Chapter 1 #2
A thread pulls through me from somewhere I do not yet want to name.
“Time,” I say and look down as I busy myself with something, anything so that I can pretend I do not feel the air changing shape around my ribs.
A gust of wind lifts the corner of the tent and a row of votive candles gutter and scatter smoke like a warning.
A biker claps his hands once, twice, to draw attention to nothing and everything.
The bride appears in the doorway with her hem gathered in one fist and her groom’s jacket on her shoulders and her mouth parted like she wants the storm to be part of her wedding album.
The band rolls into a song that sounds like small-town Sunday mornings and big-city summer nights at once.
A shout comes from somewhere near the bonfire—something about a missing shoe and an argument over who spiked the cider.
Cruz sighs like a man who has seen this exact kind of trouble too many times and grins at me as if to say, “Welcome to the circus.”
“Duty calls.” He releases my hand with a reluctant warmth before striding toward the chaos.
Someone tries to hand him a roasting fork on his way past.
He takes it without missing a step, already laughing.
I’m left behind with coffee in my hand and the absurd awareness of all three of them—storm-eyed Roman who carried my crate without asking, quiet Deacon with the measured gaze and the towel, and now Cruz with his sun-warm laugh and wood-bead rosary.
They move in and out of the tent like they own every inch of it, and for the first time all night I’m not sure if the heat under my skin is from my work or from them.
By the time the band starts to play under the dripping lights, the table looks presentable again.
The panna cotta has decided to behave.
The lemon bars are still sweating but only in a way that makes their sugar glitter.
My sugared rose petals have been resurrected with a whisper and a prayer and a few careful twists of the wrist.
I have patched, dabbed, turned, and coaxed every plate into a version of itself that deserves a wedding.
Beyond the dessert table the party staggers into life. A line of bikers clink glasses like armor.
Girls in satin bridesmaid dresses kick off their heels and run barefoot along the deck, squealing when the cold water hits their ankles.
A child with a crown made of pine needles sprints past, clutching a dinner roll like treasure.
Through the open flap I can see the lodge beyond the tents, a hulking timber body with a soul that looks like it has survived winters and men and prayer.
Smoke rises from a chimney and blends with the storm.
“Careful of the chickens,” a woman says as she passes, balancing a tray of tiny hot dogs like a circus act. I blink at her.
“The what?” I had presumed the little girl was talking about imaginary chickens.
“The hens,” she says with the weary pride of someone who has negotiated with them. “Mean as tax day. Named after Saint’s exes. Do not show fear and do not run.”
She pauses just long enough to hitch her chin toward the men who’ve been circling my table like I’m worth the trouble. “Speaking of mean when they want to be—those three? Lodge owners. And bikers. The kind that still put in miles when there’s snow on the mountain and ice on their beards.”
I add the note to the list inside my head.
Sugar, cardamom, wet linen, thunder-eyed man, silver-bearded man, warm-eyed man, and a squad of aggressive hens named after the exes of Saint.
It feels like a recipe that might change me.
“The tall one with the storm face and the leather vest under his coat? Roman Saint Salvatore. Runs the security end, used to race before he got tired of being chased. The one with that tidy beard is Deacon. Handles logistics and keeps everyone in line, which is why no one’s dared start a fight near the cake table.
And the smiley one who looks like he could talk the hens into laying golden eggs is Cruz.
He runs the bar, the lodge kitchen when it’s not rented out, and half the hearts in this county. ”
The woman leans in just enough for me to smell onions and mustard from her tray.
“Don’t let them rope you into drinking contests or charity rides unless you’re ready to lose. And if they offer to fix your car, your roof, or your whole damn life…well. That’s how they keep people around.”
She’s gone before I can reply.
With a shake of my head, I resume work in the corner while the storm and the song make their own vows.
People drift up to the table and take a tartlet and tell me nothing at all with their mouths full.
The band leans into an old ballad with a steel guitar that sounds like a promise.
A woman with glittered eyelids asks if she can hold my piping bag because she used to bake with her grandmother on Sundays, and when I hand it to her, she pipes a perfect rosette then wipes a tear with the back of her wrist.
I think I will never stop loving my job, even when my shoes are ruined and my hair is wetter than the tablecloth.
“Marisa.” My name tastes different in that voice, darker and sweeter all at once.
I turn and Roman is back.
He’s holding one of my sugared rose petals between two fingers like a relic.
The petal glitters, and his gaze is unreadable.
Up close I can see the saints inked inside the leather of his skin, the way rain beads on the curve of his jaw, the neatness at the corners of his mouth that argues with the wildness in his eyes.
“I wanted to see if it would dissolve,” he says and sets the petal on his tongue.
The sugar melts slow. He closes his eyes for a heartbeat, and when he opens them I see a man who has tasted too many bitter things and has not forgotten any of them.
“It holds,” he says. “Barely. Which is sometimes the point.”
“Do you speak that way to everyone,” I ask, “or only to confectioners under duress?”
He looks at me for a long breath. The rain streaks behind him in ropes. “Only to the ones who make something stand in a storm.”
A thin shiver runs over my skin. He puts the petal’s twin down on the edge of the tray like a coin left in a church then steps away as a man shouts “Saint” from the far tent.
The wedding absorbs him again.
Then I feel it, the attention I pretended not to notice thickening, as if the string lights have pulled me into the center of them.
I look down to fix a ribbon and I feel the pull again, so I give up and lift my head and there they are.
Roman stands with his arms folded across his chest, rain slicking his hair back, a cut on his cheekbone he has not bothered to wipe.
He looks like a cathedral built out of muscle and rules. Beside him is Deacon with the engineer’s gaze, holding a toolbox like a priest carrying a book, measuring the places where the tent groans.
His eyes are the color of a river in winter, not unkind but not warm, clear and cutting. Right in front of me is Cruz.
It’s apparent he is the warm one.
The wind shifts and blows through the tent, carrying a smell that reminds me of summers I spent on rooftops in Brooklyn, a mix of hot tar, a neighbor’s basil, and the iron taste right before rain.
It makes me think of my family all the way downstate and the fights we left half-finished on kitchen floors.
Reminds me of how I got here, which was with my stepbrother Nico’s borrowed van and one good apron and a playlist full of Christmas songs because December weddings have a way of pretending to be both festive and holy.
The thought makes my chest ache, so I choose the simpler thought, which is that I need to save the meringue kisses now before they suck the weather into their bones.
“Here,” says Cruz, appearing like warmth does, sudden and welcome. He holds a plate heaped with food in one hand and a folded linen napkin in the other.
He has flour on his sleeve.
I do not see an oven anywhere near us, which makes me wonder if flour follows him because it wants to be better dough.
“Trade you. One plate for ten minutes of sitting down.”