Free Web NovelChapter 291: Chapter 291: Nobody Knows
Damon’s POV
The village was called Threnwick.
Damon had been there once before, years ago, for reasons he couldn’t fully remember now. Something pack related. He had driven through it and noticed the food smell coming from a small restaurant on the main street and had told himself he would come back and then never had.
He had been thinking about that restaurant for three years.
It did not disappoint.
They found a table in the corner by the window....small, slightly wobbly, with paper menus that had clearly been photocopied so many times the edges were grey. The kind of place that had been there for forty years and wasn’t trying to impress anyone. The kind of place where the food was good because the people who made it actually cared about food and not because anyone was watching.
That was the thing about Threnwick. It was small enough that strangers weren’t remarkable. Four people sitting down for lunch on a Wednesday afternoon where nobody recognized them. Nobody looked twice. Nobody whispered. Nobody knew who Eve was or what had happened at the Seraphim Court two days ago or what any of their names were.
They were just people.
Damon hadn’t realized how much he had needed that until he felt his shoulders drop the moment they sat down.
Damian looked at the menu like it was a document requiring careful analysis.
"It’s a menu," Damon said. "Not a treaty."
"I’m reading it," Damian said.
"You’ve been reading it for five minutes," Damon said.
"There are a lot of options," Damian said.
"There are twelve options," Damon said. "It’s a small restaurant."
"Damon," Silas said.
Damon looked at him.
Silas looked back with the expression that meant let him read the menu.
Damon handed the menu to him.
Eve was looking out the window at the village street outside. She had her chin in her hand and her eyes were moving over the people going past, a woman with a pushchair, an old man with a dog, two teenagers walking close together and not quite holding hands.
She looked relaxed.
Actually relaxed, not the performing-calm thing she did when she was managing something difficult. Her shoulders were down and her jaw wasn’t tight and she had her hair loose, she was wearing Silas’s jumper which was too big for her, she looked like a completely ordinary person having a completely ordinary Wednesday.
He loved her so much it was almost a problem.
"Stop staring," she said without turning around.
"I’m not staring," he said.
"You are," she said.
"I’m appreciating," he said. "There’s a difference."
She turned and looked at him.
He smiled at her.
She shook her head but her mouth was doing the thing it did when she was trying not to smile back.
"What are you having," she said.
"Everything," he said. "I’ve been thinking about this restaurant for three years."
"You’ve been thinking about a restaurant you’ve never eaten at for three years," Damian said without looking up from the menu.
"I drove past it," Damon said. "I smelled it. That counts."
"That absolutely does not count," Eve said.
"The smell was incredible," Damon said. "I knew. Some things you just know."
Silas looked at the menu. "The lamb," he said. "That’s what I’m having."
"You haven’t read the whole menu," Damian said.
"I don’t need to," Silas said. "I saw lamb and I stopped reading."
Damian looked at him over the top of the menu. fгeewёbnoѵel.cσm
"That’s not how you make an informed decision," Damian said.
"It is if you like lamb," Silas said.
Damon looked at Eve.
Eve looked at Damon.
They had this conversation about twice a week and it never got less entertaining.
The food arrived twenty minutes later.
It was exactly as good as Damon had hoped.
Better, maybe.
He worked through his plate with the focused appreciation of someone who had been looking forward to something for a long time and was not going to rush it. Across the table Silas was eating his lamb with the quiet satisfaction of a man who had made a good decision and knew it. Damian had ended up ordering the same thing as Silas after reading the menu for another four minutes and then looking at what the table next to them had.
Eve had ordered soup and bread and was eating it slowly, still half turned toward the window, watching the street.
"You’re people watching," Damon said.
"I like watching people," she said. "I always have. It’s how I learned to read rooms." She nodded toward a couple at a table across the restaurant....middle aged, comfortable with each other, not talking much but not uncomfortable about it either. "They’ve been together a long time," she said. "Look at how they eat. They’re not performing anything. They’re just....existing in the same space."
Damon looked at the couple.
She was right.
"Is that what we look like?" he said.
Eve looked at him.
Then she looked at the four of them sitting around the wobbly table with the paper menus and the window light coming in.
"Yes," she said. "I think it is."
Something in his chest went warm and steady at that.
He looked back at his food.
"Good," he said.
After lunch they walked out of the restaurant, with no plan and no destination in mind. So they walked round the village street.
Damon walked beside Eve. Damian and Silas were a few steps behind them, talking quietly about something, he could hear their voices but not the words. He didn’t try to listen. They did this sometimes, his brothers. Found each other in the quiet spaces between bigger things and said the things they didn’t say in front of everyone else. He had always trusted them to do that. It had never needed his participation. freewebnøvel.coɱ
"Tell me something," Eve said.
"What kind of something," he said.
"Something about you," she said. "Something I don’t know. Something from before all of this."
