Page 3 of Morally Black Betrothal
“Hi,” I whispered.
The morning light dappled his sleek, dark hair, pleasantly rumpled as he propped himself up on his elbow. My faded daisy sheets fell to reveal the lean muscles and olive skin I’d enjoyed so thoroughly the night before.
“Jesus,” Brendan muttered as he checked his watch. “What time is it?”
“Six twenty,” I said, not quite able to stop my voice from shaking. “I’m sorry I woke you.”
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
Brendan’s dark green eyes found mine, and whatever he saw made him spring into action. The sheet fell away as his long legs swung around, feet to my battered wood floor. Then he stood, ready to take on the world even if he was only wearing the skin he was born in.
The mask was back. The armor no one had broken through once it was in place.
Although this story might.
My lower lip trembled as I held up my phone. “They know.”
His brow furrowed. “Who? And what do they know?”
I rotated the headline toward him. “Everyone knows. They know I’m not your fiancée. That you never loved me. That we were never real.”
Brendan took the phone. “Fuck.”
I watched as the light in his eyes I’d fought so hard to kindle died. The shadows were back. Ice froze over.
Brendan, my Brendan, disappeared.
All that was left was The Black Prince.
1
HOW TO MAKE SOURDOUGH BREAD
Four months earlier
Simone
“See, most people think you have to knead the dough for a million years.”
With efficient movements I’d mastered over the years, thanks to plenty of bedside conversations just like this one, I dealt a new hand of solitaire onto my patient’s tray.
“But that’s not actually true.” I settled the remaining cards into my hand. “Sourdough has a higher hydration percentage than yeasted bread. Mine is usually seventy-five, sometimes eighty percent when the sun’s out. Either way, the higher water content means you should limit your handling of the dough to occasional stretch and folds for the first ninety minutes of your initial rise. No ‘knead’ for standmixers or sore knuckles. Get it?”
I grinned at the patient, an old man with a surprisingly thick mane of white hair, as if he would laugh at my bad pun.
In response, he breathed through an oxygen tube sticking out of his nose. His closed eyelids didn’t even twitch.
I wasn’t offended. After all, what else could he do while unconscious?
I turned over the top three cards from the deck and went on as if the man had asked more about my favorite topic. “After that, just let the dough rise. The secret sauce is in the duration. Three days at forty-five degrees is ideal in Boston, but you didn’t hear it from me.”
I continued to explain my theories on gluten strengthening while playing cards with myself. Then I read the man’s horoscope out loud and listened to the chorus of monitors beeping in response.
In other words, just the average afternoon shift of a candy striper, aka a patient care volunteer at Massachusetts General Hospital. Three days a week, I provided emotional support to elderly people whose family or friends couldn’t be with them for whatever reason. I didn’t have candy in my pockets, and instead of a striped dress, I wore a set of thrifted scrubs. Today’s shapeless pair was cerulean blue, printed with sunglasses-wearing pineapples.
According to the Cardiac ICU staff, he was something of a celebrity. A business mogul who was a frequent flyer on Fox News, had probably been married five times to women a third his age, and fired people just because he didn’t like their names.
Right now, though, he looked like any other elderly man in a hospital gown and grippy socks, smelling of astringents and sleep. Heavy bags wreathed his closed eyes, age spots dappled his paper-thin skin, and frown lines creased the sides of his downturned mouth.
