Chapter 13
Leo
I lean my forehead against the cool, dented metal of my locker.
My heart is a trapped bird, slamming against my ribs like it’s trying to escape through bone. I can still feel her, the brush of her skin under my fingertips, the scent of cardamom and yeast, the impossible, agonizing proximity.
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
The oven timer is still screaming, a shrill, mocking soundtrack to my humiliation.
I hear her out in the kitchen, voice sharp, jerky. “Ok, ok, shut up!”
The metallic clang of the oven door. A blast of hot air hits me even back here. Then, blessed silence.
I am in trouble.
I, Leo Ashford, who has faced hostile boards, calmly navigated the implosion of a four-hundred-million-dollar crypto fund, smiled politely while men in suits tried to eat me alive, am absolutely, unequivocally terrified of the five-foot-four woman pulling bread from the oven.
I take a deep, shaky breath, straighten my sweat-damp T-shirt as if that will magically reassemble my dignity, and step out of the tiny room.
Tess stands at the cooling racks, her back to me.
Her movements are stiff, angry. She’s using oven mitts to slam the hot, dark-crusted hearth loaves onto wire racks with significantly more force than necessary.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
Each loaf lands like an accusation.
The bakery, which had been thrumming with adrenaline and the suffocating intimacy of the locker room, is now filled with a new kind of silence, heavy, agonizing, loud as a siren in my skull.
It is the loudest silence I have ever experienced.
“Those… uh… those look great,” I offer.
My voice comes out ridiculously high, like I’m fourteen and my crush just caught me existing.
Tess doesn’t turn.
“They’re fine.”
“Smell great, too.”
“They’re bread, Leo,” she says, voice flat. “They smell like bread.”
Ok. So that’s how this is going to be.
I have shattered the truce. The fragile thing that had been growing between us, the respect, the humor, the Snorlax, has just been kissed to death in a utility closet.
Rule number one: don’t be a disaster.
And I have, once again, proven myself to be a walking, talking, sexual-harassment-liability billionaire with the emotional regulation of a Labrador retriever.
“Right,” I say, throat full of ash. “I’ll clean up.”
I don’t wait for her to tell me. I grab the bucket and fill it.
The slosh of the water echoes in the quiet like we’re in a cathedral.
I mop. I scrub the steel tables until they smell like bleach, lemon, and failure.
I break down cardboard boxes from the day’s deliveries, folding them into neat stacks as if organization could make my life less messy.
We work around each other for a solid, silent hour.
It’s a new kind of dance. Where before we flowed, master and apprentice, brutal and efficient, now we’re two magnets repelling each other in jerky, awkward movements.
I step left to scrub a table; she steps right to bag the day-olds.
I move to the dish pit; she retreats to her tiny office.
We are hyper-aware of every inch of space between us, every accidental brush that doesn’t happen.
I’m dying.
The silence is worse than her yelling. At least yelling tells me where I stand.
I’m finishing the floor when the warm, buttery air finally gives way to bleach and lemon. Tess is at her laptop, but she isn’t typing. I can see her through the doorway of the prep room. She’s just staring, rubbing the spot between her eyebrows. Her spreadsheet headache is in full force.
She slams the laptop shut with a weary, explosive sigh. The sound cracks the silence like a gunshot.
She stands, stretches, and her back pops audibly. She looks exhausted. Beaten. Like she’s carrying the entire bakery in her spine.
She grabs her thin canvas bag, shoves the laptop inside, and walks to the front without checking to see if I’m done.
“I’m… I’m done,” I call, scrambling to put the mop away. “The floor’s wet.”
“I don’t care,” she mutters, already at the front door, keys in hand.
I grab my own jacket, the cheap windbreaker I bought at a corner store because my designer ones are “too much,” and follow her out.
She locks the deadbolt. The snick of it feels final. Then she turns.
We’re on the sidewalk. It’s almost six p.m. The sun hangs low, painting the city in soft, bruised light, gold and lavender. Streetlights flicker on, their pale orange glow hazy in the cooling air.
For the first time in what feels like an eternity, the Channel 5 van is gone. The gaggle of social media tourists has dissipated. The street is quiet and empty, save for distant traffic and a dog barking somewhere down the block.
It’s just… us on a quiet street corner.
Tess starts walking without a word. I fall into step beside her.
We walk an entire block. Only the scuff of our sneakers on the pavement. I can feel unspoken words screaming in my throat, building pressure, begging to be released.
“Tess,” I say finally, my voice raw.
She flinches but doesn’t stop. “What?”
“Look, I… back there. In the locker room.” I cringe as I say it, the words tasting like ash. “I am profoundly, unequivocally sorry. I crossed a line. I was…” I swallow hard. “It was completely unprofessional. It won’t happen again. I swear.”
She stops.
We’re under one of the new flickering streetlights. Her face is half in shadow, half in orange glow. I can see the tightness in her jaw.
“Yeah,” she says. “It was. Don’t… don’t do it again.”
“I won’t. Boss.” I put deliberate, painful emphasis on the last word, like I’m bricking the wall back up with my bare hands. See? I’m rebuilding the boundary. I’m being good.
She nods, short and jerky, then starts walking again.
We go another block. The silence somehow grows heavier. I’ve apologized. She’s… accepted, sort of. But the air is still vibrating, thick with what almost happened.
I can’t stand it. I need to talk, to fill the space with something other than the memory of her skin under my fingers.
My left hand is in my pockets, and with my right hand I brush the gold star sticker still firmly stuck to my sweat-damp shirt.
“You know,” I say, voice quieter, forcing a subject change before I combust. “This…” I tap the sticker through the fabric. “This is, and I am not exaggerating, the greatest honor of my entire professional career.”
She glances at me like she expects a punchline. “It’s a sticker, Leo. It cost ten cents.”
“I’m serious.” I stop walking. She takes a few paces before reluctantly stopping and turning to face me. “I got a hundred-million-dollar bonus last year. My father sent me a one-word text: ‘Fine.’”
Her expression doesn’t change, but her eyes sharpen, listening.
“When my fund hit its first billion, Julian threw a party where he…” I pause, grimacing. “I think he hired actual literal Godzilla-costumed strippers. It was… it was a brand-building event.”
A small mirthless laugh escapes me.
“This sticker. This B plus.” I swallow. “This is the first time I have earned anything. For real. In… maybe my whole life.”
Tess stares at me.
In the pooling orange streetlight, I can feel myself stripped bare, no charm, no PR armor, no quippy deflection. Just earnestness. And something sadder under it.
“What about your billions?” she asks, softer now, genuinely curious. “You didn’t earn them?”
“I inherited them,” I say with a shrug that feels too heavy to be casual.
“Well. The first pile. My first company… it was my father’s seed money.
My fund…” I exhale. “I was just good at moving money I already had. It’s a game, Tess.
Like… a global, high-stakes, boring video game.
You move assets. You leverage. You diversify.
” I look down at my hands. “You don’t… make anything. ”
I hold up my hands.
In the dim light, they’re a mess. Pale callouses, nails still caked with dried dough, a fresh burn on my wrist from an oven rack. Ugly. Useful.
“This,” I say quietly, “is real. I made something today. I made twelve perfect boules.”
A small, proud, goofy grin breaks across my face because I can’t help it.
“I made Snorlax.”
The sound Tess makes is a snort. Tiny. Choked-off. Unwilling. It is, undeniably, a laugh. She tries to hide it, but it’s too late.
“You’re a monumental weirdo, Leo Ashford.”
“Confirmed,” I say, smiling wider. “But you were right on my first day. You were… so right. About me. About my world.”
My smile fades. The vulnerability from cake day is back, but deeper now, shaped by ten days of shared silent work and the loneliness that waits for me whenever I stop moving.
“You called my life a docu-series.” I swallow hard. “And it is.” My voice cracks on the next part because it is the most honest thing I have said in years. “I’m… I’m so tired, Tess. I’m so lonely.”
The admission hangs in the cool evening air, stark and unadorned.
“I’m surrounded by people all the time. By…
sharks like this Rex Chen guy who keeps texting me.
” I stare down the quiet street. “They’re not friends.
They’re assets. They’re part of the brand.
‘The Disarmingly Earnest Venture Billionaire.’” I laugh once, bitter. “That’s not… me. It’s just a costume.”
I look away because saying it out loud makes it too real.
“This dare…” I spit the word like it tastes bad, because it does. “I know it was stupid. And I know it brought this… this circus to your door.” My chest tightens. “And I will never be able to apologize enough for that.”
I meet her eyes again.
“But this last week? Even with you hating me? Even with me as a ghost in the corner?” My throat tightens. “It’s the first real, quiet, honest work I’ve done in my entire adult life.” I take a breath. “You’re the first real, honest person I’ve talked to in… I don’t even know how long.”
Tess is silent. She just watches me. Her arms aren’t crossed. Her boss mask is gone, and in its place is something raw and startling. Empathy.
And it hits me, sharp and sad, that she might be as trapped by her world as I am by mine.
“You’re not the only one who’s tired,” she says, barely a whisper.
“The tourists?” I ask gently.
“Them.” She exhales, long and weary. “But… It’s more.” Her eyes flick to me. “You said I was afraid of scaling.”
“You were,” I say quietly. “You are.”
“And you were right,” she admits, and the words sound like they cost her something.
“But why?” I ask, genuinely baffled. “Your product is… It’s magic, Tess. Your systems…” I gesture helplessly because there’s no other word. “You’re a machine. A spreadsheet-slaying, artisan-baking machine. You could have ten of these. You could be bigger than La Fantaisie.”
“And lose the soul,” she shoots back, sudden and fierce.
She starts walking again, faster, and I hurry to keep up. She points to the corner where a generic glass-and-chrome chain coffee shop glows bright, sterile, and empty.
“That’s what happens,” she says, voice thick with old anger. “That’s the prize. You get investors. You get partners. You get a Rex Chen.” Her hand trembles as she points. “And they tell you to cut corners.”
She ticks them off like she’s lived each sentence.
“Tess, your margins on the croissants are too thin. Use cheaper butter-blend. Use pre-made frozen dough.” Her voice sharpens.
“Tess, Auntie June is too volatile. Use commercial yeast. Faster. Consistent.” She swallows, and the next one lands like a punch.
“Why are you paying Gwen twenty-five an hour when a machine could laminate for five?”
She stops, breathing hard, staring at the offensive bright logo as if it personally insulted her grandmother.
“They don’t get it,” she whispers, and her voice breaks. “They don’t get Auntie June. They don’t get the smell. They don’t understand that the work is the point.” Her eyes shine, bright and angry. “They just see a brand to dilute. A bakery experience to franchise.”
She turns to me, and I feel like the streetlight is illuminating something sacred and furious in her.
“This place,” she says, voice shaking, “is all I have. It was my Meemaw’s dream.
She taught me to bake in her tiny, hot kitchen in Pilsen.
She’s in that starter.” Her finger jabs the air, aimed straight at my world.
“And all these sharks. They just want to gut her. They want to gut me. They want to turn me into… into that.”
She points at the chain café, but I know she is pointing at my world. Brand building. Scaling. Squeezing margins until there's no flavor left.
“I’m not afraid of work, Leo,” she says. “I’m terrified of becoming that.”
We stand there on the sidewalk, two people from different planets staring at the same sterile, brightly lit hell.
And I see it clearly.
My prison is loneliness. An abundance of artifice. A lack of soul.
Her prison is fear. Terror that her soul will be stolen and repackaged into something hollow.
Two sides of the same desperate coin.
“I… I get it,” I say, my voice rough. “I wouldn’t let them touch her either.” My throat tightens. “Auntie June.”
I swallow.
“Or… or you.”