Chapter 4 #2
Jillie appears beside me with a solemn expression.
“Are you doing surgery?”
“Possibly.”
“On the mixer?”
“Yes.”
“Will it live?”
“I need space to work.”
She nods gravely, then turns and shouts through the open kitchen door, “EVERYBODY BACK UP. COLBY IS DOING MIXER SURGERY.”
The entire bakery looks over. Sadie’s head snaps up from the register.
“What is happening?” she asks.
“Nothing,” I say immediately.
Jillie points at me. “He fibbed.”
Sadie marches into the kitchen.
I stand slowly, holding a screwdriver I found in the junk drawer.
Her gaze drops to it.
“No.”
“I haven’t done anything yet.”
“That is not comforting.”
“My dad fixed restaurant equipment. I helped.”
“You’re a hockey player.”
“I contain multitudes.”
Jillie whispers, “That means more than one thing.”
“I know what it means, baby.”
Sadie looks from me to the dead mixer to the growing stack of unprepared dough.
I can see the war inside her…Pride versus necessity. Independence versus exhaustion.
Finally, she exhales. “If you break it worse, I’m naming a burnt cookie after you.”
“Fair.”
She hesitates. “And I can’t pay you.”
That lands somewhere sharp. I set the screwdriver down and meet her eyes.
“I didn’t ask.”
Her expression softens for half a second before she hides it.
“Fine. Ten minutes.”
It takes twenty-eight.
Jillie times me.
The mixer issue turns out to be a loose belt and a cracked safety guard that has probably been complaining for months. I can’t permanently fix the guard, but I can get the machine running long enough to survive the morning rush.
When the mixer finally hums back to life, Jillie screams like we won a championship.
The front of the bakery erupts in applause. I look over my shoulder, startled. Sadie stands in the kitchen doorway, one hand over her mouth. Not smiling exactly. Something more vulnerable than that.
Relief.
I look away first. Because seeing that relief feels private, and because I suddenly understand how badly I want to keep putting that expression on her face.
Which is a problem, a massive one.
***
The rest of the day speeds by in a blur of sugar, snow, and small-town chaos.
More customers arrive after the mixer story spreads, because apparently Briar Cove gossip operates faster than national media.
By noon, people are coming in “just to support Sadie.”
By twelve-thirty, three teenage hockey players from the community rink ask me to sign their sticks.
By one, a local dad asks if I’d consider making a guest appearance at youth practice.
Sadie overhears and freezes.
I don’t answer right away. Not because I don’t want to. Because I do. Too much.
“Maybe,” I say finally. “If the coach approves.”
The kids with him leave like I’ve promised them the Stanley Cup.
Sadie watches them go, then looks at me. “You’re going to cause a town-wide emotional incident.”
“I think that’s already happened.”
She shakes her head, but her mouth curves.
Small.
Tired.
Real.
My chest tightens.
Late afternoon light turns the bakery windows gold. Snow keeps falling, softening the sidewalks and frosting the awning outside Sweet Seasons. The last rush fades into a cozy murmur of lingering customers.
I wipe down a table near the window. Nobody asked me to. I just do it.
Sadie notices from behind the counter.
“You know you don’t have to keep helping,” she says.
I fold the towel. “I know.”
“You can sit down.”
“I know.”
“You’re very bad at relaxing.”
I almost laugh. She has no idea how true that is.
Relaxing has always felt like standing still on thin ice. Dangerous. Temporary. Like the moment I let my guard down, somebody takes a picture, twists a story, or reminds me that everything good comes with a catch.
But here…
Here there’s coffee going cold near the register, Jillie coloring hockey pucks on receipt paper, Sadie counting change with flour on her sleeve, and Mrs. Bellamy telling a tourist that yes, Colby Reid is handsome, but he is also “surprisingly useful.”
Here, I can breathe. The realization unsettles me. Because Frostholm arena used to be the only place I felt alive.
Now the thought of it makes my shoulders tighten.
Meanwhile this bakery, with its broken mixer and too-small counter space and six-year-old assistant manager, feels like the calmest place I’ve been in months. I look at Sadie. She’s watching Jillie tape a drawing to the wall near the cookie display. Her face is soft, unguarded for once.
That’s when I understand the real danger. It isn’t the internet. It isn’t the fake dating story. It isn’t even the way Briar Cove has already started treating me like I belong here.
The danger is that I want to.
The bell above the door jingles as the final customer leaves.
Sadie flips the sign to CLOSED.
***
Jillie hops off her stool and runs toward me with a paper clutched in both hands.
“I made you something.”
I crouch automatically.
She hands me the drawing. It shows three stick figures standing in front of what I assume is the bakery. One has brown hair and an apron. One is small with a pink hat. One is tall and wearing skates.
Above us, in crooked letters, she has written:
BAKERY TEAM
My throat tightens unexpectedly. “Wow,” I manage. “I made the team?”
“You’re assistant sprinkle manager.”
“Right. Big honor.”
“Very big.”
Sadie goes completely still behind her. I can feel it. That quiet panic again. The kind that comes from hope showing up too fast.
So, I keep my voice light. “Do I get benefits?”
Jillie nods. “Cookies.”
“Strong package.”
“And maybe you can come to my school concert.”
Sadie’s breath catches. Jillie looks suddenly shy, twisting her fingers together. “It’s tomorrow night,” she says. “We’re singing winter songs. I have one line. It’s not a solo, but Miss Angie said I say it with expression.”
My heart does something inconvenient.
I glance at Sadie first.
Because rules matter.
Because Jillie matters.
Because I’m starting to understand that every easy yes from me might cost Sadie later.
Sadie meets my eyes. Guarded. Worried. Already bracing for disappointment.
And that decides it. Not because I want to play hero. Because I don’t want that little girl to think asking was a mistake.
I look back at Jillie.
“I’d like that,” I say. “If your mom says it’s okay.”
Jillie turns her hopeful face toward her mom.
The bakery goes quiet. Sadie swallows. Then, very carefully, she nods.
Jillie lights up brighter than every winter festival bulb on Main Street.
“You have to sit in the tiny chairs,” she warns me.
I grin. “I’ve faced playoff defensemen. I can handle tiny chairs.”
Sadie mutters, “Just wait. Famous last words.”
And for the first time all day, I’m not thinking about trades.
Or headlines.
Or the reputation everyone keeps trying to fix.
I’m thinking about a school concert.
A little girl with one line.
A baker with tired eyes who looks at me like she wants to trust me and hates herself for it.
And the strange, terrifying possibility that this bakery might be the first place in years where I’m not trying to escape my own life.