Chapter Twenty-Six Lyra
I closed my eyes, and suddenly I was standing in Rab’s room, seeing through his eyes. It was discombobulating to say the least. We were bent over, digging through his closet, and I realized that he was packing a bag.
My stomach dropped.
He lifted his mattress and pulled out a wad of cash and tucked it inside a pocket of the duffel bag.
In went socks, pants, clothes, the handkerchief I had foolishly embroidered for him when I was trying my hand at making clothes for a bit.
Quietly, we tiptoed to the window and then slid outside into the night and around the house.
And then we were running. Running, with hope in our heart and excitement fueling us, toward the abandoned barn on the edge of town.
Our spot.
My heart twisted as the memory flashed through the hours Rab spent waiting in the barn.
He’d waited for me.
It had all been a lie—what he’d said to his parents about me—it had been a lie.
When the memory finally took us away from the barn and plodded slowly past my empty house, my heart split open.
I’d been so wrong about so many things.
I’d been convinced he’d thrown me away at the first sign of hardship, just like my father was willing to walk away from my mother. Men left. It had made sense to my teenaged brain, but now I realized just how distorted the lens I’d been looking through was.
Rab had lied to his parents. And he’d been willing to change his entire life to rescue me from mine.
Why hadn’t we just had this conversation? A thousand times through the years I’d been wanting to reach out. And then when we’d come back he’d given me the cold shoulder, which had just further affirmed my belief that he’d meant every word he said.
The memory winked out, and I was left standing with my mouth open, my heart hammering in my chest as I looked up at Rab.
“My, my, my.” Nevin pounced. “What do we have here? Is it a revelation? Anything you care to share with the viewers?”
Tears threatened, and I had to take a deep breath to steady myself. This changed everything.
Everything.
And somehow I needed to face the cameras and bake my way through a competition challenge.
I froze.
“Jam cookies,” Rab said smoothly, taking my hand. I blinked up at him.
“Jam cookies?” I echoed.
“You know. The cookies with the jam in the middle? We’ll call them ‘Mended Hearts.’ ” Rab beamed into the cameras as I just blinked up at him, stunned. What was happening? Mended hearts? What did this mean?
“Ah, dare I ask what the memory was you two shared?” Kelly asked.
“You may ask, but it’s ours to know.” Rab grinned cheekily. All of a sudden he was all charm and charisma for the cameras when he’d basically growled in their direction all week. I couldn’t get over the change in him, let alone the fact he’d suggested a recipe.
“Boooo,” Nevin called, sidling over to me. “Care to share, darling?”
Did I? I looked up at the cameras and took a deep breath.
“It was a memory of a misunderstanding. One that could have saved a lot of heartache had I been brave enough to reach out.” I swallowed against the lump in my throat.
“And now? Is it a Christmas miracle? Will you two get back together?” Nevin leaned in, the cameras all focused on us.
“What is this? A dating show?” Mandy griped from her table.
“Well, let’s see how the challenge goes.” I felt my lips tug up into a grin, and hope bloomed in my heart. Turning, I looked up at Rab, who had an equally silly grin on his face. “But Mended Hearts memory cookies sounds like the perfect recipe to me.”
“I mean… are jam cookies all that hard to make?” Felicity wondered, and the cameras swung to their table.
“Ohhh, we have some trash talk from one of the other teams. You’d be surprised how tricky the jam cookies can be.” Kelly strolled over to Mandy and Felicity’s table. “Tell me, what are you both making?”
“A Christmas Yule log cake to remind us of warm family mornings.” Felicity beamed.
“Aw, well, isn’t that nice? Yes, a touch more challenging than the cookies, but we’ll just have to see how it plays out.
Remember, it’s not just the recipe, but the taste and presentation that matter as well.
Simple can often be more difficult to achieve than seemingly complicated recipes.
” Kelly looked around at the others in the room and raised her hands.
“And… bake on, challengers. Your time starts now.”
“Rab,” I said, squeezing his hand that I still held. “I didn’t…”
“Not for now, Lyra,” Rab said out of the corner of his mouth as he bent to pull out bowls from the shelves beneath our workstation. “We gave them enough of us.”
“But—”
“Later, Lyra. We have all the time in the world now.” Rab glanced up at me, his eyes burning in his face, and I realized that he’d forgiven me.
Not only that, but he wanted a future with me.
Relief filled me, and so did bone-aching lust.
The bowl Rab held promptly changed into a hedgehog.
“Whoops,” Rab said, and tucked the hedgie inside the cupboard, leaving the door open a small crack for air.
He was still crouching, so I was certain the cameras hadn’t caught the transmutation, but my cheeks burned.
“I’ll be back for you, wee man. Right. Stay focused, darling.
We’ve got bigger things to worry about. Like how to make those wee jam cookies. ”
I laughed, glad he had given me something else to focus on other than jumping his sexy body, and I turned back to the table.
“Right. Jam cookies are often called Linzer cookies. So we’ll need”—I thought about it for a second—“butter, flour, sugar, ground almonds, eggs, vanilla, and raspberries for the jam.”
I reached for the butter—and immediately watched it frost over in a block of ice so solid a polar bear could’ve skated on it.
“Oh no,” I groaned.
Rab’s lips quirked, but he didn’t say anything—just quietly swapped the frozen lump for a fresh one.
The flour was next. I tipped the bag toward the bowl, but it exploded into a cloud so fine it coated my hair, my face, and my apron until I looked like a ghost.
Across the room, Mandy snorted into her mixing bowl. “Snowman chic, Lyra?”
Rab didn’t even glance up. “Ignore them.” He took my hand—grounding me—and guided it toward the mixing bowl. The moment our palms touched, my magick stopped fizzling at the edges, like he’d clicked a switch.
We rolled out the dough together, elbows brushing, his big hands covering mine to keep my focus. The heart-shaped cutters behaved themselves… mostly. One tried to sprout legs and run. Rab caught it mid-escape.
“Not today, mate.” He plunked it back onto the dough with authority.
The jam was the final test. I stirred, and it immediately tried to turn into raspberry soup. Rab stepped in, wrapping his fingers over mine around the spoon. “With me,” he murmured. The raspberries bubbled into a glossy, jewel-red filling that smelled like Christmas morning and brand-new hope.
We baked, dusted with sugar, sandwiched the jam between two perfect hearts at a time, and arranged them in pairs—two halves, mended together.
Kelly swept over, eyes going wide. “Ohhh, these are gorgeous! And symbolic. Viewers, take note. ‘Mended Hearts’ from Team Mystery Memory over here.”
Nevin smirked. “So… what’s the meaning?”
Rab grinned down at me. “That sometimes the right halves fit together to make a stronger cookie.”
The judges approached. Nevin took a bite—at which point one cookie puffed up like a balloon animal and floated gently toward the ceiling.
“What the…” Kelly looked up, wide-eyed.
“It’s… extra flair,” Rab said smoothly, reaching up to pluck it out of the air before it could hit the lighting rig. He set it back on the plate like nothing had happened.
Mandy muttered something about “show-offs” under her breath.
Kelly tried one next, her eyes widening. “Crisp, buttery, just the right amount of sweet from the jam—” She broke off as another cookie twitched on the plate and shimmied toward her hand like it wanted to be chosen.
Rab blocked it casually with the serving tongs. “Eager to please. Just like us.”
The camera guys loved it, Henry laughed behind us, and the judges? They gave us the highest marks of the round.
It had been messy, but instead of being embarrassed or upset by my misfiring magick, I’d actually had fun.
And I realized that was a huge part of the challenges as well.
It wasn’t just working under pressure or freaking out if my magick didn’t work, it was about finding joy in the process. I’d made it work.
All because of Rab.