CHAPTER 23 #3
Because this wasn’t just want. This was something else entirely.
I pulled my mouth from hers, my breath hot and ragged against her flushed skin. “Tell me you don’t feel that. Tell me it means nothing.”
Her eyes were wild as she dragged her tongue across her swollen lips. I could see the war raging behind them. “It’s not nothing. Colt, it’s?—”
“Knock, knock!” My mother’s voice sliced through the kitchen, followed by Ruby’s thundering footsteps on the porch.
Blaire ripped herself away from me, stumbling backward as her face flushed crimson.
“Something smells good in here!”
My mom and Ruby burst into the kitchen as the door slammed shut behind them. Ruby’s face lit up, her eyes shining as she ran toward me.
“Oh!” My mom stopped suddenly, her eyes darting back and forth between me and Blaire. “I texted you to let you know we were on our way. Ruby’s been dying to tell you both about our night.”
“Daddy! We had so much fun!” Ruby wrapped herself around my legs, clinging to me while Blaire retreated even farther.
I glanced down at my daughter and then up at Blaire, whose back was iron straight as she pretended to busy herself with the dirty dishes in the sink. She didn’t once glance my way, not even as I ruffled Ruby’s hair and tried to swallow the last of my own panic.
“Morning, baby.” I crouched down, letting Ruby fling her arms around my neck. “Did you help Nana eat all the chocolate?”
Ruby shook her head. “No. We saved some for you and Blaire.”
She looked over at Blaire, who finally turned and gave her a smile.
I stood, feeling the heat crawl up the back of my neck. “Thanks, kiddo. Y’all want some breakfast? Blaire is making bacon and eggs.”
My mom smiled. “Now, Blaire, you told me yesterday morning you don’t know how to cook. Were you holding out on me?”
“No.” Blaire laughed, but it was weak. “Colt was teaching me.”
“Oh!” My mom looked back and forth between us again. “Well, I’d say you’re in pretty good hands.”
I looked at Blaire, her entire face flushing, as Ruby moved to her side. “Can I help?”
“Of course.” Blaire tapped her finger against the tip of Ruby’s nose, making her smile. “You can be the official taste tester.”
Mom set Ruby’s bag on a chair and gave me a look I’d grown up with. She was seeing far more than Blaire or I wanted her to. “Well, I, for one, am starving.” She took a seat at the island, and I pulled plates out of the cabinet.
I moved the two broken eggs onto my plate before I lit the burner again and placed the pan over the heat. “How do you want your eggs, Mom? Blaire’s a professional now.”
“That’s not true.” Blaire chuckled softly as she shook her head, but she took the spatula when I held it out to her. Our fingers brushed, and her eyes finally met mine for the first time since we’d been interrupted.
“I want my eggs pink!” Ruby said as she climbed up on the stool beside my mom.
“I’m not a magician, Ruby girl.” Blaire widened her eyes at my daughter. “I can barely turn an egg over.”
Ruby giggled, and Blaire smiled as she grabbed another egg from the carton.
This was where I wanted her—in the light of my kitchen with my daughter’s laughter in the air. Not in shadows or stolen moments, but right here where everyone could see. My chest ached with a certainty so fierce it stole my breath.
“Tomorrow,” I said, topping off Blaire’s coffee like it was the most normal thing in the world. “We’ll try pancakes.”
Blaire’s eyes met mine, panic flashing, but it was quickly replaced with relief.
“Low and slow,” I breathed against the back of her neck as I reached around her and lowered the temperature. “So nothing gets burned.”
Ruby slapped her small hands down on the counter. “Pancakes!”
I grinned at Ruby and gave her a wink as I leaned against the counter beside Blaire.
“How do you like your pancakes, Blaire?” Ruby asked, climbing to her knees on the kitchen stool to grab a banana.
“With strawberries and honey.” She said it offhand, like she’d always answered that way. But I knew otherwise.
The Blaire I’d known had always piled her pancakes sky-high with whipped cream and drowned them in syrup, the whole plate a sticky mess that drove me nuts.
She used to tease me about how my pancakes were blasphemous.
Then she’d sneak a few bites from my plate, pretending to hate it, but always finishing what she stole.
“What?” I asked, my throat suddenly dry. I searched her face, but she wouldn’t look at me. Her shoulders were tense as she tried to ignore the weight of the question she’d just answered.
Ruby gasped, eyes wide with delight. “That’s how Daddy eats his pancakes too!”
Blaire went rigid then forced a smile as she turned to face Ruby and my mom. “Guess he rubbed off on me,” she said, and her hand trembled as it gripped the counter.
She’d carried this piece of me, tucked it away like a secret, and now it slipped out in front of my daughter and my mom. It was nothing but a taste preference on its own, but it felt monumental, like proof that some tiny part of us had kept living even when we tried to kill it.
“Since when?” I asked and watched her throat work as she swallowed.
She turned, almost knocking her coffee cup over, but she caught it with both hands as she forced out a laugh. “I don’t know. Sometime in college, I guess. June always sent me strawberries…” Her voice trailed off before she finally met my eyes. “And I was feeling homesick.”
I’d been homesick too.
Not for a place, but for a moment suspended in time. I’d yearned for a feeling that lived only in my memories, and there she was, eating her pancakes like me.