Page 73 of Lock

Don’t you?

I ignored that… and all I could think was how had everything gotten so damn complicated?

And why did I have butterflies from the constant inferences that I mattered to Lock?

I was clearly Alice down the rabbit hole and I probably… definitely needed therapy because why did it matter if I made friends here?

Ember didn’t let me stay in my head too long.

She clapped her hands once. “Alright. Everybody clear out. We’ll finish up in here.”

No one argued. Chairs scraped back, mugs were grabbed, and within five minutes the kitchen was mostly empty again.

Ember turned to me. “Help me tidy.”

Relief hit before I could stop it. Something to do meant I didn’t have to stand there feeling like one big exposed nerve.

“Okay,” I said, probably too fast.

She handed me a dish towel. “I’m making soup. Meat and veg. Big pot.”

“Sounds good.”

She snorted. “You’re easy.”

I glanced around the kitchen. “I can make bread. If that’s okay.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “You bake?”

“Yeah. A lot.” I shrugged. “Stress thing.”

She studied me for half a second, then nodded toward the pantry. “Knock yourself out.”

Just like that.

I washed my hands and moved like I knew where things were, even though I didn’t. Flour was easy to spot. Yeast took longer, but someone had labeled jars in neat block letters. That helped.

I measured. Mixed. Let my hands do what they knew how to do.

Dough was grounding. Warm. Predictable. It didn’t care who my father was or what cut I was wearing.

Behind me, Ember worked the stove. We moved around each other without bumping, without tension. She chopped. I wiped. She stirred. I mixed.

She didn’t hover. Didn’t watch my hands. Didn’t act like it was strange to leave me alone with knives.

Why was she being so nice…and trusting? It made my chest feel tight in a way I didn’t have a word for.

I glanced over once. She was swaying slightly, humming under her breath to a song I didn’t recognize, completely at ease.

For a while, we didn’t talk.

And it was… nice.

I shaped the dough and set it aside to rise, then started another batch. And another. If I was baking, I was baking. I added sugar and butter to the last one and rolled out cookie dough, cutting rough circles because I couldn’t find a cutter.

“You feeding an army?” Ember asked, glancing over.

“Apparently,” I said. “Is that bad?”