Page 16

As she passed by the spare room, Molly reached out for the handle. Idle, passing inquisitiveness turned imperative. Curiosity was a splinter beneath her skin. It irritated like fear too.

She wanted to know what lay behind that door, and at the same time she didn’t.

Finding it locked, she swallowed her unease, stored it with her unexpected relief, and continued onward.

“What the . . .” she began. She’d thought she smelled something cooking, but she assumed Bishop was figuring out his own meal. When she passed by the kitchen on the way to the door, Molly found herself sorely and horrifyingly mistaken.

The doorbell rang.

Bishop looked up, and Molly froze.

He was still dressed impeccably, shirt unwrinkled even after an entire day of wear. He’d rolled his sleeves to the elbows, she assumed out of practicality, while he kneaded and stretched the dough in front of him. His hands looked very strong and very sure and very . . . much. Behind him, something bubbled in a small pot. Around him, ingredients, kitchen tools, and an astonishing amount of flour littered his workspace.

Just above his left eyebrow, a streak of white flour sat so perfectly smeared that it had to have been intentional. Artful placement for perfect immersion in the scene.

A scene that involved dimmed lighting. Quiet music drifting from a speaker. A candle flickering on the kitchen table.

Molly truly and fully had no words, mouth agape.

Bishop had the good graces to look moderately sheepish, which would have been unnervingly bizarre in and of itself if not for everything else currently pressing in on Molly like an ominous storm front.

“It’s pizza night,” Bishop eventually said with a minuscule shrug.

Molly felt breathless. “And?”

He paused his work with the dough, brushing off his hands, surety in the straightness of his spine. A foreign touch of fondness warmed his face. “It’s something of a standing date we do every week—”

“Oh-ho-o, no it isn’t,” Molly interrupted, backing away from any suggestion of dating Aster Bishop. Her pulse thumped painfully in her throat, thick with panic. This was way too much way too soon, and sprung on her way too carelessly.

The doorbell rang again.

“Bishop we’re not—” she started. “This isn’t how things are going to work. You can’t just convince me to be whatever you want me to be—”

“My wife—”

“Just by replicating some romantic rituals. I’m not even close to ready for that.”

Bishop’s face, which had drained of its warmth the moment she started protesting, closed off completely. She briefly registered something akin to heartbreak before he shuttered into stoicism.

“Alannah is here,” Molly said, voice straining through an impulse to cry as she backed further away. She felt terrible for him. She did. But she felt terrible for herself too.

Like he’d said that morning. There were no good options here.

“Right,” from Bishop, who had turned away.

When Molly finally opened the door, she pulled Alannah through the apartment and into the bedroom as fast as her legs could carry her.

Safely sequestered inside, they settled on the settee—as it turned out, a surprisingly handy piece of furniture—with an entire pan of tiramisu.

There was no silverware in the bedroom, and Molly had zero intention of going back out into that kitchen. Possibly ever again. So the tiramisu sat between them, tempting and uneaten, while Alannah gnawed at the inside of her cheek.

“Alannah,” Molly eventually begged in a tone that said spit it out.

“Trying to decide on the least-worst way to bring up the . . .” she trailed off, gaze wandering around the bedroom, seemingly incapable of meeting Molly’s eyes.

Molly barked out a choked laugh, torn from a still panicking place deep inside her. “The unwelcome romantic ambience? Or the pouting alleged husband? Or the general sense of what the fuck everywhere I look?” Her chest tightened.

“Well, sure, yes, all that too. But I was thinking more about all this, actually.” Alannah gestured to the bed behind them.