I stopped inside the doorway. The scene was so normal—soft overhead light, the faint scent of dish soap, music low from a speaker on the counter—that for a second I wondered if I’d imagined the whole thing. Possibly I’d fallen asleep at the truck and dreamt Powell’s kitchen, his hands, his mouth?—
“Hey.” Meghan put the knife down and really looked at me. “Come sit.”
I moved to the island like a puppet whose strings had been yanked. The stool was cool against the backs of my knees as I sank onto it. I dropped my bag on the floor and folded my hands on the counter so they wouldn’t shake.
Pepper’s eyes narrowed. “Wow. You look… not fine.”
“Thanks,” I said, but it came out flat.
Allie slid a glass toward me. “Water. Start there.”
I took a sip without arguing. The coolness hit my tongue, my throat, dropped into my stomach, and still I had the sensation of watching myself from two feet outside my body.
Meghan returned to chopping, but slower now, eyes flicking between the knife and my face. “Okay. You have the ‘something big just happened, and I haven’t caught up yet’ look.”
Pepper poured more chips than necessary onto the pan. “Please tell me it’s not your insurance giving you grief. I’ll go down there and burn them to the ground.”
“Okay, maybe let’s not commit a felony,” Allie said mildly.
I let out a breath that might have been a laugh in another life. Right now it was more like air leaving a balloon. I traced a knot in the butcher block with my fingertip, watching the swirls in the wood instead of their faces.
“It’s not insurance,” I said.
“Is it the truck?” Meghan asked gently.
“It’s… kind of adjacent to the truck.” I swallowed. “It’s Powell.”
That stopped everybody. Pepper froze mid-chip scatter. Allie’s head snapped up from the cheese. Meghan’s eyebrows shot up.
“Powell,” Pepper repeated slowly, like she was making sure she’d heard correctly.
“Yeah.” My voice sounded thin even to me. “Ferguson.”
“As opposed to some other Powell you’ve been secretly stockpiling?” Allie muttered.
I lifted one shoulder, the closest I could get to a shrug. “I went to his place.”
Meghan’s knife clinked against the cutting board. “You what now?”
“For planning,” I added quickly. “For the Twelve Stops. He said we needed to test a few of the activities. Time them. Figure out the flow.”
Pepper leaned both elbows on the island, giving me her full attention. “And that required his home kitchen?”
“He has a big island,” I said weakly. “And extra counter space. And he said he’d cook. For efficiency.” My mouth twisted. “It was very… efficient.”
They exchanged a look that practically screamed,Is that what we’re calling it now?
Allie let out a low whistle. “And how did that go?”
I stared at my hands for a long beat. The urge to minimize all of it, to wave it off as nothing, clawed up my throat. But lying to them wouldn’t change the way my heart had tried to beat out of my chest when his lips touched mine.
“He’s a really good cook,” I said instead.
Meghan’s lips quirked. “Okay. But I’m guessing the food is not what sent you over here in need of emotional triage.”
I shook my head. “No.”
Pepper slid the sheet pan into the oven and set the timer before turning to cross her arms. “Spit it out. The thing that’s making you look like you got hit with one of those cartoon anvils.”
