"

"Bad dreams." He lifted a shoulder and kept stirring.

I blinked, wondering what kind of bad dreams could stir up that kind of anger. "I have bad dreams too. The difference is I don't wake up wanting to beat the s.h.i.+t out of something."

When he glanced over his shoulder at me, his eyes were darker than normal. Not quite black, but close enough to make my breath catch in my lungs for a moment. "Then your bad dreams are different than mine."

I wanted to ask about those dreams, to dig deeper into the demons that haunted him day and night, but I knew what I would have said if our roles had been reversed-something along the lines of "f.u.c.k off" or "mind your own business." Ripping your chest open and flas.h.i.+ng your scars didn't only take courage on the part of the revealer, but courage on the part of the observer.

Life held several recurring themes-courage being one of them. Attaining it, building it, holding onto it, and-in rare instances-sharing it. For me, holding on to it had been the most challenging part, but for Knox, if I had to wager a guess, I'd say the challenging part was sharing it. He didn't trust that anyone had enough courage to deal with the ghosts of his past. That made me that much more determined to prove I could handle it. I couldn't prove a man innocent until I knew just what he was guilty of. For Knox, I guessed that guilty list ran deep.

While Knox was busy with the eggs, I decided to make myself useful and man the toaster. I shouldn't have been able to ma.s.sacre toast too easily.

"So you're studying journalism? To become what after you graduate?" he asked.

My eyebrows pinched together. "A journalist." Maybe it wasn't so obvious to everyone else, or maybe that tire punching bag hit back every once in a while and went for Knox's head. He rolled his eyes. "Really?" His voice was thick with sarcasm. "What kind of journalist? The kind who sits behind a camera and smiles all pretty while talking about a litter of twenty-one kittens being born inside an abandoned van?" The sarcasm had been exchanged with mocking.

s.n.a.t.c.hing a wooden spoon from the utensil jar, I gave his backside a smack. When the sound it made was more crack than thud, I accepted that, yes, Knox Jagger's a.s.s was every bit as hard as it looked. The G.o.ds were good. As hard as that spoon had cracked, however, Knox barely flinched. He threw me a wicked smile and popped his brows a few times.

Which made me get back to focusing on the toast... "Not the television kind of journalist. The article-writing kind. The kind who digs deep to research a story and publish the unbiased truth in national papers. The kind who makes a difference instead of just talking about the difference."

He sprinkled some salt and pepper into the eggs and kept stirring. "You already make a difference."

"Yeah?"

He nodded. "That article you wrote on virginity, yours specifically, listing out the pros and cons of abstaining . . ." My eyes were already pulled together in suspicion before his smile broke and he continued speaking. "You made me remember why I'm eternally and deeply grateful I'm no longer one."

When I went to smack him with the spoon again, he s.n.a.t.c.hed it from me. "One spank's foreplay. Two's a tease."

I leapt, trying to reach the spoon he held way above my head. "I don't know what that means, nor do I want to know." I jumped again and was still a foot short.

I was on my fifth or sixth jump when he lowered the spoon. Just as I reached for it, he tucked it into his boxers-the front of his boxers. My hand froze, my eyes as well, and slowly, I took a step back instead of the lunge forward I was dying to.

"That's what I thought," Knox said victoriously. "Now, focus. The toast is starting to burn."

I smelled it a moment later. Rus.h.i.+ng back to the toaster, I popped up the bread to discover that it wasn't quite burnt. Nothing a little b.u.t.ter couldn't solve at least. "So what are you studying?" I grabbed the plate Knox held out for me.

"Forensic science."

"Wow, I'm impressed. I never would have guessed something with science in it would be what you were majoring in." I went to the fridge to pull out a tub of b.u.t.ter. "Modern-Day Caveman must have been full."

Knox turned off the burner. "I was thirtieth on the wait-list, so I figured a Plan B was in order."

"And what made Forensic Science your Plan B?"

"Television shows made it seem cool."

I raised an eyebrow at him as I b.u.t.tered the toast.

"Would you be satisfied if I answered your question with pa.s.sion?"

"Is that the honest answer?" I sc.r.a.ped on another layer of b.u.t.ter to hopefully mask the charred flavor.

Knox nodded.

"Let me get this straight. You're pa.s.sionate about forensic science?"

He nodded again. "I'm pa.s.sionate about the irrefutable justice that comes with it."

"Okay, now your pa.s.sion is starting to rub off on me. Get ahold of your pa.s.sion, for crying out loud. It's making a mess." My default seemed to be teasing lightness when Knox opened up another hidden window to me. I wasn't sure if I did that for me or for him, but lightness wouldn't get me behind Knox's high wall of secrets. "Can I ask what transpired to make you so pa.s.sionate about irrefutable justice and forensic science?" I bit my lip and waited, wondering how my attempt to dig deeper would go over.

Grabbing a couple more plates from the cupboard, he shrugged. "Life."

I rolled my eyes as I took the plate of b.u.t.tered toast to the table. "You do realize that could be an answer to absolutely any and every question ever asked, right?"

Knox looked at me with half a smile. "Why do you think that's the answer I went with?"

I loved it when he looked at me that way, like there were no secrets between us-or if there were, none of them would make a difference anyway. It was intimate and wonderful and made me feel all warm and light. I reminded myself that I shouldn't love, or even like, the way he was looking at me.

"So how do you afford this place?" I settled back in my chair while Knox heaped eggs onto plates. "I know living in the dorms isn't cheap, but it's a heck of a lot less than this place would be." I glanced around the kitchen. Much like the rest of the house, there wasn't anything extravagant about it, but it was still s.p.a.cious, clean, and close enough to campus to be pricey.

"I don't have a nine-to-five job, if that's what you're digging for." He set a ginormous plate of eggs in front of me. Really, it looked like some egg-eating challenge on a game show instead of a Sunday breakfast. Knox must have noticed my eyes bulging. "Whatever you don't eat, I'll finish up. Don't worry."

When I peeked at his plate, which was almost teetering over with double the amount of eggs as mine, I guessed Knox didn't have to worry about being protein deficient. "So what do you do then? If it's not a nine-to-five job, what is it?"

Knox slid a fork and napkin across the table to me as he took a seat. "A little of this, a little of that."

"And that translates into?" I paused with the fork in my hand, not letting him take the vague-and-obscure out.

"Mostly arm wrestling. Sometimes a little one-punch knock-out, drinking contests, fighting with one arm tied behind my back or blindfolded, or once, both arms tied behind my back. If people can compete in it and bet on it, chances are I've probably done it." When he saw the look on my face, he cleared his throat and dug into his eggs. "But I don't have to do that stuff too much anymore."

My fork clattered to my plate. "Arm wrestling? One-punch knock-out? I don't even know what that is, but it sounds menacing-not to mention lethal. What the h.e.l.l made you get involved in that kind of stuff?" I shouldn't have been surprised, but alas, I was. But really, how many people would I come in contact with who made their living through college arm wrestling truckers and drinking rock stars under tables?

Knox finished his bite and took a drink of coffee before answering. "I was sitting at a bar drinking one night, and some guy even bigger than me lumbered up. He threw fifty bucks down on the bar and bet me I couldn't hold him off for two minutes in arm wrestling."

I blinked at him. He was so matter-of-fact that someone would have thought we were talking about how he lifeguarded at the local pool during the summers. "I'm just going to overlook the fact that you were probably in some seedy, motorcycle gang type bar-"

"The seediest," Knox added.

"And that, since you're only just twenty-one, you had to have been underage-"

"I was eighteen."

I unfroze enough to shake my head. "And this other guy was looking to exploit a college guy's invincible ego complex and take him for all of the money in his wallet-"

"He definitely thought he had my number."

I stared at the eggs. They smelled good, and if you didn't eat eggs hot, they were unpalatable, but how could a person eat while carrying on a conversation with Knox Jagger? "So what happened?"

"Well, since he bet me fifty bucks I couldn't hold him off for two minutes, I bet him a hundred that I could beat him in one."

My eyebrows reached my hairline. "And?"

Knox shrugged, shoveling another bite of eggs into his mouth. "I left the bar one hundred dollars richer and a profession was born."

I picked up my fork and returned his smile. "What profession is that? Does arm-wrestling hustler slash better binge drinker than the compet.i.tion slash one-armed fighter have an official job t.i.tle? Because that's kind of a mouthful."

"Certified Bada.s.s is how I was planning on listing it on my resume. What do you think?"

I stabbed a forkful of egg and brought it to my mouth. "It does have a ring to it." I forced myself to take a bite, and when I found Knox watching me a bit too purposefully, I actually had to remind myself to chew. Apparently, eating and sitting across from Knox was a challenge. "So how did it spread from there? Did you show up at the same bar the next weekend, just waiting for another d.i.c.k in a sleeveless flannel s.h.i.+rt to fall into your trap?"

Grabbing a piece of toast, he sawed off a chunk, made a not too bad face, and took another bite. "I don't know. Word kind of spread, you know? It's a big city and all, but it's a college town, which means everyone is all up in everyone else's business. When word spread that some punk teenager had beat Big Al arm wrestling, every guy flexing his biceps down at the gym wanted a chance to show me up."

"Big Al. That guy was so wearing a sleeveless flannel, wasn't he?"

Knox grinned, finis.h.i.+ng the rest of his toast. "Red-and-black lumberman checked."