Unwanted Blood (Harper) novel Chapter 25

Chapter 25

Chapter 25

By two in the afternoon, the kitchen at the Gadigal Center smelled entirely of scorched sugar and vanilla essence.

Lily got flour on everything, including her jeans within the first ten minutes. Ethan followed behind her with a cloth wiping the counter every time she dropped a bowl.

I was paired with the two youngest kids in the group – Mia, who was six, and a boy named Jayden who kept stealing extra chocolate chips and denying it.

–

Mia attached herself to me immediately. She tugged my sleeve every few minutes to show me whatever shape she’d pressed into the dough a rabbit, a star, something that might have been a duck.

“Sister Harper, look,” she whispered, holding up a lump of graying dough. that vaguely resembled a lopsided rabbit. “Look at the little bunny I made. The ears are too big.”

“Yes baby. You did a great job,” I said, crouching down so our shoulders touched. I took a pinch of flour from the bin, but as I reached over, the edge of my sleeve brushed against my face. Mia giggled, her small, flour- coated hand darting out to strike the bridge of my nose.

“You look like a panda right now,” she said, her teeth showing in a wide, unbothered grin.

She reached up without warning and wiped a smudge of flour off the tip of my nose, then immediately reconsidered and left a bigger one.

“You look like a panda,” she said, her teeth showing in a wide,

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unbothered grin.

I let out a short laugh. But as I leaned back to wipe the white dust from my eyes, my gaze drifted toward the reinforced glass of the double entry doors at the front of the hall.

Colton was standing on the pavement outside, his hands buried deep in the pockets of his dark canvas jacket. In his right hand, he was holding a small, brown paper gift bag with twisted twine handles. He didn’t push the door open. He didn’t call out. He just stood there by the glass, his eyes fixed on the flour on my nose, watching me with a strange, heavy stillness.

My breath caught in my throat. I thought they had left after the hotel confrontation. I thought the boundaries had been set.

Colton saw me lock eyes with him. He hesitated for a split second, then reached out and placed the brown gift bag carefully on the metal bench right beside the entry door. He took two steps back, turned his collar up against the rain, and walked down the avenue without looking back once.

Lily appeared at my elbow, her eyes tracking the dark shape of his coat as he disappeared around the corner of the market. “Do you want me to drop it in the bin outside?” she asked quietly.

I looked down at the rabbit dough in Mia’s hands, then back at the bench. “No. Leave it there.”

When the class ended at four, the kids ran out into the courtyard, leaving the hall smelling of warm butter and damp coats. I walked over to the exit, reached out, and pulled the twine handles of the bag off the metal bench.

Inside was a heavy, spiral-bound sketchbook with thick, textured cream pages and a full set of professional German charcoal pencils. Tucked between the charcoal tins was a small, unlined index card.

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“When you were nine, you drew a picture of the four of us sitting on the

porch after the storm. You put yourself in the corner by the steps. I’ve kept it in my desk drawer since the year you left.”

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