I shifted in my seat and glanced toward the fridge. “So… what’s for dessert?”
He looked up from his plate like I’d asked if he collected bones for fun. “I don’t eat dessert.”
My fork dropped dramatically onto my plate. “What are you, a serial killer?”
He shrugged. Shrugged.
“It’s pointless,” he said. “Sweet is distraction.”
“Right,” I said. “Because cookies are obviously the gateway to emotional collapse.”
He smirked, and it was the worst kind—the kind that said I’m enjoying how much I annoy you.
And wow, it was working.
I pulled out my phone. “Okay, now I have to fix you.”
His eyebrow lifted. “What are you doing?”
“Ordering a warm cookie pie. For educational purposes.”
“Is this what rehabilitation looks like?”
“Exactly,” I said, scrolling through the app. “Phase one: butter and sugar.”
“You really think you can change me with baked goods?” he asked, amused in that quiet, too-cool way of his.
I looked up and gave him my sweetest, fakest smile. “I know I can.”
He just shook his head like I was an unsolvable riddle he wasn’t sure he wanted to decode.
We fell into silence again—cozier this time. Like we were both pretending we weren’t waiting for dessert like two emotionally constipated humans trying to outrun feelings.
Eventually, we started talking again. Bantering. Joking. Somewhere between mocking his no-sweets lifestyle and me threatening to throw flour at him next time, we were… laughing.
Like, real laughing.
Like we weren’t bound by a stupid bet or thirty tangled strings of trauma.
And for a few quiet minutes in that sterile, sharp-edged house?
Everything was warm.
Everything was simple.
Even if it wouldn’t last.
The doorbell rang like destiny itself had arrived.
I jumped up from my chair so fast I nearly tripped over it. “Finally! Dessert time!”
I practically skipped to the door, flung it open, and there it was—glory in a cardboard box. “Warm Cookie Pie,” the label declared in big, joyful letters that smelled like chocolate and victory. The delivery guy gave me a weird look, but whatever. I was in my element.
“Thank you!” I sang, clutching the box like it held the secrets to world peace. Which, honestly? It kind of did.
I darted back to the table, holding it out like Simba on Pride Rock. Nikolai just leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, eyebrow practically ascending into orbit.
“Really,” he said, voice dry enough to dehydrate a plant. “You ordered dessert.”
