Chapter 2The Chrysalis Burns Twice

Lauren stared at me for a long beat, then tossed the candles onto the glass coffee table. They scattered with a dull, plastic rattle.

"Fine," she said. "Suit yourself. Don’t go telling your friends I didn't try."

Silence fell over the apartment, heavy and thick as wet wool.

From the kitchen, the timer on the convection oven let out a sharp beep. I set my mug down, walked past her, and checked the temperature on the drying racks. Tomorrow morning was the finals for the National Pastry Championship. For thirty days, I had survived on four hours of sleep a night, obsessing over sugar work, stabilizing fruit reductions, testing the temper on single-origin Venezuelan chocolate.

Everything in my prep containers was labeled, sealed, and resting at precisely thirty-six degrees Fahrenheit.

Satisfied, I walked back toward the hallway to go to bed.

As I crossed the living room, the garish magenta of that strawberry cake sat on the table like an open wound. Lauren was lounging on the sofa, scrolling through her phone with a small, contented smile playing on her lips.

A sudden, quiet clarity washed over me. Four years of walking on eggshells. Four years of feeling like an applicant interviewing for the position of her partner.

"Lauren," I said softly. "We're done. Let's break up."

She didn't blink. She didn't even look up. She tapped the screen and spoke directly into the air: "Don't worry about it, Derek. He's just being overly sensitive again. You know how moody creative types get."

I stood there, paralyzed, before I noticed the tiny white stem of an AirPod tucked into her ear.

She was on the phone with him. Reporting back. Taking notes on how to manage my "emotional instability."

My mouth opened, but no sound came out. What was there left to say? I turned on my heel, walked into the bedroom, and pulled the door shut behind me, locking the deadbolt with a soft click.

Our bedroom shared a thin wall with the living room. Even through the drywall, her voice drifted in, clear and rhythmic.

"No, he didn't touch the cake."

"Yeah, locked himself in the bedroom. Throwing a fit."

I pulled my vintage leather duffel and hard-shell Rimowa suitcase from the top of the closet, threw them onto the mattress, and began pulling my clothes from the hangers. Merino sweaters, chef whites, denim, linen shirts.

Ten minutes into packing, the front doorbell chimed.

"Where's Bennett?" Derek’s voice filtered through the apartment.

"In the bedroom," Lauren said, her tone softening in that specific, singsong way she only ever used with him. "Why did you come all the way back out? Your nose is bright red from the wind."

"Because I'm a good friend, obviously!" Derek laughed.

Their voices drifted closer to the hallway, then receded toward the kitchen. I kept my head down, folding my knives into their canvas rolls, refusing to imagine what they were doing out there. But the apartment was too quiet, and the giggles were too sharp.

"Hey! Lauren! You did that on purpose—that flour was supposed to go in the sifter!"

"Shut up, Derek!" Lauren giggled.

"Tone failed! Say it again with sweetness!"

"Derek, please—"

"Posture failed! Re-approach!"

I slammed the zipper shut on my garment bag. I opened my airline app, found a one-way flight from Logan to Charles de Gaulle departing at 8:40 PM tomorrow night, entered my card details, and hit confirm.

At 1:00 AM, knuckles rapped against my bedroom door.

"Bennett. Open up."

I unlocked the door and pulled it open.

Derek was standing in the hall, playfully tugging Lauren forward by her elbow. "Bennett, my man! I ran her through the remedial empathy drills! She’s officially certified to apologize now."

Lauren stepped into the room, looking slightly flustered, carrying a fresh, rustic-looking layer cake dusted with powdered sugar.

"Derek and I stayed up and baked you a replacement," she said, her voice pitched in a gentle, supplicating tone that sounded entirely scripted. "Chocolate and vanilla. Stop pouting, okay?"

It was one in the morning. My birthday had expired sixty minutes ago.

Then my eyes caught the pale lavender streaks in the buttercream. The delicate, unmistakable scent of Sicilian blood-orange curd drifted from the layers.

Blood orange. Wild lavender.

Blood roared in my ears. I lunged forward, shoving past her into the hallway.

The cake flew from her hands, hitting the hardwood floor with a wet, heavy thud, spraying crumbs and frosting across the baseboards.

"Bennett! What the hell is wrong with you?!" Lauren shrieked, chasing after me.

I threw open the kitchen door. The lights were blazing.

The commercial refrigerator stood wide open. Inside, my stainless steel prep containers were ransacked. The artisanal fruit glazes I had spent twelve hours simmering and straining were empty. The hand-pulled sugar ribbons I had kept under humidity-controlled domes were shattered on the counter. The custom almond-flour sponge bases I had rested overnight to achieve the perfect crumb structure were hacked to pieces, the remnants dumped directly into the stainless steel sink amidst soapy water and eggshells.

I stood there, my hands trembling so violently I couldn't ball them into fists.

"Who..." My voice cracked, raw and hollow. "Who told you you could touch my competition prep?"

I had drafted over two hundred design sketches for tomorrow. I had tested the moisture percentages a hundred times to ensure the structural integrity of the centerpiece. It was a month of pure, obsessive labor, destroyed in forty-five minutes so two people could play flirtatious house in the middle of the night.

Lauren caught up, leaning against the doorframe, her face dark with irritation. "Why are you making such a massive deal out of this? It’s just flour and sugar, Bennett. You’re acting like a lunatic."

I turned my head and locked eyes with Derek, who was hovering in the hallway, looking suddenly uncomfortable.

"Those were my ingredients for the national finals tomorrow morning," I whispered. "Those were my showpiece components."

Lauren blinked, her expression stuttering for a fraction of a second.

Derek’s face drained of color. "Bennett... man, I had no idea. We just saw the bowls in the fridge and thought you had leftovers from the bakery. I'm sorry, I really am—"

Lauren immediately stepped sideways, placing herself directly between Derek and me. Her chin came up, her maternal, protective instinct flaring entirely in his defense.

"All right, that's enough," she snapped at me. "Derek didn't do it on purpose! If you hadn't been acting like an insecure child all evening, he wouldn't have had to come back over here at midnight to help me patch things up with you! If those ingredients were so precious, why didn't you put a note on them?"

I looked at the woman I had loved for four years. I looked at the way her body angled, shielding another man from my grief.

I closed my eyes.

"Bennett," she added, her tone dropping into an icy ultimatum. "If you're going to continue being this impossible, this vindictive... then maybe we shouldn't even bother."