Then I flip it over.
A hundred-dollar bill is taped neatly to the back.
I bark out a laugh that startles Thistle.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” I say aloud.
My voice cracks halfway through, anger and disbelief tangling together until I’m not sure which one is winning.
“What the actual fuck is this?”
I drop the note onto the bed and scrub a hand over my face. My palm drags down my cheeks, my mouth, my chin. My skin still feels warm beneath my touch, still remembers the weight of his hands, the sound of his breathing, the way my name sounded in his mouth.
Money.
I glance back at the bill, then at the note.
He cleaned my room. He washed my sheets.
He bathed me. Put my hair up. Stayed until the worst passed.
And then he left me cash like this was some kind of transaction.
My chest aches in a way that has nothing to do with my body.
“I didn’t ask for that,” I whisper.
Thistle hops onto the bed and pads over, nudging the note with his nose. He looks up at me, ears twitching.
“I know,” I tell him. “I know.”
I stand again, moving more carefully now, and head toward the kitchen. The house feels different in the daylight. Familiar, but altered, like something important happened here and the walls are still adjusting.
On the counter, just like the note said, there’s a small jar with a handwritten label.
Aftercare Blend. Drink slowly.
There’s nothing else on the note. Where did he even get this? June? Does he have a supplier of specialized teas? Can he make it any clearer just how much he regrets what he did?
That’s what I get for sleeping with Damon fucking Wilder.
Weather Ward:
Hang a bell in a window. It rings when storms approach.
The house still smells like flour and sugar. My mother never really stopped baking, not even after she sold her bakery. Nowadays, people get their baked goods from other places, but there was a time everyone in town raved about Anne’s bakery. She always claimed it was time to retire, but I’ve never quite believed that. I’ve always had a feeling she did it because my father asked her to.
He retired… so she had to, too.
I hated it, and I tried to talk her out of it, but it was all moot. Eventually, she sold the place and hung up her apron, but I can still see the passion she has for her craft. It’s in the walls. It’s in the way the kitchen hums when the oven’s warming up, like it remembers her hands.
“You don’t need to go all the way to the grocery store,” Mom says for the third time, standing at the counter with a chipped blue bowl in front of her. She’s already tied her apron, hair twisted up with a pencil like she’s about to start a shift instead of breakfast. “I can make do.”
I shrug into my jacket and grin because this dance is older than me. “You’re out of eggs. And butter. And the good vanilla.”
She clicks her tongue. “We have vanilla.”
“The imitation stuff. I’ll get you the good stuff,” I say, bending to kiss her cheek. “I’ll be quick.”
