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Calaruga Shark Media, Hello and welcome to Romance Weekly and
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Thanksgiving Seduction. This is episode three The Family Recipe.
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My grandmother's journal was hidden in the attic, wrapped in oilcloth,
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and tucked behind Christmas decorations from the seventies. I wouldn't
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have found it if I hadn't been desperately searching for something, anything,
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to distract me from the craving. Three days since Adrian's dinner,
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three days of James cooking every meal for me, trying
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to flush the false emotions from my system with real ones.
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Three days of shaking, sweating, wanting. You'd think emotional withdrawal
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wouldn't have physical symptoms, but you'd be wrong. My skin
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felt too tight. Food tasted like cardboard unless James had
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made it, and the craving, God, the craving was eating
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me alive. November eighteenth, nineteen sixty three, My grandmother's careful
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script began. I can taste Harold's intentions in everything he cooks,
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not just his love, but something else, something he's adding
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that makes me feel things I know aren't mine. Mother says,
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I'm imagining things, but I know the difference between real
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emotion and what he's feeding me. He's preparing me for something.
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I can feel it building in my bones, like seasoning
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in a cast iron pan. My hands trembled as I
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turned the page. November twentieth, nineteen sixty three. Harold says
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his family has been in Westbrook for generations. Says they
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have an agreement, a covenant. Every Thanksgiving they prepare a
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feast of gratitude. But it's not the food that matters.
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It's the people eating it, people whose emotional fields have
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been properly seasoned. He wants me to be the centerpiece
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this year, the main course, he calls it, though he
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swears I won't be harmed, just shared my essence, fed
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to something that keeps the town prosperous. Norah James's voice
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from the attic stare you okay? Up here? My grandmother,
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I said, voice hollow. She had the gift too, And
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someone named Harold James climbed up, ducking under the low beams.
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When he saw the journal, his face went pale. Harold Blackwood,
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Adrian's grandfather. What the Blackwoods have been in Westbrook forever?
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They run high end restaurants every few decades, always around Thanksgiving,
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always leaving after something happens. He sat beside me, careful
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not to touch. We'd learned that skin contact when I
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was in withdrawal made the craving worse. May I. I
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handed him the journal November twenty second, nineteen sixty three, Thanksgiving.
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I'm writing this in case I don't come back myself.
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Harold says. The entity that feeds on our gratitude isn't evil,
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just hungry. Says it keeps the town safe, prosperous, special.
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All it needs is emotional energy, freely given. But I
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don't want to give mine. I don't want to be consumed,
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even partially. Harold says, I don't have a choice, says
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I've been too well seasoned to waste. He's coming for
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me tonight. If anyone finds this, don't trust the Blackwoods.
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Don't eat their food. Don't let them prepare you. Run.
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She disappeared that Thanksgiving, I said, Maum always said she
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ran off with some man, But she was fed to something.
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James's jaw was tight, just like Adrian's preparing to do
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with you. With all of us who've eaten at Harvest,
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you only ate there once. Once was enough. I can
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still feel it sometimes, like a mark on my emotional signature.
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We're all tagged Norah, marked for consumption. I stood too quickly, Vertigo,
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making me grab the beam. We have to warn people
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who'll believe us that the hot new chef is seasoning
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people for some thanksgiving entity, James steadied me, and the
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brief contacts sent electricity through my system, not the good kind. Besides,
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everyone who eats at Harvest regularly is addicted like you.
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They won't want to believe. Then we stop him ourselves.
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How we don't even know what the entity is or
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how the feeding works. Your family's been here for generations too,
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I said, remembering something he'd mentioned. What do you know?
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James was quiet for so long I thought he wouldn't answer.
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My great great grandmother was brought here specifically to feed it.
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She had the gift like us, but she figured out
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how to cook emotions that would poison the entity. Instead
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of nourishing it. She fed it rage instead of gratitude,
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fear instead of contentment. It got sick, went dormant for
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twenty years. Can we do that again? Maybe? But Adrian
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knows about that incident. He'll be watching for it. James
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helped me down from the attic plus poisoning the entity
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doesn't solve the real problem, which is the town needs it.
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Westbrook has been prosperous for two hundred years because of
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this thing. Every business thrives, every harvest is perfect, every
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family prospers, all because something feeds on our gratitude every Thanksgiving.
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We were in the.
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Kitchen now and James automatically started making me lunch, simple
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grilled cheese. But I could taste his determination in it,
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his protective instinct, real emotions, even if they weren't as
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intoxicating as Adrian's manufactured ones. So the whole town is complicit,
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not consciously. Most people don't know. They just know that
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Thanksgiving in Westbrook is special, that they feel more grateful here,
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more connected. He flipped the sandwich. But the old families know,
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the ones who've been here longest, like yours, like mine.
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He plated the sandwich, added pickle spears that tasted like resignation.
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We're supposed to help make sure the feeding goes smoothly,
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but I can't. I won't let him take you, Norah,
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even though it means breaking centuries of tradition, risking the
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town's prosperity. He looked at me, then really looked at me,
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and I could taste his emotion in the air between us. Love,
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genuine and terrified and determinedly ignored until now.
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Yes.
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Before I could respond, the kitchen door slammed open. Ben
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stumbled in, my younger brother, looking haggard and wrong. His
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emotional signature was chaotic, like someone had put his feelings
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in a blender. Norah, he slurred, though I could smell
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no alcohol. You have to come. Adrian wants he needs
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you to come, Ben. What did he do to you?
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Fed me? Ben laughed, high and unstable, fed me confidence, courage, decision.
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I signed the papers, sold my share of the inn
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to him. Mom doesn't know yet you what he needed?
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A venue for the gratitude feast. The inn is perfect, historical, traditional,
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Ben swayed, caught himself on the counter. You have to
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come now. He says, you're suffering withdrawal, says he can
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make it stop. The craving roared to life at the
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possibility of relief. My body actually leaned toward the door
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before James caught my arm. She's not going anywhere she
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needs it, Ben said, and I could taste his second
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hand addiction, weaker than mine, but still powerful. We all
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need what he gives us. You don't understand because you
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barely tasted it. But Norah, Norah, he prepared you specially,
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you're the main course. Get out, James said, quietly, Not
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without my sister, I said, get out. Ben lunged at James.
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Move It's clumsy but desperate. James deflected him easily, but
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the contact did something. Ben gasped, his eyes clearing for
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a moment. Oh god, he whispered, what did I do?
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The inn? Mom's going to Then his eyes glazed again.
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Adrian needs Norah. The feast is in four days. James
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physically removed Ben, gentle but firm. When he came back.
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I was pressed against the wall, shaking with want. I
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can't do this, I admitted, the craving it's getting worse.
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Then we need to try something else. James pulled out
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his phone. There's someone who might help my grandmother. She's
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ninety three and half senile, but she remembers the old ways,
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the ways to cook emotion as weapons instead of seasonings.
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An hour later, we sat in Riverside Senior Care watching
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James's grandmother, Edith, sought through recipe cards with spotted hands.
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Emotional cooking is about intent, she said, voice stronger than
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her frail appearance. Suggested. The Blackwoods use it to season people,
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make them palatable, but it can also be used to
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create antibodies. Antibodies, I asked, emotional resistance. If someone feeds
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you false emotions, you can build immunity by consuming concentrated
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doses of true ones. She pulled out a worn card.
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This was my mother's recipe, not for food, but for
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the emotion itself. The recipe was strange, not ingredients but feelings.
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Truth braised with acceptance, Love reduced to its essence, Fear
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clarified and skimmed of doubt, anger purified through righteous heat.
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How do we cook emotions? James asked. Edith looked at
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him like he was simple. You already do, boy, every
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time you cook with feeling. But this, this requires both
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of you, both two people with the gift, cooking together,
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combining your emotional signatures to create something stronger than what
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the blackwood boy can manufacture. She studied me with cloudy
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eyes that seemed to see too much. You're already seasoned, girl,
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can smell it on you like perfume. But it's not
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too late. Cook together, feed each other truth, build your
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resistance together, I repeated, looking at James together, he agreed.
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That night, in the inn's empty kitchen, we tried standing
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side by side at the stove, shoulders touching. We attempted
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to cook pure emotion into being. Focus on what's real,
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James said, his hand over mine on the spoon as
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we stirred soup. What you really feel, not what Adrian
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made you feel. The contact should have made the craving worse,
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but something else was happening where our skin touched. I
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could feel James's emotions flowing into the food, not manufactured
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but genuine. His fear for me, his anger at Adrian,
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his love that he'd been trying to hide. I can
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feel you, I whispered, I know I feel you too.
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The soup began to shimmer, actually shimmer with visible energy.
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Our combined emotional fields were creating something new, something that
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made my synthetic cravings recoil more. I said, we need
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more contact. James moved behind me, his chest against my back,
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his arms around mine. As we cooked together. The intimacy
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was overwhelming, not sexual, but something deeper. I could feel
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every emotion he'd ever felt about me. Layering into the food,
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his first glimpse of recognition when I'd walked in, his
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hope that I might understand him, his devastation when I
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chose Adrian, his determination to save me anyway, Norah. He
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breathed against my ear and my name carried the weight
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of everything he felt. The soup was glowing, now actually glowing.
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I dipped a spoon, tasted it, and gasped. It was
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like drinking liquid truth, burning away Adrian's false emo, like
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acid on paint. The craving cracked, faltered, began to fade.
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It's working, I said, turning in his arms. James, It's
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actually working. He was looking at me with such naked
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emotion that it took my breath away. Can you feel it?
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What's real?
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Yes?
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I reached up, touched his face. I can feel you,
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the real you, and I I'm so sorry for choosing him,
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for not seeing what was right in front of me.
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You were drugged, manipulated. I was foolish. Even before his food.
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I chose the excitement over the truth. I could taste
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my own emotions, now clear and genuine for the first
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time in days. I chose the dangerous stranger over the
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good man. Who read my articles and made me cinnamon
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rolls Norah. I kissed him, not with manufactured passion or
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false desire, but with real feeling, gratitude, affection, the beginnings
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of something that could become love if we survived this.
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James kissed me back, and I could taste everything, his relief,
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his joy, his persistent fear that we were running out
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of time. When we pulled apart, the kitchen was full
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of golden light from our combined emotional fields. We need
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to cook more, he said, roughly. Build your immunity, make
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you unpalatable to whatever Adrian's planning to feed you to together,
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always together, from now until Thanksgiving. We cooked through the night,
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our bodies touching, our emotions flowing into every dish. Soup
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that tasted like protection, bread that tasted like hope, cookies
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that tasted like rebellion. With each bite, I felt Adrian's
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hold weakening, my true self emerging from under his seasoning.
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But as dawn broke, we both knew it might not
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be enough. The Gratitude Feast was in three days. The
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inn had been sold to Adrian, and dozens of people
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were thoroughly seasoned for consumption. What if we can't stop it,
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I asked. James pulled me closer and I could taste
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his determination like iron in the air. Then we'll poison
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the whole feast, every dish, every bite. If that thing
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wants to feed on Westbrook's gratitude, we'll give it something
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that'll make it choke together together. Outside November, wind rattled
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the windows, and I could have sworn I heard Adrian laughing.
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Three days to save everyone, three days to break his
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hold completely, Three days to turn gratitude into a weapon.