I don’t mind Will being here.
But I do mind when he isn’t.
“You’re doing the measuring thing again,” he says.
I look over my shoulder. “What measuring thing?”
“Where you measure the ingredients twice.” He takes a long sip of coffee. “You always measure it twice when you’re thinking hard about something.”
I set the measuring spoon down very deliberately. “I’m not thinking about anything. I’m making a cake.”
“Sure you are, Brightside.”
“Okay, that’s the second time you’ve called me that.”
He raises a brow. “You don’t like it? I think it suits you.”
I smirk. “I like it. I just don’t get it.”
He studies me for a second, deciding how much truth I’m ready for. “You walk into a room, and it changes,” he says finally. “Not in some loud, look-at-me way. Just, things feel different… easier. Like the world isn’t quite as heavy for a minute.”
I open my mouth, then close it again.
He keeps going, his voice roughening around the edges, the words slipping out before he can pull them back. “Most days in my head, everything runs worst-case. That’s how you survive where I came from. Where we live now, you plan for what goes wrong. You brace for it.”
His gaze flicks over my face, then settles. “You don’t. You look at things as though there’s still a good angle buried in there somewhere. As though there’s always another way through it. It’s… annoying as hell.”
I laugh softly. “High praise.”
“It is,” he says, deadpan. Then, after a beat, “You remind me there is another side to things. That’s all. A brighter side.”
Something warm and slightly dangerous settles in my chest.
“So, I’m your emotional coping mechanism?”
“Don’t get cocky,” he says, but there’s a hint of a smile there. “You’re just… the part that makes the rest of it make sense.”
I tilt my head. “That almost sounded like a compliment.”
“It was. Don’t expect a speech.”
“Too late,” I say. “I’m writing it down.”
He huffs a laugh, shaking his head. “Yeah, yeah. C’mere, Brightside.” And the way he says it this time feels different, less like a joke, and more like something he’s already decided is true as he wraps his arms around me. I peer up into his eyes, smiling at him as the oven behind me ticks and hums, already heated to the right temperature. I have been planning this cake for three weeks, ever since Sin confirmed Will’s patch date and the clubtradition landed in my lap like a beautiful, slightly terrifying responsibility.
Whoever is closest to the new patch member provides the food. And there was no debate to be had, no moment of uncertainty, because I have always been the one who bakes for this club, and Will has always been the one I do it for most carefully, even when I couldn’t say that out loud.
Chocolate… four layers… salted caramel between each one, because he mentioned it once, offhand, three months ago, and I filed it away for an occasion such as this.
I am not going to analyze that too closely.
The batter is smooth, dark, and smells good, and as I peel away from Will to get back to the batter, folding it in careful strokes, he watches me from the table. My dad is in the living room with the television on low, the background murmur of the midday news that he keeps for company when he’s reading. The house smells like coffee and chocolate, with a lingering warmth of morning. Outside, the neighborhood does what it always does, nothing dramatic, the ordinary soundtrack of a Saturday with nowhere pressing to be.
This is our rhythm now.
We found it without trying, without agreeing to it.
There was no moment where either of us said,‘This is what we do now,’but somewhere in the last several weeks, this becamewhat we do. He shows up, I cook, we talk, or we don’t talk, and both feel equally easy. He watches me like this, and we both keep pretending we’re still in control of something we gave up control of the second we kissed.
