These areI can’t stop picturing your hands while I zest an orangecookies.
These areI fantasized about you so hard my cookies came out perfectcookies.
I package them carefully. Don’t bother with a note.
He’ll know they’re from me.
Who else is breaking into his house to leave Italian pastries?
The drive feels different this time.
Not the panicked energy of the first trip or the manic determination of the second. This is something calmer.
He left the door unlocked for me. That’s mob-code forcome sit on my face while I explain omertà.
That changes everything and nothing. I’m still a federal witness violating protection. Still risking my safety and my future.
But I’m also expected.
Invited, even.
Is it still breaking and entering if he basically left the porch light on and wrote my name on the lock?
Legally, sure. Emotionally? It’s practically an engraved invitation.
RSVP: Me. Cookies. Delusion.
God, my life is weird.
His neighborhood is aggressively serene today. Tree-lined silence. Golden sunlight. One of those streets where even the air smells expensive and no one ever yells about their ex on the front lawn. The kind of peaceful that probably costs extra in property taxes.
I park down the street. Grab the cookies. Walk up to his door.
Deep breath.
I try the doorknob.
It turns.
Something warm blooms in my chest. He did it again. Left it open. For me.
I step inside. Close the door softly.
“Hello?” I call out, quieter than last time.
Silence.
But a different kind of silence. Not empty. Prepared. Like the house has been staged for my arrival.
The kitchen first.
I round the corner and stop.
The container from my cranberry orange cookies is sitting in the dish drainer. He ate them and cleaned up after himself like a civilized human being. He’s trying to seduce me via Tupperware etiquette.
It’s working.
There’s a note on the counter. Small. Cream-colored stationery. Neat handwriting that somehow manages to look both precise and elegant.
