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"—that she may become pregnant at some point. And then you will also be baking for baking sales. And I bet you will be thinking that it is work."
A snort break through his cookie stuffed mouth. "Nuh-uh. I live in Manhattan. I'll grab a dozen donuts from Doughnut Project. The kids won't buy anything less."
"Aw.” I stop mixing for a moment, contemplating not having homemade baked good. “That's sad."
"Right, so youdoknow what sad looks like..."
Damien elbows Kylian but I see it and I give them both a glare.
"What are you guys doing here? If you're just here to mess up my kitchen, then I'm going to have to ask you to leave. Everything okay at the office?"
"Er, yeah, great. Marcus is amazing. I'm going to steal him next time Odette gets too mouthy," Kylian says. "We just came to check on you and we were wondering what you thinking about the next board meeting."
I throw my hand in the air, accidentally flinging some meringue onto the kitchen cupboard. "What do you mean? They've decided to reconvene in a month and do the CEO vote then. So, until then, what can I do?"
"That sounds a little passive for you, bro,” Kylian notes.
"Not at all. Maybe it's just my new Zen attitude…bro"
"Which one's the Zen?" he shoots back, pointing to the open bottles of liqueur.
Damien sighs, and storms over to me. "Kingsley. Would you just, argh, give me that fucking bowl for one moment." Damien rips the bowl out of my hands, and then grabs my shoulders and pushes me down onto a breakfast stool. "I am genuinely worried about you. You haven't slept more than an hour a day for a week. And normally I wouldn't be that worried except that you actuallylook like that's all you've slept for a week. You haven't gone to the office for a week. You sent out the Baxter press release that said that we were not commenting on the article in any way, which is not perfect. But fine. Whatever. But now you haven't come up with a plan for your CEO vote. Gerry is temporarily back in his hole after we drove him back there after the last board meeting. But that's not going to last. The jubilee is in a few weeks. And you've all but given up on trying to talk to Lun—"
I push him away and stand up when he says her name. "I'm not talking about her."
"Fine. Then you can just listen. Youcannotflake out right now. You’ve had a week. It's time to get your shit together. I don't care if you bake a hundred macarons a day—"
"Ooh, yes, I love macarons!" Kylian cuts in, giving me wide eyes, and I wink at him, with an agreeing head nod.
"But you also need to be thinking about your future.”
I sigh, rolling my eyes. "Are you done?"
He nods. "For today's lecture. Yes."
"Good. Mix this." I throw the mixing bowl and whisk into his hands, and go to grab a spatula out of the rack. "If you beat the air out of that, I'll beat the air out of you."
Forty-Five
Kingsley
The baking distraction highdoesn't last.
Soon, it's just me in my office, in the dark, activating every mental and physical muscle I have, to stop me falling into my memories.
But sometimes, one will break through, and I’ll be rendered useless as I wallow in the memory of her.
As much as I miss her physical presence, her touch, the feel of her skin under my fingertips, I also miss the way she would always be looking at me whenever I glanced at her, and the smiles she'd give me when our eyes would meet. I miss her silly, funny, sexy text messages coming through, sometimes when she was sitting on the other side of the desk having the uncanny way of being able to make me smile.
The way she made me laugh.
I've laughed more in the last two months than I have in the previous forty-one years of my life combined. I have no doubt of that.
For all the labels of all the things she was for me, most important, she was my best friend.
And I was supposed to be hers.
"Hamilton is in my blood."
