Page 53 of Sweet Temptation
When I stress, I bake.
A lot.
That explains why I’m drizzling homemade salted caramel on what’s got to be my... I don’t even know what number cookie I’m on. I lost track when I decided to make my fourth kind. I don’t go for salted caramel often, but there’s something satisfying about making the caramel, so I said fuck it.
Shame the dickhead isn’t here so I can tell him he got me to sayfuckagain.
And it’s the only way he’s ever going to hear me use that word from here on out.
“Hello . . .” Brea calls out as she walks through the front door. “Lex . . .”
I don’t answer her. I don’t need to. She follows the sugary cookie scent into the kitchen and grimaces when she sees the counters covered in dozens of cookies cooling on racks. “Oh shit. Who fucked up?”
I blow a strand of hair out of my face and continue to drizzle caramel.
“Wait. I see lemon ricotta cookies, chocolate chip cookies, and oh wow, peanut butter and raspberry jam cookies? This is bad.” She grabs one of the warm salty caramels and breaks off a piece. “Okay, bad,” she murmurs with a mouthful. “But so good.”
“Thanks,” I blurt out and finish with the caramel and hand her my squirt bottle so she can add a little extra. Brea loves my caramel. Mine is better than hers.
“So, who pissed in your pie?” she asks and squirts some caramel onto an already oozing cookie.
I barely look at her before the timer goes on the batch of walnut chocolate chunk in the oven.
“Shit. Was it me? Should I be worried?”
Once I have the trays from the oven resting on the racks, I stop and look at my best friend. And for the first time in hours, I feel like I could cry.
That thought hits me about thirty seconds before my lips tremble and hot tears sting my eyes.
“Lexie, you’re scaring me. You don’t cry. Like, ever. I cry. I’m the crier.” She moves around the mess I’ve made and hugs me. “Are you okay? Are you sick?”
I sniffle and shake my head. “I’m okay, physically.”
“Your lungs?—”
“Are as good as they get. It’s not my lungs. It’s my heart. My heart and your stupid cousin.” I wipe away the tears with the back of my hand, but they just keep coming. “It hurts, Brea.”
“I don’t understand,” she says softly as she strokes my hair like I’m a child who needs soothing. And right now, I am.
“I slept with Lucky,” I finally admit, and my heart breaks a little bit more.
“That motherfucker. Tell me you slept with him, and then he hooked up with someone else, and I swear to God, I will use the cleaver Nonna gifted me at graduation to chop his balls off.”
I shake my head, wishing I could find that funny.
“I made him promise it would just be one time,” I whisper, hating how weak my words sound.
“Okay, sweets, I’m going to need you to explain this to me because I’m confused.”
I hand her another cookie and slide onto a stool and spill everything.
Everything about the past few weeks.
Everything about last night.
Well, not everything. Just everything she needs to know.
Everything about this morning.
