Page 121 of Riv's Sanctuary

The complete concern there was startling.

“It’s fine, Riv.” She blinked. “It’s fine. I’ll just bandage it later. It’ll heal.”

Riv rested her hand on the table and sat beside her.

Next, the bowl in front of her was pulled away along with the scoop he’d placed beside it.

She could do nothing but stare as she watched Riv dip the scoop into the bowl and held it out to her.

She blinked.

“Wha—”

“Don’t talk. Eat.”

Lauren blinked again.

He didn’t wait for acquiescence. The scoop was brought to her lips and she only had a second’s thought before she opened her mouth and sipped on the warm fluid.

It tasted like what she’d expect a bowl of heated chlorophyll to taste like. Lucky for her, her taste buds no longer protested having alien foods.

They’d had a year to get over themselves. The hard meal bars had made sure of that.

Riv seemed to be focusing intently on the scoop as he brought it back to the bowl and refilled it. His eyes didn’t rise to meet her gaze or anything else in the room.

“I can feed myself, you know.”

“Debatable.” He put another scoopful at her lips. “Your hands are unusable.”

She took the food into her mouth and waited as he filled the scoop again.

“You don’t need to do this.”

He seemed to huff a breath through his nose.

“There are a lot of things I shouldn’t be doing.”

She swallowed yet another scoop. “Then why are you?”

Maybe she’d asked too much because he stopped moving, the scoop paused in his hand, which was outstretched halfway between them.

The seconds felt like ages as she waited for him to reply.

“Because, La-rehn,” his gaze finally met hers, “I've realized I’m a fool.”

* * *

His words left her stunned and for the next few moments, she took the scoops into her mouth as he fed them to her.

She wasn’t blind.

He was obviously going through something, processing something, or fighting something. Whatever it was, he still refused to meet her gaze.

Instead, he focused on the scoop and on feeding her the rest of the soup.

Maybe because she was stunned by this sudden change in his behavior or maybe it was because a part of her liked the fact he was being so attentive for a change, but she sat in silence allowing him to feed her.

And the longer it went on, the more intimate it felt.