Page 89
I am grateful for Ruari. Still.
I want him. Still.
He shut the notebook. He was the last authority left to defy, and he’d been obeying himself with the blind devotion of a Sacred Vessel.
Cassian threw the duvet off, and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He pulled on joggers and Colin’s oversized Carhartt hoodie without turning on the light, shoved his feet into trainers, and crept down the stairs with the notebook tucked into the front pouch. The third step from the bottom groaned under his weight, but nobody stirred.
Proving Ground’s windows were lit by the time he got there.
Through the glass he could see the kitchen in full swing, sheet pans stacked on the counter, flour dust hanging in the air beneath the strip lights. Ruari stood at the bench with his back to the window, arms moving through the lamination process.
The bell above the door chimed when Cassian shouldered through it. Ruari’s hands went still on the dough, and then he turned around. He looked offensively good: clear-eyed, clean-shaven, and carrying another half a stone across the shoulders.
Ruari looked him over from the trainers to the hoodie. “Cassian,” he said.
Cassian snatched a croissant off the cooling rack and bit into it.
The pastry cracked against his teeth, and butter flooded his mouth. The lamination was perfect. The interior was open and honeycomb-soft, pulling apart in long translucent sheets when he tore the second bite free, and the flavour kept developing as he chewed, turning almost savoury at the finish.
He took another savage bite and pointed the remaining crescent of croissant at Ruari like a weapon.
“Why do you look like that?” Cassian demanded, through the mouthful.
Ruari’s gaze dropped to the croissant, then back to Cassian’s face. “Like what?”
“Like that.” Cassian gestured at him with the croissant, scattering flakes over the kitchen floor. “Healthy. Rested. You look rested, Ruari. Like a person who has their life together, and I have been eating Ladurée croissants for four months. Ladurée! Felix spat his out. Fallon wouldn’t even eat them, and Fallon eats her own hair.”
Behind the espresso machine, Raf retreated from the conversation.
Cassian finished the croissant, wiped his mouth on Colin’s sleeve, and grabbed a pain au chocolat from the rack. He bit into it, chocolate smearing on his lower lip.
“I have twenty-five million Australian dollars,” Cassian said, chewing. “Twenty-five million. Alison rang me, and the Commission referred Charles for prosecution, so his lawyers are settling because they know what’s coming. I could buy every pastry in this shop every single day for the rest of my life and still have enough left over to buy the shop. I could buy Ladurée. The whole company. Every branch. And I would burn them all to the ground because their croissants are shit.”
Ruari hadn’t moved from the bench. His hands hung at his sides as he watched Cassian demolish the pastry.
“So why aren’t I happy?” Cassian’s voice cracked on the last word, and he set the half-eaten pain au chocolat down on the counter. “You’re happy. You’re here, in your shop, making your bread, looking like that, and I’m the one with twenty-five million dollars! It’s what I’m worth, Ruari. That’s the number Charles’s solicitors reckon I cost.”
He looked at Ruari, and his chin wanted to tremble, but he forced it still.
Ruari’s hand came up and swiped the cluster of pastry flakes from the corner of Cassian’s mouth with his thumb. The pad of it dragged across Cassian’s lower lip, catching the smear of chocolate.
“Dunno about twenty-five million, Cass.” He said it to the flour on his own hands rather than to Cassian’s face. “Bit of a low figure, that. I reckon you’re worth a lifetime of early mornings. That’s what I’d put on the books. A lifetime of getting up at two a.m. to make sure there’s a passionfruit tart on the counter before you walk through that door.”
Cassian bit the inside of his cheek.
“You’re worth every bollocking Colin’s ever given me,” Ruari continued. “And he’s given me some proper ones, Cass. The man threatened me with a claw hammer once, and I deserved it. You’re worth the two a.m. text messages about what a binturong smells like, and the seventeen-minute voice note about whether octopuses have feelings, which you sent me when I was trying to sleep and which I still listen to.”
The sweetness of his words hit Cassian like a wall, and the fury that rose up to meet it was so enormous and so irrational that his vision blurred.
“Stop it,” Cassian said.
“You’re worth—”
“I said stop it.”
He swept the nearest sheet pan, twelve golden palmiers in two perfect rows, off the counter. The pan hit the tile floor with a crash that rang through the kitchen, palmiers scattering in every direction.
He turned to the shelving unit against the back wall. It was industrial steel, bolted together, loaded with bags of flour, sugar and tubs of dried fruit. He got both hands under the nearest shelf and heaved upward with everything his body had.
