Chapter 15
Beatrix
I’m neck-deep in flour,butter, and cocoa powder with them half-splattered around the kitchen. I’m lucky that Cooper is one of the most patient men in existence because while I might be a halfway decent baker, I am also one hundred percent a messy one too. So I’m hoping he doesn’t get home a half hour from now and die at the state of it. Not exactly the surprise birthday party Lizzy imagined for him. As I start to run the mixer, I feel like I’m missing something, and I scan the ingredients on the counter again.
“Trixie?” I hear him call from the front hallway. So much for getting this done before he got home. I guess they let him loose early the day before his birthday.
“In the kitchen!”
Cooper comes in a moment later, blinking as his eyes shift back and forth at the mess I’ve created.
“I’m going to clean it up. I’m sorry. Wren says it’s worth it,” I apologize, cringing a little as I look around and see how bad it truly is.
Cooper laughs and shakes his head.
“Okay, well, maybe we need to order in or go out for dinner then?”
“I ordered some food already.” I grin at him, trying to cover for the fact that his surprise party’s going to be here shortly.
“Oh, okay. Perfect then. So what’s so special about this cake?” He sidles up to the counter and peeks into the mixing bowl.
“Wren says it’s Better Than Sex cake. It’s some inside joke between her and Easton that I’d rather not ask about, but she’s planning on serving it at the new restaurant, and she let me try it. It was so good, and Lizzy said you loved chocolate. So I decided it’d be good for your birthday. It was supposed to be a surprise.” I’m hoping admitting to part of the secret will keep him distracted from the bigger surprise to come.
“You made me a birthday cake?” The smile on Cooper’s face spreads.
“Yeah. I couldn’t let you down. With Lizzy at camp, someone’s gotta hold down the fort.” I grin.
“Better than sex, huh?” He eyes the batter skeptically.
“So Wren says.”
“I’ll have to give East shit for that one.”
I shake my head at him and give him an admonishing look.
“Something’s missing though, like I missed an ingredient.” I wipe some of the splattered batter off the edge of the bowl.
Cooper turns his baseball hat backward and leans over the counter to grab a spoon out of the holder. He dips it in the edge of the bowl and then licks it. He makes an approving face and a little grunting noise.
“Wren might be right.”
“You don’t think something’s missing?” I ask.
“Tastes like chocolate cake batter to me.” He shrugs and hands me the spoon where there’s still a little batter left, and I lick it. It’s good. Really good. But I still feels like something’s just a touch off.
I frown at the bowl and then turn to grab my phone before I realize my hands are still covered in batter and flour. I brush them on the apron without much luck. So I huff and decide to have my phone read it out loud to me.
“Hey Siri, can you read me the Better Than Sex cake ingredient list?”
“Better than the Ex Adventure List. Go stargazing. Go camping. Have sex outside. Voyeurism?”
My cheeks turn bright red, and I’m furiously wiping my hands on a towel before I realize how silly it is to worry about my phone getting food on it when it’s literally reading off a list of kinky, post-breakup things I want to try. I can’t even risk a look at Cooper right now for fear of spontaneously combusting.
Cooper.
Cooper is on the list.
“Stop. Siri. Stop!” I practically scream the words, but she doesn’t. She keeps going.
“Rough sex. Impact play. Degradation.”
If I’ve ever had any luck in my life, I’d like to use it all right now to get this phone to stop telling my ex’s brother every fantasy I’ve ever considered in the middle of his kitchen.
My fingers fumble over the buttons, and it refuses my first entry. I try again, but she’s dangerously close to the end of the list.
“Temperature play. Cream pie. Get a tattoo.”
Oh my god. I feel the sand running out. I’ve gotten it unlocked and my finger’s half a millisecond away from exiting the app when she does me dirty.
“Sex with the ex’s brother.”
I hate Madison and Wren right now. I hate myself for not deleting that the second they wrote it there. I hate the fact that I’m seemingly never able to remember an ingredient list to save my life and for being messy enough that I couldn’t just look at the list.
“What was that?” Cooper’s voice is rough, and I can feel his eyes on me.
No good deed goes unpunished.
I click out of the app, pretending to be focused on my phone, even though she’s already betrayed me. Cursing the fact that there’s no time machine app to take me back and stop all this from happening in the first place.
“Uh… that was nothing. Just a joke list the girls put together for me. Madison and Wren were just being funny the other night. We were drinking and talking. Just being silly. You know. I’m sure you do the same with the guys.” I swallow hard and then risk raising my eyes to get a look at him, a flush burning across the skin on my cheeks and chest.
I don’t think I can live here anymore. I’ll need to pack my bags and head back to the hotel. Listening to my neighbors fuck and worrying about a potential overzealous fan is a hell of a lot better than Cooper knowing how I want to get fucked. That I’ve thought about him that way.
And what if he tells Rob that I have a list like this? That he’s on it. I’m sure they’ll have a long laugh at it. Or at least Rob would. Cooper isn’t like that. Really, Cooper wouldn’t share something like that with Rob at all, or at least, I don’t think he would. That’s my only solace here. Focus on the positives, right?
“Do you have a sex list?” He’s recovered now. Amused even. I can hear it in his voice even though I’ve returned to staring at my phone.
“It’s not like that. It’s a… a challenge list, and there’s just some sex stuff on there,” I say dismissively and scroll the ingredient list, pretending to have lost all interest in what just happened. We can just move on. Especially when I figure out what ingredient I forgot. “Vanilla. I forgot the vanilla!”
“I’m not sure that list includes anything vanilla. Can you play it again?”
“Cooper.”
“I just want to hear the last one again.” He hovers as I go to get the vanilla out of his pantry, looking at me expectantly.
“No, I just need to get the spoon for this.” I dodge around him and go for the measuring spoons.
“So I didn’t hear it right?”
“I don’t know what you thought you heard.” I shake my head and measure out the vanilla, pouring it into the cake batter and restarting the mixer like my phone didn’t just tell my ex’s brother I’ve thought about fucking him.
I stare into the cake batter like if I look hard enough, it might just take me down into its little vortex of chocolatey goodness and let me disappear from this kitchen. I’m contemplating other exit strategies when I feel his hands brush over my shoulders and down my upper arms. Just that soft touch has goosebumps lighting up my skin.
He leans down, and I hear his breathing change before he speaks, and when he does, it’s a tone I’ve never heard him use before. One that has every little part of me paying attention because it’s so soft, I have to focus to make sure I hear him right.
“I’ve thought about you so many times, Trixie. If it was really a joke, I’ll never bring it up again. But if it wasn’t… tell me.”
My heart is in my throat. It must be because I can feel every single little flutter of it, and I can’t find words. This can’t be real. Now it’s me who didn’t hear him correctly.
“Not entirely,” I say softly. I can admit that much. The whole list wasn’t a joke, but I still have some plausible deniability since Madison wrote it for me.
One of his hands slides the rest of the way down my upper arm, over my elbow, and his fingers brush my waist. He bends closer until I can feel the slightest whisper of his breath over the shell of my ear. His fingers inch slowly over me, and I don’t move away.
“Are the other things on the list a joke?” He asks quietly, so much so I barely hear him over the pounding of my own heart.
“No. Well… It’s like I said. Like an adventure-challenge sort of list for the summer. Things I want to challenge myself to try.”
“Because if I’m already on your list, you might as well use me to make your way through it. I could help you with some of them. All of them, really.” His voice is so soft and deep that I might be lost in it.
“All of them?” I nearly choke on my own words. I’m already imagining him doing those things to me. The naked version I saw in his bathroom the other morning using me how he sees fit, and I’m ready to confess everything.
“Any of the ones you want.” There’s a soft, half-nervous laugh from him that puts me enough at ease that I feel like I can admit some of the truth.
“I want to…”
“But?”