Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
STEVIE
The kitchen smells like butter and sugar and something that almost feels like home. Almost. If I squint hard enough, ignore the witness relocation vibes, ignore the fridge that hums like it’s hiding FBI secrets, ignore the fact that the view out the window makes me want to scream.
Just butter, sugar, and delusion.
I cream the butter and sugar the way I’ve done a thousand times.
Add eggs, vanilla, the peanut butter that Saul bought without being asked.
Measure flour, baking soda, salt. Fold in chocolate chips until the dough looks right, feels right, tastes right when I lick the spoon because salmonella and I already have a death pact.
Three dozen cookies. That’s reasonable. That’s normal. That’s not too much.
Last scoop, and my eyes betray me. They lock on the nuts. Pecans and walnuts. Waiting. Whispering. Judging.
I like nuts in my cookies. Pecans or walnuts. Either works.
I like forearms and federal badges and the sound Saul makes when he clears his throat.
It’s his fault. He said it, while I was trying not to sniff him like a freak.
I like nuts in my cookies.
Like it was nothing. Like I wouldn’t etch that sentence into my brain and build him a dessert-based shrine two days later.
I should leave it alone. The regular cookies are fine. Good, even. He doesn’t need Saul Special cookies. He doesn’t need me psychoanalyzing his grocery choices and baking him gratitude with a side of unresolved attachment issues. But here I am.
The walnuts are in my hand and my dignity is in the fucking garbage.
My inner critic, nosy bitch, whispers ‘he’s going to think you want to marry him,’ and my pussy whispers ‘maybe I do.’
I open the bag.
The second batch is sluttier. Bigger. Brown sugar cookies. Walnut-laced and a little unhinged. Twelve oversized cookies. If I’m going to be insane, I’m going to be deliciously insane.
When they come out golden and obscene, I give them their own container. No label. No explanation. Just vibes. I know which ones are his.
So now it’s 3 AM. I’m surrounded by 48 cookies, horny, sleep-deprived, and baking love spells into brown sugar circles for a man whose thighs probably register as lethal weapons in seven states.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
Don’t answer that.
He knocks at eight.
I’ve been awake for an hour, showered, dressed, brushed this fake blonde hair like I’m auditioning for a role in Functional Human: Season 1.
I look almost like someone named Beth Taylor who absolutely did not emotionally imprint on a bag of walnuts and spiral-bake at 3 AM for a man she’s known for forty-eight hours.
“Hi,” I say, as if I haven’t already practiced this interaction in my head twelve times while pretending to eat breakfast.
“Hi,” he says, and he double takes. Takes in the hair, the clothes, the fact that I’m vertical and not weeping into a pile of stolen identity documents. “You look... better.”
Better than what? Better than federal collapse Barbie from yesterday?
“I made cookies.”
It flies out of my mouth like I’ve never heard of chill. Like I’m not three seconds from blurting “I also licked the spoon and thought about your forearms.”
I could’ve said anything. Good morning. Come in. I respect boundaries. But no. I chose cookie confessions.
I step back to let him in. The apartment smells like sugar, butter, and shame. The shame is from the slightly burnt batch that happened when I got distracted thinking about Saul’s mouth and how it would taste with brown sugar on it.
Saul stops when he sees the counter. Three containers, neatly stacked.
“You made a lot of cookies.”
I shrug like it’s no big deal and not a whole-ass breakdown in Tupperware. “I had a lot of feelings and nowhere to put them except into baked goods and barely repressed horniness.”
That half-smile again. The corners of his eyes crinkle but his mouth is still holding secrets. I want to see the full smile. I want to earn it. I want it directed at me while he’s shirtless and saying something like “you really made these for me?”
Stop it, Stevie. Jesus.
I pick up the container with the walnut cookies. Hold it out.
“These are yours,” I say. “These have nuts.”
He opens the container. Looks at the cookies, then at me. Like I’m soft. Stable. The kind of woman you could trust with your secrets and your nuts.
Which is basically emotional second base.
“Walnuts,” I say too fast, too bright, like I’m trying to upsell a Girl Scout badge in unspoken intimacy. “You said you liked them. Yesterday. When we were putting stuff away. I just… logged it.”
Something changes in his expression. I watch it happen, catalog every micro-movement because I can’t help myself.
The slight widening of his eyes. The way his jaw loosens, just barely. The flicker of something that might be surprise or might be something else.
“My brain’s like a weird little squirrel,” I add. “It hoards things. Weird data and emotional landmines. Enjoy your nuts.”
Fuck, now I’m obsessed with his nuts.
He picks up a cookie. Bites into it.
I stop breathing.
His eyes close. Just for a second. When they open, he looks at me like I just touched something inside him, and not in a metaphorical way, in a ‘where’s the lube’ way.
Rude. Extremely rude. We’re strangers and I’m barely holding it together.
“These are incredible,” he says, and his voice is different. Softer. Like I’ve done something that matters.
“They’re just cookies.”
“They’re not just cookies,” he says, chewing like I’ve just activated some dormant food kink. He’s got this thoughtful expression like he’s trying to memorize what they taste like. Or what I’d taste like. I need to sit down.
“You remembered. About the walnuts.”
Of course I remembered. My brain is a high-functioning surveillance drone. I remember Dario’s eyes. I remember Enzo’s accent around my name. And now I will remember Saul’s after-cookie exhale until the day I die.
“I notice things,” I say. “It’s a curse, mostly.”
“Doesn’t feel like a curse from where I’m standing.”
Okay. Sir. If you’re going to flirt at me using emotional insight and walnut appreciation, we’re going to have a problem.
He finishes the cookie. Takes another one. I watch him eat my cookie and feel something bloom in my chest that’s probably not a heart attack but could definitely kill me. It’s warm and reckless and wants to believe in things like comfort and foreplay and men who stay.
I made walnut cookies for a U.S. Marshal I barely know and now my frontal lobe thinks we’re emotionally married.
So yeah.
It fucking means something.
The week blurs together in a series of small kindnesses I don’t know how to receive.
Day two, Saul shows up with pillows.
“These are for you,” he says, holding up two absurdly fluffy pillows like he’s not casually rearranging my entire circadian rhythm.
They look expensive. They look like they’ve never known suffering. I want to climb inside them and scream.
I blink at them like they’re engagement rings. “You bought me pillows?” My voice sounds weird. Too high. Like maybe I’ve never been loved before and this is the first symptom.
“The ones in your bedroom are terrible. You need to sleep properly.”
“How do you know they’re terrible?”
He pauses and proceeds to say the most devastating shit of my entire week.
“I noticed. Yesterday. When I was checking the windows in there.”
He was in my bedroom for thirty seconds and noticed my pillow situation. I can’t get men to notice when I get bangs and this one clocked my lumbar support needs in under a minute.
“Saul, you didn’t have to…”
“I know.” He sets them on the couch. “But you need to sleep. It’s a safety issue.”
It’s not a safety issue. It’s a domesticity kink. I’m being courtship-pillowed like a 1950s housewife who just got brought home from Sears.
I take the pillows and sleep like I haven’t been feral and full of dread for a week straight. My body recognizes something has changed. Maybe I’m not just being protected, I’m being kept.
Day three, curtains.
“The streetlight shines right into your window,” he says, casually installing blackout curtains like we’re married and he’s finally fixing the thing I keep complaining about even though I haven’t said a word. “You’ll sleep better with these.”
I stare at the way his shirt stretches across his back as he reaches up, biceps flexing, and think, this is how it starts. This is how people end up pregnant from domestic gestures. I’m ovulating emotionally.
“How do you know the streetlight shines in my window?”
“I drove by last night. Noticed your light was on at 2 AM.” He finishes adjusting the curtain rod, turns to look at me. “You should be sleeping.”
He says it like it’s normal. Like this isn’t the part where my womb starts screaming “he cares!”
I think I black out a little.
“I was baking,” I say weakly.
“At 2 AM?”
“Anxiety doesn’t keep business hours.”
He gives me that smile again. Half-measured. I want the full thing. I want him to laugh for real while holding something I made him and then push me against the counter and say thank you.
Day four, coffee.
Good coffee. Sinfully good coffee. Beans with names like Mountain Revival and Midnight Reverie. Beans that smell like dark promises and orgasms in expensive cabins.
“The stuff I bought before was too weak,” he says, setting the bag on my counter. “This is what I drink. Figured you might like it better.”
He thought about my preferences. He used his beautiful federal brain to imagine my tongue and what it wants. He went to a store and stood in front of coffee and picked one because he thought it might make me happy.
I’m genuinely on the verge of crying over beans. I do not deserve this espresso-based affection. He could have ignored me. He could have mailed me Folgers. But no. He brought pleasure into my kitchen like a goddamn alpha.
“Thank you,” I manage.
“Don’t thank me. Just drink it and tell me if it’s good.”
It’s good. It’s so good I moan on the first sip.