The whisk moves faster. Probably too fast. I’m definitely overmixing, but stopping means thinking, and thinking is not on the agenda right now.
I don’t hear the pantry door open again. Don’t hear footsteps on the kitchen floor.
The first sign I’m not alone anymore is the heat against my back—body warmth close enough to feel but not quite touching.
Then Wes’s voice, low and intimate, right by my ear:
“Your secret’s safe with me.”
I freeze, knuckles going white around the whisk handle. Every muscle in my body locks up like I’ve been struck by lightning.
“What secret?” I manage, trying for casual and missing by about a mile.
“The one youliked.”
The words hit somewhere deep inside, sending heat racing through my veins and making my pulse stutter. I want to spin around, want to face him, want to demand what the hell he thinks he’s talking about.
Instead, I stay perfectly still, staring down at the batter like it holds the secrets of the universe.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I say, and even I don’t believe it.
Wes chuckles, soft and knowing. “Sure you don’t.”
When I finally work up the nerve to turn around, he’s already walking away. Casual as anything, like he didn’t just turn my entire world sideways with a handful of words.
He pauses in the doorway, glances back over his shoulder.
“For what it’s worth,” he says, “Gray’s a good kisser. But I think you already figured that out.”
And then he’s gone, leaving me standing there with half-mixed batter and a heart that’s beating so fast I’m surprised it doesn’t crack a rib.
I stare at the bowl, trying to process what just happened. Trying to figure out what the hell Wes thinks he saw, what he thinks he knows about me.
Trying to figure out why the idea of Gray being a good kisser makes something tight and hungry unfurl in my chest.
The batter is definitely overmixed now. Probably ruined. But I keep whisking anyway, because stopping means admitting that everything just changed, and I’m not ready for that.
I’m not ready to think about Gray. Or Wes. Or the way they both looked at me like they could see straight through every wall I’ve ever built.
The pancakes are going to burn, and it won’t be the batter’s fault.
Chapter 8
Bree
The kitchen smells like a crime scene.
Burnt flour. Something that might have been pancakes in another lifetime. The kind of disaster that requires actual scraping to remove from cookware.
I’m standing in the wreckage, holding what I think used to be breakfast, when footsteps approach behind me.
But my mind keeps drifting to last night. To Stellan appearing in my doorway like he’d been summoned by my restlessness, slipping into bed behind me with that quiet question:“Okay?”
I’d fallen asleep in his arms. Actually slept, deep and dreamless, for the first time in days. But when I woke up this morning, I was alone, and there was this hollow feeling in my chest that I don’t know how to name.
What did it mean? And why did part of me wish he’d still been there?
“Well,” Zira says, appearing in the doorway. “Someone had a morning.”
