Chapter 8: Crepes & Calculated Tension
The phone’s ring was a jagged shard of sound, tearing through the velvet layer of sleep. Sammy jerked upright, heart hammering against her ribs, the receiver she’d fallen asleep with still clutched in her hand. It was silent now. The ringing was coming from the landline itself. She blinked, disoriented, the deep jade of her walls swimming into focus in the morning light filtering through the blackout curtains.
She fumbled for the vibrating phone on her nightstand, the old-fashioned bell inside it shrill and insistent. “Hello?” Her voice was rough with sleep.
“Darling! Did we wake you? It’s just gone noon there!” Her mother’s voice was a sun-drenched burst of static, the connection threaded with the distant crash of waves.
“Mom?” Sammy rubbed her eyes, pushing her dark hair back from her face. A glance at the digital clock confirmed it was only 8:07 AM.
“Your father and I are in Crete! The light is just magical. We’ve decided to extend the trip, take the yacht down to Cyprus. Richard’s closed the merger early, so we’re seizing the day!”
In the background, Sammy could hear the distinct sizzle of bacon and the clatter of a pan. Her father’s voice, lower and calmer, floated near the receiver. “Tell her we’ve wired the quarterly stipend. And for God’s sake, tell Caleb to check his messages. I need those studio projections.”
“Your father says check your messages, darling. How is everything? Any more trouble?” Evelyn’s tone shifted, a razor of concern wrapped in silk.
Sammy’s sleep-fogged brain finally engaged. The texts. The night before. Rebel’s presence, solid and sure on her doorstep. The feeling of his body against hers on the bike. “No. No trouble. It’s handled.”
“Good. Use the guards if you need to. Don’t be shy about it.” The sound of a blender roared to life, drowning her mother out for a second. “We’ll be back for Caleb’s launch party next month. Must run, we’ve a helicopter to Meteora in an hour! Kisses!”
The line went dead. Sammy held the buzzing receiver for another few seconds before dropping it back into its cradle. The sudden silence of her room felt denser, heavier. Sunlight now edged the curtains, painting sharp lines across the velvet duvet.
Then, a different sound filtered up through the floorboards. The low murmur of voices. A deep, rough laugh she’d know anywhere. The clang of cookware.
She swung her legs out of bed, the cool air hitting her skin. Pulling on a loose pair of black sweatpants and the same band t-shirt from the night before, she padded barefoot to her door, unlocked it, and stepped into the hallway.
The aroma hit her first—rich coffee, melting butter, the sweet, caramelized scent of cooking sugar. It was utterly, mundanely glorious. She followed it downstairs, the marble floors cold under her feet, the sound of the voices growing clearer.
“—just flip it, you philistine. You’re massacring it.”
“It’s a crepe, not a patient. It doesn’t need your delicate fucking touch.”
She paused at the entrance to the vast, professional-grade kitchen. Caleb, in expensive-looking sweatpants and a wrinkled t-shirt, was leaning against the central island, sipping from a mug of coffee. Rebel stood at the stove, his back to her. He wore simple black jeans and a tight grey henley, the sleeves pushed up over his forearms, the intricate lines of his tattoos on full display. A dish towel was slung over his shoulder. He held a pan in one hand, wrist flicking with a precise, confident jerk. A perfect, golden-brown crepe sailed into the air, flipped, and landed back in the pan with a soft slap.
Caleb whistled, impressed. “Show-off.”
“You said you were hungry,” Rebel muttered, his focus on the pan. “Quiet is part of the service.”
“Good morning, sleeping beauty,” Caleb said, spotting her. “Your knight in shining armor stopped by. With your phone. And, apparently, a mission to feed us.”
Rebel didn’t turn around, but his shoulders tensed just perceptibly. He slid the finished crepe onto a waiting plate already stacked with three others. “Tell ghost-girl to get her ass downstairs before I eat all her crepes,” he said, his voice a low rumble.
Sammy felt a flush warm her neck. The memory of his voice in the dark, saying other things, washed over her. She walked into the kitchen, the morning light streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows making the stainless steel gleam.
“I heard you were extending my protection detail to include breakfast,” she said, aiming for casual and landing somewhere near shaky.
Rebel finally turned. His sharp eyes swept over her—the sleep-tousled hair, the bare feet, the way her shirt hung off one shoulder. A faint, unreadable smile touched his lips. It wasn’t the dangerous, possessive look from the bike, or the soft intimacy from the phone. This was different. Domestic. It was somehow more unnerving.
“Security is holistic,” he said, turning back to pour more batter into the pan. “Nutrition is a factor. Your brother’s idea of a balanced breakfast is cold pizza and regret.”
“Accurate,” Caleb chuckled, pushing a mug of coffee across the island towards her. “He also fixed your phone. The… issue is contained.”
Sammy wrapped her hands around the warm mug. “Contained how?”
Rebel’s back was still to her. “The number was a burner. Probably some drunk idiot from the club who got a lucky guess. I put a filter on your line. Anything from unidentified numbers gets quarantined. You won’t see it.” He said it with such effortless, technical finality that it sounded like the truth. It was, in its way. Just not the whole truth.
“So that’s it?” she asked, sipping the coffee. It was perfectly made, just how she liked it.
“That’s it,” Caleb said, shrugging. “Rebel’s systems are better than anything Dad’s paranoid security consultants could dream up. You’re ghosted now, for real.” He grinned. “Pun intended.”
Sammy watched Rebel work. The smooth, economic movements of his hands. The way he nudged the edge of the crepe with the spatula, his focus absolute. He was here, in their kitchen, cooking. After watching her sleep. After hearing her breathe.
“You didn’t have to do all this,” she said quietly.
He slid the last crepe onto the plate and brought it, along with a bowl of whipped cream and a plate of sliced strawberries, to the island. He set it down in front of her. Their fingers brushed. A spark, small and electric, jumped between them. She looked up, and for a fraction of a second, his guard was down. She saw not the obsessive watcher, nor the sarcastic friend, but a man looking at something he wanted so badly it scared him.
Then it was gone, replaced by his usual wry amusement. “Sure I did. Caleb can’t cook. You can’t cook. Your personal chef is off. You’d starve. It’s a public service.”
They ate. The conversation was light, filled with Caleb’s stories about a demanding artist at the studio and easy, familiar jabs between the two men. Rebel was funny, in a dark, dry way. He made Caleb laugh hard, and Sammy found herself smiling into her coffee, the residual fear of the night before dissolving in the warm, buttery normality of the moment. He was just Rebel. Her brother’s best friend. The guy who fixed things. The guy she wanted more than anything, but couldn’t have.
When the food was gone, Caleb gathered the plates and dumped them in the sink. “I owe you, man. Seriously. For last night, for this.” He clapped Rebel on the shoulder. “I’ve got to jump in the shower. Conference call with Dad in twenty.”
“Don’t mention it,” Rebel said, his voice even.
Caleb disappeared, his footsteps fading up the stairs. The kitchen felt cavernously quiet without his buoyant presence. Sammy busied herself with wiping the island, avoiding Rebel’s gaze. He leaned against the counter, arms crossed, watching her.
“You should change the password on your socials,” he said, his tone conversational. “Something with higher entropy. Not your old dog’s name and your birth year.”
She froze, the damp cloth in her hand. “How did you…”
“Lucky guess,” he repeated, echoing his words from the phone. His expression was unreadable. “It’s a common pattern. Easy to hack.” He pushed off the counter and walked to the breakfast nook, where her phone now sat, plugged into an outlet. He unplugged it and held it out to her. “All clean.”
She took it. Their hands didn’t touch this time. He’d made sure of it. “Thank you,” she said, her voice small.
He nodded, looking around the pristine, empty kitchen as if cataloguing its exits. “Lock the door behind me,” he said, moving towards the foyer.
“Rebel.” The word stopped him. He turned, one eyebrow slightly raised. The morning light from the windows cut across the planes of his face, highlighting the sharp line of his jaw, the dark intensity of his eyes. She had no idea what she wanted to say. Thank you for staying on the line till she fell asleep?
The words dissolved on her tongue. Instead, she asked, “Will you be at the studio thing? Caleb’s launch next month?”
He studied her for a long moment, his head tilted just slightly, like he was listening to a frequency only he could hear. “Would you want me to be?”
Her heart stumbled. “Yes.”
A slow, genuine smile, one that reached his eyes, transformed his face. It was devastating. “Then I’ll be there.” He turned and walked toward the front door. “Lock it, Sammy.”
She listened to the solid thud of the door closing, to the faint growl of his motorcycle starting up and fading away. She walked to the door, slid the heavy deadbolt home, and engaged the electronic lock. The house was silent again. But it felt different now. The sunlight seemed too bright, the silence too complete. She looked down at her phone, clean and anonymous in her hand. She looked at the locked door, a barrier he had told her to secure.
The heavy silence was shattered by the thump of footsteps on the stairs. Caleb descended halfway, a white towel wrapped around his waist, his hair damp.
“Mom just texted,” he called, his voice echoing in the vast foyer. “The dress delivery for the charity gala on Wednesday is confirmed. It’s coming here, noon-ish.” He shook his head, droplets flying. “Can you be here to sign for it? I’ve got that studio mix session.”
“Yeah, I’ll be here,” Sammy said, her voice sounding detached to her own ears.
“You’re a saint.” He flashed her a grin, then turned and bounded back up the stairs, leaving a faint scent of expensive soap and steam in his wake.
The house settled back into its hollow quiet. Sammy stood there, her hand still resting on the cold metal of the door lock. The interaction had lasted less than thirty seconds, but it had fractured the strange spell of the morning. The ghost of Rebel’s presence evaporated, replaced by the stark, lonely architecture of her life.
She walked back to the kitchen, the memory of him at the stove already feeling like a dream. The lingering smell of coffee and sugar turned cloying. She poured the cold dregs of the pot down the sink, the liquid swirling, brown and pointless.
He dropped everything because Caleb asked.
The thought landed like a physical blow, right in the center of her chest. She leaned over the granite countertop, her palms flat against the cool stone. She pictured him in his own place last night, monitors glowing, doing whatever he did. The phone ringing. Caleb’s name on the screen. A request. An obligation.
He came because of loyalty. Not because of her. He’d stayed on the phone until she fell asleep out of a sense of duty. A completed task. The “good girl” was just a pat on the head for following instructions, for locking the doors. A flush of shame, hot and prickling, climbed her neck. How pathetic she must have seemed, clinging to his voice in the dark, secretly hoping the line would stay open, that he was still there, listening to her breathe.
She thought of his hands on the motorcycle handles, the deliberate lean into the curve. The way he’d pulled her knees tighter around him. Her arms locked around his waist. For one stolen moment, she had let herself believe it was for her. That the current humming between them was real and reciprocated.
But it was just Rebel being Rebel. Efficient. Darkly charming. Doing a favor for his best friend’s little sister. A pest control job with a side of breakfast.
The fantasy she’d hugged to herself since she was nineteen —of him seeing her, really seeing her—curled up and died in the sterile sunlight of the kitchen. She would never get over him. The certainty of it was a cold, heavy stone in her gut. He was a habit her heart couldn’t kick. A permanent condition.
A new, more vicious image bloomed behind her eyes. Him with someone else. Not a vague notion, but a specific, brutal cinema. A woman with easy laughter, someone who didn’t trip over her own words, who didn’t need to be rescued from anonymous texts. She’d be cool, uncomplicated. She’d touch his arm without flinching. He’d smile at her, that real, rare smile, and it wouldn’t be because he was fixing her problems.
He’d want her. He’d choose her.
Sammy’s breath hitched, a sharp, pained sound in the empty room. Her vision blurred, the gleaming stainless steel appliances swimming into watery shapes. She pressed the heels of her hands hard into her eyes, trying to push the image back, to dam the sudden, scalding pressure building behind her face.
No. Stop.
But it was too late. A silent, ragged sob shook her shoulders. She slid down the face of the kitchen island until she was crouched on the cold floor, her back against the cabinet, her arms wrapped tight around her knees. She pressed her forehead to her denim-clad legs, her whole body trembling with the effort to contain it. The tears came anyway, hot and silent and utterly defeating, soaking into the fabric of her sweatpants. She was twenty-five, hiding on a kitchen floor, crying over a man who only saw her as a responsibility. A lock to be checked. A problem to be solved.
A problem to be solved.
The stark truth of it echoed in the hollow quiet of the kitchen, a final verdict that left her empty. Her tears were a silent confession to the marble floors, a private surrender. Then, a sharp, digital chirp shattered the silence, slicing through her grief like a blade.
Her personal cellphone, abandoned on the island counter, vibrated with an incoming video call. The screen showed a cascade of familiar names: Shani, Cora, Lindi. A lifeline thrown from the normal world. Sammy wiped her face roughly with the sleeve of her shirt, took a shuddering breath that caught in her throat, and reached up to grab the phone. She accepted the call.
Three faces pixelated into view, squinting against different sources of sunlight. “There she is!” Shani’s voice was a bright, cheerful blast. “Why do you look like a haunted Victorian child? It’s a gorgeous day. Seriously, get some sun on that goth pallor.”
“We’re coming over,” Cora announced, her head bobbing as she walked, phone in hand. The camera showed a flash of blue sky behind her. “We have provisions. Bagels, iced coffee, that pineapple hard seltzer you pretend to hate. We’re gonna swim.”
“Hold on, hold on,” Lindi interjected, her face filling the screen as she leaned in. Her expression was pure, unadulterated glee. “First, details. Immediate details. How was the ride? And i’m not talking about the motorcycle.” She winked on the screen.
The barrage of normalcy was a tidal wave. Sammy’s mind, mired in the dark, sticky residue of her own heartbreak, struggled to surface. She managed a watery, unconvincing smile. “There’s no details. Rebel dropped me off, and made sure no more weird text would come through.”
“That is categorically not ‘it,’” Lindi fired back.
“I look like a haunted child because I just woke up,” Sammy lied, pushing herself up from the floor. Her legs felt unsteady. “And yes, please come swim. I need to… not be inside my own head today.”
“That’s the spirit!” Shani said. “We’re twenty minutes out. Wear the black bikini. The one with the silver rings. It’s a statement.”
“It’s a bathing suit,” Sammy mumbled, but a genuine flicker of warmth cut through the cold knot in her stomach. Their noise, their casual demand for gossip, was a rope pulling her back from a ledge she hadn’t fully acknowledged she was on.
“We’ll get it out of you poolside,” Cora sang. “See you soon!”
The screen went black. The sudden silence felt different now, charged with impending interruption. The solitude was broken. Sammy looked around the kitchen, at the evidence of the morning—the empty coffee mugs, the faint smear of powdered sugar on the island where Rebel’s plate had been.
She had twenty minutes. Twenty minutes to erase the evidence of her meltdown, to swap the tear-stained sweats for the black bikini with the silver rings, to rebuild the wall between the girl who cried on the floor and the one who joked with her friends. To lock the image of him flipping a crepe with focused, tattooed hands into a mental vault marked “Do Not Touch.”
She moved quickly, a sudden, nervous energy propelling her. She rinsed the mugs, wiped the island clean of sugar and memory.
She climbed the stairs, each step feeling like a move away from the vulnerable creature she’d been moments before. Her bedroom was a sanctuary of her own making, but the walk-in closet was its true heart, a cavern of organized darkness. She slid the heavy pocket door open and stepped into the soft, ambient glow of the LED strip lights she’d installed herself.
The air was cool and carried the faint scent of sandalwood from the drawer liners. She rummaged through the neatly arranged swimwear section, her fingers pushing past one-pieces and patterned bottoms. The black bikini with the silver ring detailing was tucked at the back, a purchase she’d made on a whim and never worn. She pulled it free, the matte fabric soft against her skin.
As she turned to leave, a tiny, pinprick glow in the baseboard near the floor caught her eye. It was a soft, steady red light, emanating from what looked like a standard, beige wall outlet. She paused, frowning. It was too dim to be an emergency light, too purposeful. She knelt on the cool carpet, her shirt falling open slightly as she leaned forward.
Up close, it was unmistakable. The light was embedded deep within one of the outlet’s lower sockets, a tiny LED behind the plastic. Her first thought was a nightlight, but this outlet was behind a rack of long coats, useless for that. Probably some type of tech stuff for the house, she reasoned. A network indicator, or part of the security system Caleb was always upgrading. She ran a fingertip over the plastic faceplate. It was slightly warmer than the wall around it.
On the other side of the city, Rebel sat on his Kawasaki outside a nondescript tech warehouse in Fullerton. His phone was balanced on the handle bars, the screen split between a routing protocol and a single, living feed. He’d just pulled it up, a reflexive check, a need for a hit of her before a day of dirty work.
The image loaded. His breath stopped.
It was a low-angle shot, intimate and devastating. Sammy was kneeling, her hazel eyes narrowed in curiosity, focused on the very lens he was watching through. The v-neck of her worn band t-shirt gaped open, offering a forbidden slice of shadow and soft skin. The morning light from the closet played across her collarbones, the line of her throat. She was so close he could see the individual lashes framing her wide, curious eyes.
A wave of ice-cold fear instantly doused the heat that had sparked in his gut. His thumb trembled above the screen. Does she know? The thought was a siren in his skull. He watched, paralyzed, as her fingertip traced the edge of the outlet plate. Every logical part of him screamed she’d seen the reflection, understood the tech, that in the next second her face would twist in dawning horror.
Will she hate me?
The terror was absolute, a freefall sensation in his chest. Then her expression softened, shoulders relaxing. She shrugged, a tiny, dismissive movement. Her lips moved, forming silent words he could easily read: house stuff. She pushed herself up from the floor, the moment of scrutiny over, and turned away from the camera.
Relief, sharp and giddy, left him lightheaded. It melted almost instantly into a thicker, more shameful heat. But wow she is so fucking beautiful. The thought was a raw, stripped-bare truth. He watched her stand there, the black bikini dangling from her hand, staring at nothing for a long moment. The vulnerability he’d seen in the kitchen was gone, replaced by a resolved blankness that somehow hurt more.
She peeled off her shirt. He shouldn’t look. He always looked. It was his curse and his sacrament. The camera feed was crystal clear, a high-definition betrayal. He watched the efficient, unaware motion of her changing, the graceful dip of her spine as she fastened the clasp. The silver rings of the bikini top gleamed against the stark black. She pulled her hair up into a messy knot, a few dark strands escaping to frame her face.
Then she was gone, stepping out of the frame, leaving only the empty, peaceful closet.
Rebel put his phone into the pocket of his spiked leather jacket, as if it had burned him. He gripped the handlebars, his knuckles bleaching white, and let his head fall forward with a dull thud against the leather. The engine’s low rumble vibrated through his skull. He’d dodged a bullet so large it would have ended him. The close call was a nauseating whirlpool of terror and illicit thrill.
He sat there until the shake left his hands. Then he picked up the phone again, killed the feed, and pulled up a different screen—maps, coordinates, the clean, clinical language of a job. He needed the distraction, something concrete to purge the image of her kneeling, so close to discovering him, and the even more dangerous image that followed. He put the bike in gear, the tires squealing slightly as he pulled out of the lot, forcing his mind onto the cold, binary problems ahead.
Back in the house, Sammy padded down the grand staircase in her bikini, a sheer black kaftan thrown over her shoulders. The vulnerability of the kitchen floor felt sealed away, packed down under the practical need to host her friends. She heard the gate intercom buzz from the kitchen a moment before her phone chimed with a text from Shani: We’re here, let us in, it’s fucking hot.
She buzzed them in, the mechanical whir of the gate a familiar sound. By the time she reached the colossal, sliding glass doors that opened to the patio and the long, azure pool, she could hear their voices echoing across the water.
“There she is!” Cora called, already laying out towels on a wide, cushioned lounger. Lindi was unpacking a large tote bag, setting out cans of seltzer and a box of still-warm bagels.
Sammy slipped off her kaftan, the sun immediately warming her pale skin. “You guys are speedy.”
“We were motivated by gossip and carbs,” Shani said, sliding a pair of oversized sunglasses onto her face. She popped the top off a seltzer and handed it to Sammy. “Now. The real report. How was having Rebel Gage as your personal knight in shining leather?”
Sammy took a long sip, the bubbles sharp and crisp. She walked to the pool’s edge, staring down into the shifting, turquoise-tiled depths. “He took me home. He fixed my phone. He made crepes for Caleb… and me this morning. He left.” She kept her voice flat, matter-of-fact. She dove in.
The water was a shocking, perfect cold, enveloping her, washing away the lingering sting of tears and the phantom feeling of his hands. She stayed under, swimming the length of the pool in a smooth, powerful crawl until her lungs burned. When she surfaced at the deep end, gasping, the three of them were watching her, arms crossed.
“That was an emotionally charged lap,” Lindi observed dryly.
“It’s nothing,” Sammy said, treading water. “I’m just being stupid. It was just a favor for Caleb.”
“Bullshit,” Shani said. “You’ve been in love with him since you had braces. He shows up in the middle of the night on a murder cycle, takes you home, makes you breakfast, and your takeaway is ‘it’s nothing’?”
“My takeaway is that he’s Caleb’s best friend,” Sammy shot back, hauling herself out of the pool. Water sheeted off her, pattering on the hot concrete. She grabbed a towel. “And I’m Caleb’s little sister. That’s the whole script. It never changes.” She said it with a finality she hoped would end the discussion.
Cora tossed her a bagel. “Fine. But for the record, the way he looks at you sometimes isn’t very brotherly.”
Sammy’s heart gave a hard, hopeful thump she immediately despised. She took a savage bite of the bagel to keep from asking what, exactly, Cora meant. The conversation moved on, blessedly, to Shani’s disastrous date, a new client at the tattoo shop, the absurdity of the upcoming charity gala. Sammy let the normalcy of it, the easy back-and-forth, anchor her back in her own life.
She was laughing at a story of Lindi’s, stretched out on the lounger, when her personal phone buzzed. A new email notification popped up. The sender was the concierge service her mother used. The subject line: Jade Residence - Delivery Confirmation & Itinerary for Wednesday.