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“Good morning.”
“Sophie...?”
“Still passed out,” he tells me. “I just checked.”
“Someone’s getting bold,” I tease.
“Mm. Addicted, maybe.”
“I call that job security.”
He pulls away from me laughing. “Hysterical.”
“What do you want for breakfast?”
“Whatever it is, we better start now before Sophie wakes up, or we’ll be having pancakes again.”
“I think you’re just sore that she doesn’t likeyourpancakes.”
“I’ve cooked for senators, and I can’t satisfy a ten-year-old. How would you feel?”
“Maybe try something else. Evenyoucan’t mess up eggs and bacon.”
I catch Aiden rolling his eyes beside me, and I wink at him before I return my attention back to the now beeping coffee machine. “Go on. I’ll make the coffee. You can be the breakfast hero.”
“She’ll probably hate that too,” he grumbles.
“Don’t worry. I’ll show you how to make them right,” I say seriously. I turn on my best Norman Osborn impression. “You know, I’m something of a chef myself.”
“Should a Spider-Man reference turn me on?”
“Probably not,” I deadpan. “Something is probably seriously wrong with you.”
I yelp when he suddenly lands a smack against my ass, grinning back at him while he starts to rifle through the cabinets for a pan. It’s moments like this that make it so hard to entertain thethought of telling him the truth, this easy routine between us making it even more difficult to try to find some sort of opening to reveal our history. Things have been so perfect, and don’t I deserve a little perfect in my life? It’s been ages since I’ve had any. There has to be some universally accepted perfect-to-shit ratio for everyone.
Idohear Sophie when she comes down the stairs, turning to catch her stretching her arms over her head when she reaches the last step, looking just like her dad when he first wakes up. I feel like I shouldn’t feel so happy to have noticed it.
You’ve got it bad, Cassie Evans.
Sophie lurches sleepily into the kitchen to join us like a newly turned zombie, mumbling, “What’s for breakfast?”
“Your dad is cooking,” I tell her.
She makes a face. “Not pancakes, right?”
“Hey,” Aiden counters, sounding offended. “What if I’d been practicing?”
“Have to be alotof practice,” Sophie snorts.
Aiden looks at me incredulously with a spatula in one hand and a skillet in the other. “Do you see what I deal with?”
“Oh, poor baby,” I coo, pouring a cup of coffee for him. “So mistreated.”
He shakes his head, returning his attention to the stove. “Everyone is against me.”
Sophie grins at me from the counter, where she’s found a seat, and I return it conspiratorially as I grab my own mug. I watch quietly as Sophie and Aiden continue chatting back and forth while he busies himself with breakfast, and again there is that creeping sense of guilt that settles in my chest like a sticky weight. It’s something I’ve never experienced, this warm sense offamily time. When I was a kid, I was usually making my own breakfast, andmore often than not, I did it in an empty house. Is that why I’m so hesitant to screw things up here?
Thinking about it makes my head hurt.
