Chapter 4
Chapter four
Colby
Bakery Mornings
By six-fifteen, I learn three important things about Sweet Seasons Bakery.
One, Sadie Bennett becomes terrifyingly focused when she has a rolling pin in her hand.
Two, flour is not a passive ingredient. It attacks.
And three, Jillie considers herself upper management.
Since school doesn't start for another hour, Jillie has apparently appointed herself assistant manager for the morning shift. Sadie assures me she'll be on the bus before eight, but for now she seems determined to supervise every tray that leaves the oven.
“You’re doing it wrong,” she tells me from her perch on the stainless-steel counter.
I look down at the tray of croissants in front of me. “I’m standing here.”
“Wrongly.”
Sadie snorts from the other side of the prep table, where she’s shaping dough with quick, practiced hands. Her hair is twisted up in a messy bun, her cheeks are pink from the heat of the ovens, and there’s a streak of flour across one cheek that she either doesn’t know about or is too busy to care.
I know about it.
Unfortunately, I know about everything this morning…
the soft line of concentration between her brows.
The way she bites the corner of her bottom lip when she’s counting.
The fact that she hums under her breath while working, barely loud enough to hear.
None of these details are useful to me. All of them feel dangerous.
“I thought standing was fairly universal,” I tell Jillie. She shakes her head as though I'd just committed a crime against pastries.
“Not in a bakery.”
“Noted.”
Sadie glances over. “She’s not wrong.”
I place a hand against my chest. “Et tu, cinnamon roll queen?”
Her mouth twitches. That tiny almost-smile feels like scoring in overtime. Ridiculous.
I need coffee.
Actually, I have coffee. I brought coffee. I brought my house coffee and the burned cinnamon rolls currently sitting on the far counter like evidence of a baking-related crime scene.
Sadie had laughed when she opened the door.
Really laughed.
The sound has been sitting in my chest ever since, warm and bright and inconvenient.
“Mommy,” Jillie says, swinging her legs, “can Colby wear an apron?”
“No,” Sadie and I say at the same time.
Jillie beams. “You said that together.”
Sadie immediately becomes fascinated by dough. I immediately become fascinated by the croissant tray.
Jillie, unfortunately, becomes fascinated by both of us.
“I think you should wear the pink one,” she says.
“I’m not wearing the pink one.”
“It has cupcakes.”
“I’m aware.”
“And sparkles.”
“I have a public image to repair, not destroy.”
Sadie laughs again, quieter this time, but I catch it. I catch everything. Maybe that’s the problem.
On the ice, noticing everything keeps me alive. The angle of a defender’s shoulders. The shift of a goalie’s weight. The half-second window before a play collapses. In this bakery, noticing everything just makes me want things I have no business wanting. Like belonging.
That thought lands hard enough to annoy me.
I reach for a clean towel and wipe flour off the counter. “Where do you want these trays?”
Sadie pauses. “You don’t have to help.”
“I know.”
“You’re a professional athlete.”
“I’m still capable of carrying metal rectangles.”
Her eyes narrow slightly, but there’s warmth underneath it. “Cooling rack by the back wall.”
“Yes, boss.”
Jillie giggles. “Mommy is the boss.”
“I gathered.”
“Sometimes she uses her scary voice.”
“I’ve noticed that too.”
Sadie points a flour-covered finger at both of us. “My scary voice keeps this place functional.”
“Your scary voice is very effective,” I say.
Her eyes meet mine, and for one second the bakery goes quiet around us. Not actually quiet. The ovens hum. Trays clatter. Jillie taps her heels against the cabinet. Outside, delivery trucks rumble faintly through Briar Cove’s snowy morning streets.
But inside me?
Quiet.
Which is new.
And worse, I like it.
Then my phone vibrates on the counter.
I glance at the screen and instantly regret owning friends.
BLIZZARDS GROUP CHAT: 47 MESSAGES
Toby: Is that flour on his face?
Liam: no way
Caleb: Why are there photos already?
Jamie: Because none of you know how to ignore the internet.
Toby:
HE’S IN A BAKERY
WITH A CHILD
AND A WOMAN
WE HAVE TO DISCUSS THIS
Liam: Colby Reid, domestic king.
Toby: Colby Bread
Liam: Colby Knead
Toby: Lord of the Rolls
Caleb: I’m leaving this chat.
Jamie: You always say that and never leave.
A photo appears next. Me, through the bakery window, holding a tray while Sadie points toward the cooling rack and Jillie looks like she is issuing royal commands.
Great.
I type with one thumb. Do any of you have jobs?
Toby replies instantly: Watching you become a Hallmark subplot is my job now.
Liam: Does the bakery sell humble pie?
Caleb: He needs two.
Jamie: You look happier.
The conversation keeps going, but I stop reading.
You look happier.
The three words sit there on the screen, simple and inconvenient.
I lock the phone.
Sadie notices and asks if everything is okay.
“Teammates.”
“That bad?”
“Worse.”
Jillie perks up and asks if they are hockey men.
“Hockey men?” I repeat.
“Yes. Men who hockey.”
“That is technically accurate.”
“Do they know me?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
Her eyes widen. “Am I famous?”
Sadie sets down the dough immediately. “No.”
Jillie looks disappointed. “Can I be bakery famous?”
“You already are,” I tell her.
Sadie gives me a warning look.
“What?” I say. “She has strong brand presence.”
Jillie straightens proudly. “I knew it.”
Sadie points at me again. “Do not encourage her.”
I should probably stop. I don’t.
The morning rush begins at seven, and by seven-fifteen, Sweet Seasons turns into controlled chaos.
People pour in from every direction. Locals bundled in scarves and boots. Tourists carrying phones. Moms picking up pastries for school drop-off. Retired men in Blizzards hats who pretend they only came for coffee but keep glancing at me like I might offer commentary on our power play.
Sadie moves through it all like she was born in motion. Boxing pastries. Pouring coffee. Calling people by name.
She remembers who likes extra glaze, who needs gluten-free muffins, who is picking up cupcakes for a birthday party. And she never stops. Not once. And not in the glamorous, effortless way people pretend in commercials.
She works. Hard.
By eight o’clock, her cheeks are flushed, her sleeves are pushed up, and she’s carrying herself with the slightly braced posture of a woman used to doing everything alone.
That bothers me more than it should.
I stay out of the way at first, but then Mrs. Bellamy asks if I can reach a stack of holiday tins on the top shelf.
Then Mr. Callahan needs help carrying two crates of day-old bread to his truck.
And then Sadie’s teenage helper calls in sick, and suddenly I’m refilling napkins, wiping tables, and learning that customers become emotionally unstable if the maple pecan bars run out.
“Don’t worry,” an older woman tells me while patting my arm. “You’ll get the hang of it.”
“I play professional hockey.”
She nods kindly. “I’m sure that helps.”
Jillie nearly falls off her stool laughing.
Sadie watches from behind the counter, trying not to smile.
The bakery door keeps jingling. Phones keep appearing. Whispers follow me from table to table. But none of it feels like the arena.
In Frostholm, attention always comes with hunger. People wanting quotes. Pictures. Access. Pieces of me I stopped knowing how to give.
Here, it’s different. Still strange. Still invasive at times. But softened by cinnamon and small-town nosiness.
A woman named Peggy asks me if I’m eating enough. A teenage boy wants advice on wrist shots. A man in a plaid jacket tells me I need to “stop dangling at the blue line and shoot the puck like my grandmother paid for the ticket.”
I sign a napkin for his grandson. He squints at it and says, “Your handwriting is terrible.”
“I’ll work on that.”
“You do that.”
By nine, I know six customer names.
By nine-thirty, Mrs. Bellamy has told me which townspeople are secretly feuding over the snowman contest judging.
By ten, Jillie has assigned me the official title of Assistant Sprinkle Manager.
By ten-fifteen, the industrial mixer dies.
Not sputters.
Not slows.
Dies.
A loud grinding noise tears through the kitchen, followed by a metallic clunk that makes Sadie go completely still.
That kind of stillness I recognize. It’s not surprise. It’s calculation.
The fast, silent math of someone figuring out how bad the damage is and how much it will cost.
Sadie crosses to the mixer and flips the switch again. Nothing.
She tries the outlet. Nothing.
Her face changes.
Not much.
Just enough.
“Mommy?” Jillie asks from the doorway.
“It’s fine, Bug.”
It is not fine.
I can tell by the way Sadie says it.
She opens a lower cabinet and pulls out a folder stuffed with invoices. She flips through them quickly, too quickly, then presses her lips together.
“How bad?” I ask quietly.
She startles slightly, as if she forgot I was there.
“It’s fine.”
“That word is doing a lot of work today.”
Her eyes flash. “I said it’s fine.”
I lift both hands. The last thing I want is to make her feel small.
She turns away, but not before I see the strain on her face.
And something in me reacts.
Again.
This keeps happening.
With Jillie near the rink.
With Sadie facing cameras.
With those comments online.
Now with this.
***
I have spent years trying not to care too visibly because caring visibly makes you weak in a locker room, in an interview, in a playoff series where every mistake becomes a headline.
But in this bakery, every instinct I’ve buried keeps climbing back out. Sadie disappears to the front counter, smiling too brightly at a customer.
I walk to the mixer. It’s older, heavy, industrial. The kind my dad used to fix in church kitchens when I was a kid because he believed buying new was what people did when they lacked imagination.
I crouch and check the cord first.
Then the switch housing.
Then the back panel.