27. Sabrina #2
“I’m only putting on the record that if the plan involves you in a building on Cape Cod arguing with people about their methods sections, I’m in favor of the plan and I’ll drive you.” He held the door for me. “Also your brother-in-law has eaten most of the cheese.”
“Your brother.”
“He’s yours when he does that.”
Killian’s phone lit up on the counter, buzzing hard against the tile. I saw the name on the screen before he did. Nate, his assistant, who didn’t call at nine on a Saturday night for anything small.
The old reflex was still there. I felt it in my own body before I saw it in his, the way my shoulders climbed toward my ears, bracing for the version of this night where he took the call in the other room and came back an hour later with his mind somewhere else, and I pretended it didn’t matter, and one more small thing between us went quietly dark.
I had lived that night a hundred times. I knew every beat of it.
Killian looked at the phone. Then he looked at me, and at Sully with his head still in our refrigerator, and at the flour and the eggs somebody had already dumped on the counter.
He picked up the phone, and my heart dropped, and then he said: “Nate. Hey. Whatever it is, it’s going to have to hold until Monday.
I’m on vacation.” A pause. Nate’s voice, tinny and urgent.
“I know it’s the Reyes account. I heard you.
And I trust you to handle it, which is why I hired you.
It holds.” Another pause, softer. “You’ve got this. Good night.”
He hung up. Set the phone face-down. And went back to arguing with his brother about whether we owned a rolling pin, as if he hadn’t just done the most romantic thing I’d seen him do all summer, more than the drone, more than the tattoo, more than a yacht strung with the data of my own mind.
“What?” he said, catching me staring.
“Nothing.” My voice came out thick. “You just… you put it down.”
He understood what I meant. Of course he did. He crossed the kitchen and took my face in his hands. “I’m always going to put it down,” he said. “That’s the whole point. That’s the only point. Everything on that phone can wait. You never had to.”
We ended up making pasta from scratch, which was Tessa’s idea and immediately proved to be a disaster. None of us actually knew how to make pasta from scratch. We consulted recipes on our phones, argued about flour-to-egg ratios, and made a tremendous mess of the kitchen.
“This doesn’t look right,” I said, staring at the lumpy dough I’d been kneading. “It’s supposed to be smooth.”
“Add more flour,” Tessa suggested.
“I already added more flour. Twice.”
“Then add water.”
“Water and flour at the same time? That seems contradictory.”
“I don’t know, I’m not a pasta expert. I thought this would be fun.”
“It is fun,” Sully said, grabbing a handful of flour and flicking it at his sister. “See? Fun.”
Tessa shrieked and retaliated, and in no time the kitchen had devolved into a full-scale flour war. Killian tried to stay out of it, which lasted right up until I threw a fistful at his chest.
“Sabrina.” He looked down at his ruined shirt. “That was unprovoked.”
“Consider it payback for the spreadsheet.”
“The spreadsheet was a gesture of love.”
“The spreadsheet was excessive.” I grabbed another handful. “This is proportionate response.”
He caught my wrist before I could throw, his eyes glinting, dangerous.
“You really want to start this?”
“I already started it. Try to keep up.”
He grabbed the bag of flour.
By the time the war ended, all four of us were covered head to toe in flour, and it blanketed every surface of the kitchen. The pasta dough was abandoned on the counter, beyond saving.
“So,” Sully said, brushing flour out of his hair. “Cheese and crackers, standing up?”
“Anything that doesn’t need a recipe,” Tessa agreed.
We ate cheese and crackers and the cold roast chicken Bridget had sent home with us, standing at the counter because every chair was covered in flour.
The conversation was easy and warm, the meandering kind that happens when people are comfortable with each other.
Tessa told a story about a disastrous date she’d had recently.
Sully shared gossip from the yacht club.
Killian explained, at length, the engineering challenges of his stabilization prototype until I threw a cracker at him.
But throughout the meal, I kept catching Killian’s eye across the kitchen. Each time, he held the look a beat longer than he needed to, and I forgot what I’d been about to say, and neither of us mentioned it.
Sully groaned.
“Okay, we’re clearly interrupting something.” He stood up and grabbed his jacket from the back of a flour-covered chair. “Come on, Tessa. Let’s get out of here before I lose my appetite permanently.”
“We’re not doing anything,” Killian protested.
“You’re undressing each other with your eyes. It’s very obvious and very uncomfortable for those of us who share genetic material with you.”
“He’s right,” Tessa said, gathering her things. “You two have been making bedroom eyes at each other for the last twenty minutes. It’s sweet but also deeply awkward.”
“We haven’t been making bedroom eyes.”
“You absolutely have. I’m leaving before it escalates.”
They left in a flurry of hugs and flour clouds, and then Killian and I were alone in the destroyed kitchen.
He looked at me, and neither of us said anything for a beat too long to be innocent.
“Well,” he said.
“Don’t start.”
I glanced down at myself. I was covered in flour, my hair was matted with it, my clothes were completely ruined.
“I’m going to shower,” I said.
His eyes darkened.
“Is that an invitation?”
I didn’t answer. I just turned and walked toward the bathroom, leaving a trail of flour in my wake.
Behind me, I heard him push off the counter.