Chapter 9 Kit #3
“There’s only one in the cupboard. And there’s normally like… thirty or something, right? Still left over from the hotel?”
I inspected the cupboard myself. There, in the dead centre of the middle shelf—usually brimming with ceramic—was one single plate.
I ripped open the other cupboards. No saucers. No bowls. There weren’t even any baking trays or casserole dishes.
Priya. That witch was going to get a piece of my mind later. I imagined her carrying load after load of crockery to some random room in the hotel yesterday evening, chuckling to herself.
“How strange,” I said. “Priya must have decided everything needed a deep clean, I suppose.”
Felix stared at me. “Priya hates cleaning.”
“Flynn, then? Or maybe Rory needed them for some reason. Maybe he smashed all of Theo’s, and had to steal ours to replace them,” I tried to joke.
“Maybe,” Felix agreed, but he looked puzzled.
“Anyway, you eat some first, then I’ll have the plate.”
“Oh!” Felix shuffled on the spot, teeth worrying his lip. “No, no, you go first.”
“I insist.”
“But you heated it up—”
“I can wait. I’m not that hungry.”
“I couldn’t possibly—”
Our stomachs rumbled at exactly the same time, loud enough to echo off the kitchen tiles. We both burst out laughing, the sound bouncing between us like a shared secret.
And then, because Felix was smiling, madness struck me.
“Hey, why don’t we just sit at the counter and share the plate?”
Felix’s eyes widened behind those devastating glasses. “Oh… sure!” He said too brightly, and guilt ate at my starving insides. There was no way he wanted to sit with me, but he was far too polite to refuse.
He grabbed the one plate, carefully decanted the quiche onto it, then perched on a stool. I pulled open the cutlery drawer. And laughed.
And laughed.
And laughed.
“What?” Felix asked.
I turned around, brandishing a fork—the only fork in the drawer. The only piece of cutlery at all; not even a teaspoon remained.
“There’s only one… fork.”
Felix’s eyes went owlish behind his lenses.
“Oh.”
I went around to hop onto the stool beside him, and for a moment it swung slightly. Our legs brushed—just the barest contact—but it sent tingles shooting through me like I was a schoolboy holding hands for the first time.
I slid him the fork.
“Um… are we just going to share it?” he asked, staring at it like it had offended him.
“Unless you don’t want my germs.”
“No, no, it’s fine,” he said, quickly shovelling a forkful of food into his mouth before passing me the instrument.
I almost laughed, wondering how many passes of the fork Felix would last before he pretended he was full and bolted for the basement.
When I took the fork from him, still warm from his grip, my wolf practically purred.
The metal carried the faintest hint of Felix’s coffee breath—sweet with too much sugar, familiar as breathing.
I concentrated on not groaning as I took a bite of the quiche.
Spinach and tomato with a nutty cheese, possibly gruyere, but all I could taste was him.
Fucking hell. I’d truly reached new levels of insanity, losing my mind over shared cutlery.
I couldn’t help my hyper-awareness of Felix’s limbs beside me. The way his knee angled towards mine. How his elbow bumped my arm when he reached for the fork.
How many times could we “accidentally” touch without him getting suspicious? I wasn’t going to find out, because I wasn’t a freak. Honestly.
“How’s Wren?” I asked, completely randomly, and Felix almost choked on his quiche. I wasn’t surprised; the question was so utterly out of left field. Felix was so private he never spoke about Wren.
After he swallowed, he whispered, “He’s okay?” like a question. Then added, probably just to fill the silence, “We’re going to a K-pop concert with my sister, Lily, Saturday after next. SEVENTEEN. You’ve probably never heard of them.”
I made a noise as if I was surprised and intrigued to hear he liked K-pop, though I’d heard it leaking out of his headphones numerous times. I’d even tried looking up the songs to find out more about them. Unfortunately, it all sounded like noise to me. Very loud, noisy noise.
“That sounds fun.” I said. “Does Wren often spend time with your sister?”
“No, it’s the first time they’ll meet.”
I battled violent waves of jealousy. After too much time passed, I finally asked, “Where is the concert?”
“The O2 Arena,” Felix said. His eyes flicked to mine, and he made a face. “Did you know it has a capacity of twenty thousand people?”
“That’s a lot of people,” I said.
We shared a smile.
“I had a panic attack in a large crowd once,” Felix confessed, gaze very focused on the fork.
“Oh,” I said. “I’m sure Wren will look after you, though.” I tried to sound as encouraging as I could while imagining Wren’s arm around Felix’s shoulders, protecting him from the crowd. “Make sure you don’t get crushed.”
Felix snorted. “Nah. Lily will elbow anyone who gets too close to me. She’s even smaller than I am, but ten times more feisty.”
My heart sank as I realised we were devouring this quiche at a rapid pace. I took a tiny bite next, trying to make it last. This was the most we’d ever spoken, and although half of it was about Felix’s boyfriend, it felt like something precious and fragile.
Felix fidgeted with his phone for a moment, thumb swiping across the screen. I made sure I wasn’t peeking—the last thing I needed was for him to think I was some sort of creep who read his messages over his shoulder.
Then he gasped.
A sharp intake of breath that made my wolf sit up and take notice. Something was wrong.
“What?” I couldn’t stop myself asking.
Felix stared at his phone screen, blinking rapidly behind his glasses. “This is so weird, but Wren actually just messaged me about the SEVENTEEN gig. His great-aunt has just died, so he has to travel up to Birmingham that Saturday evening for the funeral the next morning.”
“Oh no,” I said, my heart pounding with a confusing mix of emotions. Sympathy for Wren’s loss warred with something darker and horribly selfish that I refused to examine. “So it’ll just be you and Lily?”
“No.” Felix said. “Her friend I’ve never met will be there as well. That was the point of me bringing Wren, so it wasn’t all her friends.”
My throat closed up. Usually, I spent hours rehearsing lines I wanted to deliver to Felix, running them through my head during morning runs until I had every word perfect. But now I only had seconds before the conversation moved on.
Offer to go.
Offer to go.
Offer to go.
But the voice in my head was screaming other things too.
You’re not his friend!
He won’t want you there.
It would be creepy to invite yourself.
He has a fucking boyfriend, you sick fucking freak.
Felix miserably stabbed one of the final pieces of quiche with the fork, shoulders hunched in defeat.
This was it. Now or never.
My wolf reared its head, howling with fierce determination.
“Felix, I—”
“Hey, hey, hey!”
Rory burst into the kitchen like a tornado, all bouncing energy as he moved straight for our counter. I startled so hard I nearly fell off my stool—I’d been so focused on Felix that I hadn’t sensed my own brother approaching.
“Rory! You’re back early. I thought you were out most of the afternoon.”
I wanted to scream at him that as usual he had the world’s most terrible timing.
Rory shrugged, brandishing a packet of instant noodles. “Plans changed.” He threw the noodles down, then turned to open the cupboard where the bowls should have been. He froze.
“What… What happened to all the stuff?!”
“Ask Priya,” I said. “And tell her to put it all back.”
Then I snatched up the empty plate and fork, threw them in the dishwasher, and tried to leave the room as casually as possible, while inside, I was slowly dying.