Page 168 of Just One Little Bargain

He crosses to the kitchen for paper towels while Marmalade continues his victory pose in the doorway. I sink back into the cushions, pulling the blanket up to my chin. The movie has ended without either of us noticing. The screen has gone dark.

Four days. That’s all we have left.

I refuse to accept it. There has to be a way around this, and I’ll find it before time runs out.

Chapter 48

Evie

The next three days pass too quickly.

Milo makes me pancakes on his last morning. The kitchen smells of cinnamon and browned butter. My favorite mug is already waiting beside my laptop. The coffee has been made the way I like it: two sugars, a splash of oat milk because the regular kind upsets my stomach.

Batter hisses when it meets the skillet.

Milo turns the heat down when the edges color too quickly, nudging his glasses higher with the back of his wrist. His sleeves are pushed above his elbows. There’s a dusting of flour near his cheek that he hasn’t noticed yet.

Everything about this morning is horrifyingly normal except for the weight pressing down on both of us.

I sit at the kitchen table and open the inn’s booking calendar because there are still rooms to turn over, guests arriving next week, and invoices waiting to be paid. My life has the audacity to extend beyond tonight.

The reservation on my screen belongs to a couple arriving on Thursday. Sunrise Room, three nights, late check-in. I read their names, the dates, the special request, then realize I’ve made it through the entire entry without understanding a word. When I begin again, Milo’s reflection appears across the dark edge of the display, and my concentration abandons me altogether.

Outside, Brindlewood has the indecency to carry on. A delivery truck rattles past the cottage, chassis complaining over the uneven road. Somewhere down the street, a dog erupts into furious barking and is answered by another. Morning light lies bright across the kitchen tiles. Nothing out there looks the slightest bit altered by the fact that Milo will be gone before tomorrow.

I hate it.

He sets a plate in front of me without meeting my eyes. Three perfect golden circles. Steam rises off them in delicate spirals that curl and disappear before they reach the ceiling. Cinnamon freckles the surface. The edges are browned the way I like them because during the past month he learned that I leave the soft, pale ones behind. Beside the dish sits softened butter rather than the cold brick I usually carve straight from the refrigerator. He must’ve remembered me complaining about it tearing the pancakes weeks ago.

I reach for the syrup just to give myself something to do. This is what losing him is going to be made of. Not only the enormous, impossible fact of his absence, but every tiny accommodation I never asked him to make and only noticed once he had already woven it into my life.

“My mom’s doing dinner tonight.” I keep my gaze fixed on the pancakes. “She called yesterday.”

He turns halfway, not quite looking at me. “You should go.”

“Or I could stay.”

“I mean it.” He slides another pancake onto my plate, even though there’s already more food than I can eat. “There’s no reason for you to be here tonight.”

There are plenty of reasons for me to stay, and both of us know it. If this were happening to anyone else, that’s what I’d tell them to do.

Stay. Say everything. Hold on until there’s nothing left.

But the arguments never reach my mouth. Because the truth underneath it is uglier. I’ve been sitting with it since I woke up this morning and couldn’t go back to sleep: I want to skip the worst of it and walk away before the ending arrives.

“Okay,” I whisper.

For the first time since he started cooking, Milo looks at me.

Relief softens his features before the expression collapses beneath everything it costs him. His eyes remain on mine. I know that look because I’ve been guilty of it all morning. He takes in my hair, my face, the old sweatshirt I slept in, lingering over details too insignificant to deserve such concentration.

He’s making his own collection.

I lower my gaze before my composure gives way. Across the table, he draws in a slow breath, then turns back to the stove and switches off the burner with a small, final click.

We eat in silence. The pancakes taste perfect, but I can barely swallow. He cuts his food into smaller pieces than necessary. I pour syrup with exaggerated focus, watching it pool and spread across my plate.

Every ordinary sound acquires an intimacy I never noticed before: the faint scrape of his knife against ceramic, the creak of his chair when he shifts, the soft knock of his coffee mug against the table. I know he’ll drink from the same side of the cup until there’s a pale crescent left on the rim. Know he dislikes the sticky residue syrup leaves on his fingertips and wipes them on his napkin after a few bites. Somewhere along the way, these details stopped belonging to a stranger temporarily occupying my cottage and became part of the landscape of my days.