5. Sophia
SOPHIA
The kettle’s on. Ian’s in the kitchen, and I’m standing in the hallway with Gerald in my hand thinking about going back to my room.
The woman in me doesn’t think she has the strength to face whatever almost happened last night. But the therapist is determined to deal with it head-on, to name it, to put it somewhere it can't fester.
He looks up when I come in. Something moves through his face—quick, barely there—before he reaches for the kettle.
"Coffee," he says. Not a question.
"Please."
He pours. Sets the cup across the counter. Sits back down with his own.
Outside the window, the garden is doing what it always does at this hour. Sunlight hits the persimmon tree at an angle that turns the leaves gold at the edges, the fruit hanging heavy and still unripe, and everything looks exactly the same as yesterday morning and the morning before that.
Everything exactly as it always is.
Except…it isn't.
The air between us has a texture it didn't have yesterday. Not uncomfortable, exactly. Just—present. Like something that was invisible has been outlined and now neither of us can pretend we don't see the shape of it.
I sit down. Wrap both hands around my cup.
Ian is looking at his phone with the focused attention of a man reading something very important. I'm fairly certain the screen is off.
I take a breath. "Ian."
"Mm."
"About last night—"
"How are your feet?" He looks up with complete sincerity. "The stones on that path are uneven. You were barefoot."
I blink. "My feet are fine."
"Good." He nods seriously. "Because I've been thinking, and I know this is controversial, but I think Gerald may have been carved by the same person who designed that path. There's a structural recklessness to both of them that suggests a shared artistic vision."
"Ian."
"I'm serious. Look at his beak. That's a beak made by someone with strong opinions about—"
"Ian." I set my cup down. "I'm trying to have a conversation."
"I know." He meets my eyes. His are steady and warm and completely, deliberately deflecting. "I know you are, Crazy."
"We have to—"
"You hungry?" He's already at the stove, back to me, cracking eggs into the pan with the efficiency of a man who has decided that breakfast is the most important thing happening in this kitchen right now. "You want eggs? Actually, yes, you do. You need the protein. You haven't been eating enough."
I stare at the back of his head.
"Ian."
"Salt?"
"You're impossible."
"I've been told." He glances over his shoulder, and for just a second—one unguarded second—the deflection drops, and what's underneath it is exactly what I saw on the step last night. Honest and tired and careful. Then he turns back to the stove. "Two minutes and I’ll have you fed."
I understand then that he's not going to have this conversation.
Not because he doesn't know what I'm trying to say.
Not because he doesn't have things he could say back.
But because he's made a decision about what this morning is going to be, and arguing with that decision would require me to push harder than I'm willing to push.
For the rest of the day, we move around each other with the careful choreography of two people who have silently agreed, without discussion, to table something indefinitely.
Ian makes jokes. I laugh at them. We walk to the castle in the late morning—he finally meets the aggressive swan, who charges him with the conviction of an animal who has identified a natural enemy, and Ian stands his ground with a level of calm that I suspect is less about the swan and more about having somewhere to direct his energy.
We eat lunch at the small place down the road that does cold soba, and Ian orders wrong and eats it anyway without complaint. In the afternoon, he reads. I sit in the garden with Gerald and try to write and don't.
We don't talk about the step.
We don't not-talk about it in a way that feels strained.
We just—don't. And I let him set that tone because I understand, with the part of me that has been watching people manage themselves for years, that Ian is doing the only thing available to him right now.
Holding the line. Keeping the shape of what we are intact for as long as he can.
I respect it.
I hate it a little too.
By evening, the air between us has settled back into something familiar, almost the way it was before last night, except it isn't and we both know it isn't, and that knowledge sits quietly between us like a third person at the table who doesn't speak but takes up space.
I’m in my bedroom by eleven, then find myself in the kitchen by half past midnight. I don't decide to bake. It just happens—me opening cupboards, pulling out flour and sugar and cinnamon, because my hands need something to do and my head needs somewhere to put all the noise.
Apple cinnamon muffins.
I don't let myself think about why. But then I think about why.
Him.
It’s always him.
Everything, everywhere, every goddamn second, it’s him. At least, until two nights ago before gravity happened, and suddenly it’s not always him. Suddenly, every second has turned into every minute. Everything, everywhere, now has two faces, and that’s not the way it’s supposed to be.
The first batch comes out wrong. Too dense, not enough sugar, something off about the texture.
I eat one standing over the sink, and it tastes like nothing, and I make another batch. This one burns slightly at the edges. I make another.
The kitchen fills with warmth and the smell of cinnamon and something that keeps almost being right and isn't, and I can't stop. I need it to be right. I need it to taste like the ones he made. It has to be exactly like his because I need a dose of nostalgia. I need reminders of him before two faces turn into one, and I don’t even have a picture of him, or a shirt that smells like him, or anything to make sure the face I see is his, and not—
"Sophia."
I jolt, the spatula clinking loudly against the mixing bowl. When I look up, Ian’s in the doorway. Hair disheveled, no shirt, sweatpants hanging low, and it’s not like I’ve never seen the sleep-drunk Ian. I have. Multiple times.
But this time it hits differently, in a way I don’t know how to make sense of.
My gaze drags over the hard planes of his shoulders, the faint sheen of sweat on his skin, the way those sweatpants cling to the powerful lines of his thighs and the unmistakable outline beneath them.
Heat floods low, sudden and treacherous, a sharp pulse of pure want that steals my breath. Suddenly, it’s much harder, much messier to draw the line between wanting what almost happened on the step to happen and knowing it absolutely should not.
His eyes move across the kitchen—the three muffin tins, the cooling racks, the flour on every surface, the bowl I'm currently mixing a fourth batch in—and something moves through his face.
"Hey." He comes in slowly, the way you approach something that might startle. "What's happening?"
I clear my throat, straighten my composure, and focus on the bowl in front of me. "I'm baking."
"I can see that." He looks at the racks. "Sophia, there are thirty muffins in this kitchen."
"The first batch was wrong."
“So you decided to bake four more batches?”
I keep mixing. "They’re all wrong.”
Ian’s standing on the other side of the counter now, and I do everything I can to not look at him, trying to push the image of Reth’s face to the foreground.
“Crazy, how can five batches all be wrong?”
“The texture. The taste. They're not—" I stop.
Ian is quiet for a moment. He pulls out a chair and sits at the table, not trying to take anything from me, just present. Watching.
"Not what?" he asks carefully.
I don't answer. I pour batter into the tin, and my hands are shaking slightly, and I don't know when that started.
"Sophia."
"He made them." The words come out before I can stop them, and I pick up the tin.
"At the house in the mountains. And in Paris.
" My throat closes. "I need them to taste like his.
I don't know why I need that. I just need something to feel like him right now, and I can't find it, I can't find it anywhere. It's like he's—"
"Hey." Ian stands.
"I'm fine."
"You're not fine."
"I'm fine. I just need to get the recipe right. I need to—"
"Sophia." He's beside me now, and his hand covers mine on the baking tray, stilling it. "Stop."
I stop, warmth spreading along my cheek as the tear falls.
The kitchen is very quiet except for the oven ticking and the tap dripping and my own breathing, which is not entirely steady.
"I don't know what's happening, Ian." I don’t look at him.
"I don't know if he's coming back. I don't know if he's alive.
And it's killing me. It's absolutely killing me, and then—" The words start coming faster, unspooling, weeks of managed fear finally finding the gap.
"Then what happened on the step last night, and now today and the tension and I don't know if I wanted it to happen or not, or if you wanted it to happen or not, and I'm standing here making muffins that taste wrong because I need something to feel like him and nothing does, nothing does, and I'm a complete mess trying to—"
His mouth crashes down on mine, swallowing the rest of my broken words. The tray slips, and metal hits tile.
Time splits in half as his hand slides to the back of my neck, pulling me into him.
I gasp into his mouth, a broken, shocked sound, but I don’t push him away.
I should. I know I should.
But I don’t. Because for one moment, the hollow isn’t empty. For one second, the loneliness, the longing stops being this pulsating thing, and I can’t stop myself from leaning into the relief, into the peace of not hurting every single second of every single day.
His tongue finds mine, the contact sharp and so immediate he groans against my lips, grabs my waist, spins me and pushes my back against the counter.
There’s only heat and touch and the frantic proof that I’m still here, still alive, still capable of feeling something other than endless waiting and bone-crushing fear.
He’s kissing me in a way you stop someone from drowning, not by pulling them out but by giving them something solid to hold on to.
And for one unguarded second, I hold on.
One second where my hands stop shaking, the noise stops, and there’s just this.
Just warmth and stillness and the smell of cinnamon and Ian this close.
The timer on the oven goes off, and reality slices in, shrill and absolute, splitting the moment apart, and just like that, the world comes back.
I tear my mouth away with a gasp, breathing hard, tears spilling fresh down my cheeks. Ian rests his forehead against mine, eyes closed, chest heaving. His hands are still on me—one tangled in my hair, the other gripping my hip like he physically cannot let go yet.
“Fuck,” he rasps. “Sophia… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“Don’t.” My voice breaks. “Don’t apologize. I kissed you back.”
My hands are flat against his chest. Not pushing. Just there. Creating the distance that needs to exist.
We stay like this, the silence a living thing, stretching between us until the heat dies and the relief’s gone, replaced by something complicated.
"Ian—”
"I know." His voice is rough. "I know, Crazy."
Neither of us moves for a moment. We just breathe. Just exist. Letting it all settle around us. Then he drops his hands. Steps back. Looks at the muffin batter splattered across the kitchen floor.
“You should try to get some sleep. I’ll clean up.”
“Ian, you don’t—”
“Please, Sophia.” His gaze cuts to mine, and I see the current underneath, the desperation clawing through the hunger. “Go to bed.”
I nod. The air’s too volatile, my head too much of a mess to even try to talk this through.
But as I walk away, Ian’s kiss still lingering on my lips, I see it clearly.
Clearer than I have in weeks. I see Reth.
His face, his soul, his heart. And I’m reminded that I love him enough to wait a lifetime.