Page 63 of Down Knot Out
The fragile edge in his voice slices through me. “Okay, then I’ll take the trash out. No reason for it to be in your way.”
Holden shakes his head. “The trash can wait.”
“Okay.” I’m a little dense sometimes, but even I can catch on to the nonverbal plea that I not leave him alone. I check the ingredients he already has on the counter. “You need the chocolate chips and cocoa powder, right?”
He blinks, staring at the ingredients for far too long. “Right. I…must have forgotten to grab those.”
I release him. “Let me fix that while you mix the butter and sugar together.”
“Cream,” he corrects, brow still pinched in confusion. “You cream the butter and sugar together.”
I head for the pantry. “Why do you call it that?”
“Mixing is just to combine them.” He gives himself a shake as he reaches for the sugar already weighed out in a bowl beside him. “Creaming is to aerate them. It’s a form of mechanical leavening that helps provide lift.”
Talking about baking always grounds Holden. Idon’t care about the science behind it all, but Holden pours over cookbooks to learn these tricks.
As I bring the chocolate ingredients from the pantry, Quinn’s high-pitched yell pierces through the doorway. “Uncle Blake! You have to see this!”
I hesitate.
Holden flaps his hand in a shooing gesture. “I’ve got this. You should go.”
“I can stay.”
He turns away. “It’s fine.”
“Or, she can come in here and draw at the island?” I try again.
“I said it’s fine,” he snaps, spinning toward me, and his elbow knocks the sugar bowl off the counter.
I try to catch it, but it slips through my fingers and shatters on the tiled floor.
“Shoot.” He kneels and reaches for the broken pieces, but his hands shake too badly.
I gather them all, picking up the ones that slip from his trembling fingers.
“Stop,” I tell him, a little sharper than I mean. “You’re going to cut yourself.”
“Does it matter?” he asks. “We keep doing our best to turn this place into a thriving business and a home, but it doesn’t stop bad things from happening.”
Despair darkens his features, and it kills me that I can’t fix this for him. “Holden…”
What can I say? How can I fix this?
I don’t know if I can.
I don’t know if any of us can.
What can we do when the police can’t even find Simon to throw him in jail?
“What if he had hurt her,” he says. “She doesn’t even belong to us yet, and we could have lost her.”
My hands pause over the broken ceramic, my breath catching in my throat. “Don’t say that. Please.”
“We should have gone with them.” Holden swallows, and his Adam’s apple bobs in his throat. “When they come back, we need to stick together. No one goes anywhere alone.”
His fear unravels me. “That’s not sustainable.”
