Chapter 9 #2
Marley, Oliver, and Warren all look at me.
I pick up the whisk again.
“Okay, I’m going.” Oliver puts his hands up as he goes.
Marley stands and brushes crumbs off her sweatshirt. “I have to take a call.”
I panic, immediately taking my words back. I grab her wrist. “Don’t go,” I whisper.
She looks at my hand, and then back to me. “I’m not leaving the building.”
“But you’re leaving the room.”
“The room is doing something weird to my nervous system.” She lowers her voice. “Look. I love you. I trust you. I trust Warren, mostly. But I cannot watch my brother quietly make lists in your kitchen while both of you awkwardly and badly pretend that you’re not thinking about sex.”
Warren groans from behind me.
“I hate you,” I whisper.
She kisses my cheek. “I know.”
She grabs her phone and leaves.
The kitchen is quiet. Not silent. Bitter Bloom is never silent during business hours. Out front, Dev takes orders, Lisa boxes pastries and makes another Legacy Latte, the espresso machine hisses, customers laugh, and the bell over the door seems to never stop jingling as people come and go.
But here, in the kitchen, everything is too quiet.
Just Warren.
Just me.
The notebook.
And the memory of the other night.
I cross my arms. “You can leave too.”
He nods. “I can.”
“But you’re not going to.”
He looks at me.
I roll my eyes. “Fine. You may observe.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t sound pleased.”
“I am.”
I try not to smile as I grab a mixing bowl. “Don’t make it hard to be mad at you.”
I look over my shoulder. He stands near the prep table, his sleeves down over his giant arms, his hair pulled tight and his expression unreadable as he watches me.
Every single time I see him like this, it makes me want to see the wrecked man above me again.
The sound he made when I pulled his hair…
And now, he’s standing in my kitchen writing lists about production flow.
It’s obscene. Domestic and maybe even a little dangerous. For my blood pressure, anyway.
“Why are you in Maryland?” I ask before I can stop it.
“To help Marley,” he says without missing a beat.
“And to figure out your next move?”
He closes his notebook. “I finished a contract in Munich,” he says after a moment. “I didn’t renew.”
“Why not?”
“It wasn’t right.”
“That’s vague,” I mutter.
“Yeah.”
He doesn’t continue. Of course he doesn’t. Warren King can ask me whether I want his mouth on me, but heaven forbid he offer up a single fact about himself.
I turn back to the bowl. “So you came here.”
“Marley asked.”
“You always come when Marley asks?”
“Yes.” No hesitation.
“You did raise her,” I say.
“She likes to exaggerate,” he mumbles.
I shake my head. “Marley doesn’t exaggerate about the things that hurt her.”
When I turn to him, I find his eyes locked on mine with an intensity that pushes me back a step.
I don’t really know where the words came from, except my love for Marley. I know the way she jokes about old bruises, and the way she mentions Warren with affection sharpened by absence. I saw her all through high school and over video chats when she was away at college.
Warren looks away first. “Noted.”
Grabbing the whisk, I get my mixing bowl ready. “We’re making some chocolate chip cookie dough,” I tell him.
“You already sold out?”
“I almost always run out.”
“Your batch size?”
“Depends.”
“On?”
“My mood.”
I feel him step beside me. “Your mood,” he repeats, horror laced in the words.
“Yeah.”
“That’s not a measurement.”
I shrug. “It’s a spiritual measurement.”
“It’s a liability.”
“You’re a liability,” I mumble.
I risk a look at him and watch as he slowly breathes through his nose.
“Halston.”
I love how much this bothers him.
“We’re using names now?”
His face immediately hardens.
I turn away. “Flour,” I say.
He moves to the bin before I can ask.
“How much?”
“Enough.”
“No.”
I grab my recipe binder and slap it on the table. “Here. Since you hate joy.”
He opens it, his jaw twitching.
The binder is absolutely not organized in a way that Warren would like.
In fact, recipes are handwritten, crossed out, taped over, and updated with notes in the margins.
There are arrows, coffee rings, tiny sketches, stickers, chocolate fingerprints, and at least one page that says, DO NOT TRUST APRIL HALSTON, SHE FORGOT SALT from back when we opened and I decided to hire an idiot.
He stares at the book and I wait for judgment.
“Your base ratios are good.”
“Excuse me?” I gasp.
“Your base ratios. They’re good.” He looks up.
“Oh.”
“And you adjust intuitively.”
“Is that a crime?”
He shakes his head. “No. It’s a skill.” The words are quiet.
I can handle criticism. Even the list. But praise from someone who clearly does not hand it out for decoration makes me flounder.
I clear my throat. “Well, yes. Obviously.”
His mouth twitches. “Obviously.”
“Don’t patronize me.”
“I’m not.”
“You almost smiled.”
“I’m allowed to.”
“Marley said no.”
“Marley isn’t here.”
My heart stops.
For one reckless second, the kitchen feels like the apartment, images from the night flashing in my head.
The register chimes out front, saving us.
Dev calls, “Halston, someone wants to know if the Legacy Latte is available in decaf. It kind of feels philosophically wrong, doesn’t it?”
I shout back, “Tell them it requires caffeine!”
“Heard!” he replies.
Warren looks toward the doorway. “You’re good with them.”
“Customers?”
“Yeah.”
“I like people,” I say with a shrug.
“I noticed.”
“You keep saying these things like it’s a diagnosis. I’m an extrovert. We’re allowed to exist.”
He goes quiet as I grab the butter and plop it into the mixing bowl with white and brown sugar.
I can feel him watching my hands, and there’s something about a man like this watching me work that feels almost more intimate than him studying my naked body.
But I’m proud of these hands. They’re what built this place, and Warren’s gaze follows them like he respects that.
“You cream too fast,” he murmurs.
The spell breaks. He’s annoying me, so I turn the mixer up higher out of spite.
He reaches out and turns it back down.
I gasp, watching him pick up his notebook.
“Do not write that down!”
“I’m writing down your mixer speed.” His lips thin.
My eyes narrow. “Evidence against me.”
“Adjustments. Your dough needs consistency.”
And I laugh.
I’m not sure if it’s because I actually find him funny or if it’s because my irritation has nowhere else to go, but he watches me, his expression warming.
Feeling uncomfortable with the heat in the room, I turn back to the mixer. “Stop looking at me so I can focus,” I mumble.
He sighs, and I can hear the smile in it. “I’m looking at the dough, Halston.”
My hand slips on the bag of sugar as I lift it, sending granules scattering across the table. I reach for a cloth, only to find my fingers brushing Warren’s as he does the same.
The contact is small, but it’s our first contact since the other night. The first time I’ve felt his skin on mine. It feels like a zap to my heart, the memories—the sounds—rushing back in.
“You should move,” I say quietly.
His eyes hold mine. “Probably.”
He doesn’t move.
My pulse is loud in my ears as I watch him swallow.
“This is a terrible idea,” I mutter.
He nods.
I break the trance first, pulling away and grabbing the bars of chocolate from the shelf as he cleans up the sugar.
Placing them on a cutting board, I get to work chopping the chocolate into small pieces for the cookies.
“Careful,” Warren says, eyeing my hands.
“I know how to use a knife,” I snap, really over everything going on right now.
He hums. “I know.”
“Then don’t ‘careful’ me.”
“I just don’t want you to chop a finger off.”
The knife goes still in my hand as I process what he just said.
Practical flirting is one thing. Criticism of my oven, fine. I’ll allow it, I guess. Mixer-speed arguments are acceptable under duress. But sentences like that are dangerous.
At least, they are to someone like me.
I look away. “I’m not fragile, Warren.”
Before he can say anything, Marley marches back into the kitchen. “I’ve decided I can tolerate this for about four hours a day.”
I set the knife down and turn to her. “What?”
She points between Warren and me. “Whatever this is. Professional or sexual tension. Maybe one or both. I hate all of it. The bakery needs help, and Warren needs somewhere to direct his energy before he starts coming over to my place every day and alphabetizing it.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” he scoffs.
Marley looks at him.
“Not without asking, at least,” he adds.
She nods. “So here are my terms.”
“Your terms?” I ask, my brows furrowing.
“Yeah. Since apparently I’m the only one here with boundaries and a vested interest in not developing a stress rash that’ll put me in the hospital for a few weeks. One, Warren helps with production systems temporarily. Just while he’s here figuring out whatever midlife crisis he refuses to name.”
“I’m thirty-eight,” he corrects. “That’s not midlife.”
She side-eyes him. “With your personality, it just might be.”
I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.
Marley lifts two fingers. “Second, Halston remains in charge. It’s her bakery and her recipes.”
I go to open my mouth, but she lifts a third finger.
“Third, no sleeping together again.”
Warren looks at the mixer while I look at the ground. The mixer whirs behind us, the butter and sugar almost light and fluffy.
“I need verbal confirmation,” she says, annoyed.
“Fine,” I groan.
“Warren?”