Page 24 of My Irresistible Enemy

There was the muttered, “Oh, crap!” when he exploded a stick of butter in his microwave.

A bitten off, “Goddammit,” when he burned his hand on the oven, putting one of his cakes in.

A desperate, “Oh, fuck me,” when he pulled that cake out and it was completely sunken in the center. “What the hell did I do wrong?”

Any number of things could have gone wrong, from what I could see. Maybe he’d forgotten to add any raising agent. Maybe he’d forgotten his egg whites again, or over-whipped them, or under-whipped them. Without seeing his recipe, I couldn’t be sure.

Aiden looked around the tent wildly, shaking his hands, and when he glanced back in my direction, he had tears in his eyes. But when he saw me looking, his gaze went flinty.

“What?” he snapped.

“I wasn’t—I didn’t—I just thought maybe I could—”

“Oh, you j-j-just thought maybe you could yell at me again about p-p-p-paying more attention to my baking? And then maybe shit like this wouldn’t h-h-h-happen?”

I recoiled. That was a shitty thing to say. I didn’t actually have a stutter, but what if I had? What about his big lecture about how being LGBT should make you less judgemental, not more?

“Asshole,” I muttered, looking back down at my workstation.

“If you have something to say to me, just say it.” Aiden’s voice cracked like a whip in the space between us.

I refused to look up. I wasn’t going to take the bait. I wasn’t going to give him anything else to react to, wasn’t going to give him another chance to twist my words and make me look like the bad guy. He wasn’t worth my time.

“Right, that’s what I thought,” he said. His voice dripped with satisfaction. “Not brave enough to actually take a stand about anything.”

My head snapped up.

“No, I just don’t need to say anything because you’ve already said it for me.” I glared at him. “If you didn’t practice, or take the time to read your recipe carefully, that’s no one’s problem but yours.”

“And if you end up in the bottom three again because you’re a stuck-up, preening snob and no one likes you, that’s no one’s problem but yours, either,” Aiden retorted.

“Well, let’s hope you don’t end up there with me, because your baking skills sure as hell won’t save you.”

“God, are you always this arrogant?”

“Are you always this rude?”

“No, I tend to save it for the self-hating dickheads who take their own internalized homophobia out on other people.”

“For the last time, it’s not homophobia if someone doesn’t like you,” I spat. “It’s just goddamn common sense.”

Aiden flushed and didn’t respond—which was when I noticed, for the first time, that the entire tent was silent. Someone standing near the front whistled, long and low, and I knew without needing to look that all four roaming cameras would be trained on us.

So much for looking likelessof an asshole this week. I wanted to snap something in half—except that wouldn’t help my situation at all. The only thing I could hope for was that people would finally notice it was Aiden who was causing problems, not me.

I mean, he was, wasn’t he? I didn’t think I was being irrational. It had to be Aiden pushing things because if it wasn’t, that meant I was losing control for no reason, and I couldn’t have that.

Slowly, I looked down at the countertop. Made my hands get back to work. My movements felt stiff and mechanical, but there was so much left to do, and Ineededto have a good bake to show the judges.

So I did my best. I kept my eyes down and didn’t interact with anyone else for the rest of the challenge. I forced myself to be a machine, to lose myself in the work. And I didnotpay attention to Aiden, no matter what he did.

I didn’t react when I heard him curse that he’d dropped half a bottle of vanilla into his batter and needed to start again. Didn’t react when one of the attachments from his stand mixer came loose and sent flour flying everywhere. Didn’t even react when he began reading the ingredients for his third cake aloud, like a fucking grocery list.

Butter, sugar, salt, egg whites, vanilla, milk, baking powder, flour. Over and over again, like he was trying to memorize them. It was irritating as hell, but I wasn’t paying attention.

Except, I was. So, of course, I noticed when Aiden began adding his ingredients together and skipped the egg whites. I noticed—and I didn’t say anything.

Guilt formed an oil slick in my stomach, but it wasn’t any of my business. He’d made it clear he didn’t want any help from me, so he could sink or swim on his own. There was no rule saying you had to help other bakers. And it wasn’t like Aiden would help me if our roles had been reversed.

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