19. The Finish Line #2
He tried to stick to tasks that wouldn’t force him into conversation, like the final punch list, back-of-house checks, and even a walkthrough of the restroom with his designer.
He wasn’t avoiding her; he just couldn’t risk opening his mouth or meeting her eyes in front of a room full of people.
One look at her, and whatever control he had left felt like it might crack wide open.
He could still feel last night on his mouth.
“Signage is straight,” Dani said, stepping back from the wall and squinting at the Blue Cypress logo they’d just hung. “The sconces are at matching heights. Health inspector is going to cry happy tears.”
“Don’t jinx it,” Cole said automatically.
She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “You good?”
“Fine,” he said. “Let’s hit the back entry one more time when you’re done here.”
He could tell she didn’t buy it, but she was smart enough not to push. His crew had an unspoken rule: if he was short on words but still handed out clear instructions, they left it alone.
From the front, he heard Jenna laugh at something Casey said. The sound arrowed straight through him, as precise and unavoidable as a nail gun shot.
He didn’t let himself turn.
Around two, his phone buzzed with a text from Travis.
TRAVIS: Old guy’s place wrapped for today. He survived. We’re coming by.
Cole exhaled through his nose. Of course they were.
Fifteen minutes later, the bell over the bakery door jingled, and a burst of hot air, sweat, and sawdust walked in.
“We come bearing structural integrity and hunger,” Travis announced, slapping dust off his jeans just inside the door. Jerrod and Kevin flanked him, both sunburned and grinning.
Emmie popped her head up from behind the counter. “You’re tracking debris onto my freshly mopped floor,” she informed them. “This is a crime.”
“We brought offerings,” Jerrod said, producing a carton of store-bought coffee from somewhere behind his back. “We come in peace.”
“That’s not an offering, that’s betrayal,” Jenna said from a table, where she was organizing stacks of training guides. “We have a fully operational espresso machine now. You can’t show up with gas station coffee.”
Travis put a hand over his heart. “I love this woman.”
Cole glanced up before he could stop himself. Jenna was already looking away, shuffling papers she’d already squared.
The guys fanned out, doing exactly what he knew they would: checking trim, running hands along railings, admiring details they’d helped build and the ones they hadn’t.
“Damn, boss,” Kevin said, whistling low at the finished front counter. “We do good work.”
“Yeah,” Travis said. “We’re pretty. We’re useful. We’re the full package.”
“You’re loud,” Emmie said. “That’s your package.”
She reached under the counter and pulled out a tray. “Cookies,” she announced. “Payment for past roof-related services. Also, bribery, so you all come back when we open and pretend to be customers so it looks like we have buzz.”
“What kind?” Jerrod asked, eyes already on the tray.
“Chocolate chip, oatmeal cherry, and these are lemon, Mom’s recipe,” Emmie said, a small note of pride in her voice.
The men descended like they hadn’t eaten in a week.
“Emmie Cruz,” Travis said around a mouthful, “you are the future of this nation.”
She preened. “Remember that when you tip.”
Cole leaned against the doorway between the hall and the kitchen, taking it in: his crew, comfortable as ever; Emmie, laughing; and Jenna, watching them with that softened expression that only showed up when she forgot to brace.
They should have all been in the middle of this together.
Instead, there was a noticeable gap between his orbit and hers, like an invisible line down the room nobody quite dared to cross.
He caught Travis clocking it. The man’s eyes flicked from Cole to Jenna and back again, sharp for once under the ball cap.
Here it came.
“So,” Travis said slowly, sauntering over under the pretense of examining the finish on the pastry case. “Everything good?”
“Punch list is tight,” Cole said. “We’re in a good spot.”
“That’s not what I asked,” Travis replied. His voice stayed lazy, but his gaze stayed fixed.
“Everything good . . . with you and Hart?”
Cole’s jaw clenched before he could stop it. “We’re fine.”
“Uh-huh.” Travis flicked a cookie crumb into his mouth, unbothered.
“It’s just . . . I’ve been here ten minutes, and you two have been in the same room the whole time, and neither of you has looked at the other once.
No water delivery. No banter. No judging the playlists.
Usually by now there’s at least one moment where you stare at each other like somebody muted the room. ”
“We’re working,” Cole said, a little too flat. “Big weekend. Focused.”
Travis snorted. “I’ve seen you focused. This is you acting like a guy who stuck his hand in a blender.”
“Colorful,” Cole muttered.
“Accurate,” Travis countered. He tilted his head. “You two fight?”
Cole could still feel the imprint of her hands on his chest, the jolt of panic when he’d pulled away, the way her face had opened and then shuttered in the space of a breath.
“No,” he said, “we didn’t fight.”
“Did you do something that will lead to a fight?” Travis asked. “Future tense?”
Cole shot him a look. “Since when did you become a relationship counselor?”
“Since it started affecting the jobsite vibes,” Travis said easily. “Look, man, I don’t need details, but I’m just saying, if you’re going to spontaneously combust, maybe do it after final inspection. I’d like to work in this town again.”
Cole huffed out something that might have been a laugh if it hadn’t hurt. “We’re fine,” he repeated, softer this time. “Drop it.”
Travis studied him for another long moment, then nodded once. “All right,” he said. “Dropping.” He clapped Cole on the shoulder, not gently. “For the record, though? If you ever stop pretending you don’t care about her, the world will not, in fact, end.”
He walked away before Cole could respond, beelining back toward the cookie tray and leaving Cole alone with the echo of the words.
“If you ever stop pretending you don’t care about her.”
The problem wasn’t that he didn’t care. The problem was that he cared too much, and he couldn’t risk upsetting the balance they’d built. The one where his presence felt natural, expected, part of the routine, so she had nothing to run from.
He was here out of necessity, which meant every detour they took together, a paddleboard lap around the bayou, a bike ride at dusk, ice cream melting in the heat, or listening to a man play piano while the sun had gone down, could all be brushed off as convenience. Easy.
Harmless. Not a choice. Not him wanting her.
But in two days, she wouldn’t need him anymore. The necessity would evaporate.
The convenience would vanish. And then what?
Where was he supposed to steal moments with Jenna Hart once this project stopped giving him excuses? He couldn’t just show up at her door over and over again like a man with no self-control, and he sure as hell couldn’t tell her what sat lodged in his chest.
Because he knew, down to his bones, that the second he opened the floodgates of how deeply he felt for her, she would retreat. Not because she didn’t care, but because he would become one more complicated thing in a life that already had too much weight to carry.
He pushed off the doorjamb and moved through the space with his clipboard, using motion, any motion, to drown out the noise in his head.
Front windows: clean. Case lighting: functioning. Exit signs: checked. Fire extinguisher: mounted. Exterior step: level.
He eventually found himself at the front door, hand resting on the new handle. Outside, the late afternoon light slanted across the street, turning everything the same honeyed color as the oak tree in Jenna’s yard.
Behind him, he heard her voice, low and focused, as she talked Emmie through the training guide one more time.
He didn’t catch the words, just the cadence, patient, firm, gently insistent.
The way someone sounded when they believed the person they were teaching was capable of everything in front of them.
He turned just enough to see them reflected in the glass. Two silhouettes bent over a binder, heads tipped together, shoulders almost touching. A family recalibrating itself in real time.
His chest ached with something that felt like wanting and gratitude all tangled up. “Final touches, boss?” Dani asked, coming up beside him with a small box of hardware.
“Yeah,” he said, clearing his throat. “I’ll do the final walkthrough with the client tomorrow. Then it’s inspection day.”
“Big finish line,” she said.
He nodded. “Big finish line.”
He let his gaze drift across the bakery one more time, the polished counter, the menu boards with Emmie and Grace’s careful lettering, the display cases waiting to be filled with recipes carrying an entire family’s history.
And Jenna, in the middle of it all, was trying not to look at him.
He couldn’t blame her.
He also didn’t know how he was supposed to walk in here tomorrow, stand beside her, pretend nothing had shifted between them, and hand over a project that had gradually become the center of his days.
But he would, because that was the job.
And because whatever was happening between him and Jenna Hart, whatever had almost sparked to life and then collapsed on her porch in the middle of the night, was too important to push when she already had so much on her shoulders.
“Need me here tomorrow?” Dani asked.
He shook his head. “No. It’ll just be me.”
“Got it,” she said, heading back toward the hallway.
Cole stood there for another long moment, letting the quiet settle around him, then flipped off the track lighting along the wall. The front windows still glowed, but the rest of the bakery dimmed into subtle evening shadows.
Tomorrow, he would walk through this place one last time, and Monday, the inspector would sign off.
After that, this belonged entirely to Jenna and Emmie.
He just wished he knew what would be left of him when it did.