Chapter Nineteen
O n Wednesday, everything went wrong.
Week five on the show was Tribute Week—which meant each bake was in honor of someone. Filming the episode started on Tuesday with a cherries jubilee Skills Challenge. Magda had performed well enough, but so did everyone else. Mac was actually ranked above her, and her nerves were shot going into the week five Elimination Challenge on Wednesday.
Cupcakes. The judges announced the challenge before they left the kitchen Tuesday night. A cupcake in honor of someone who had impacted their baking journey.
After the disaster of her underbaked cupcakes on week one, Magda needed to redeem herself, but all night she’d had nightmares about presenting underbaked goo, while the judges stood over her and called her flavors “expected” and “unoriginal.” Alexander Clay’s voice sneering, “derivative—where are you in your bakes” had haunted her.
She woke up Wednesday morning feeling off—and things had gone downhill from there.
Her lucky hair-tie had snapped when she was putting her hair up. A glittery stone had fallen off of her lucky “Not Here to Make Friends” apron when she put it on for her morning pep talk in the mirror. And then the van bringing her to set had gotten a flat tire—forcing them to send another van for her and making her late for hair and makeup.
They’d rushed her through, but the entire morning had been harried, and she was frazzled and anxious before she even walked into the Cake-Off kitchen to face the judges and their serious frowns.
The judges ran through the same instructions they’d been given the previous afternoon. A dozen perfect, identical cupcakes. Filled and iced. Unique. Perfectly baked. With something special to honor someone who had helped them on their baking journey.
“Wow us,” Alexander Clay demanded.
Then they were off. And Magda felt a low buzz of panic, like a bee inside her mind.
Every contestant had a story—not just who their rival was, but who they were in the competition. Tim was the hotshot from the fancy hotel kitchen. Mac was the “unique flavors but slapdash technique” guy. Eunice was brilliant but inconsistent and insecure. Abby was the frontrunner. Walter was all flash, no flavor.
And Magda? Magda was “great technique but no personality.”
The judges had started saying her flavors were “expected,” and though her technique was always flawless, they just wanted more from her. They wanted her to surprise them. Which felt less like an indictment of her cooking and more like a criticism of her.
She wasn’t creative enough. She wasn’t fun enough.
Boring, invisible Magda. With her flawless, forgettable food.
Another anxiety bee joined the first that was already buzzing around her head.
After the cupcake debacle during week one, she was especially desperate to redeem herself. She’d planned to wow them with her technical expertise and classic flavors—she’d practiced a light-as-air angel food cupcake to honor her “angel” investor aunt—but now she was second-guessing everything.
Should she do something more exotic? Mac would make something surprising—but she couldn’t compete with him for inventiveness. She needed to do what she did best—only she no longer knew what that was.
People raved about her vanilla cupcakes, but she couldn’t do vanilla. Maybe pineapple? Was that unexpected enough? Mango?
She made up the batter, slower than normal, staring into it and wondering if she needed to add another flavor profile. Ginger? Turmeric? Something surprising? She had always focused on being deeply excellent at the classics—in Pine Hollow, her vanilla cake was legendary , but the judges weren’t going to be satisfied with vanilla. They’d made that clear.
She filled the cupcake cups with mango batter and popped the cupcakes into the oven, setting the timer—and checking the temperature twice. A blast of heat had hit her when she opened it, so she knew it was on, and the numbers read 325. Perfect.
Then she started on her icings. Maybe she could go a little wild there. Passion fruit? Coconut? Or citrus was always good, right? Maybe yuzu?
There were still three minutes left on her timer when she smelled burning.
Magda glanced around. Was someone burning caramel? It was easy to do if you didn’t pay attention to it. But no… she didn’t see any blackened pots nearby.
She sniffed again, frowning.
And then she saw the smoke coming out of her oven.
“No! No-no-no-no-no! ”
The camera crews zoomed in on her like distress-seeking missiles as she frantically grabbed for a hot pad and yanked open the oven.
A billow of smoke belched out, making her cough—and making a PA run over with a fire extinguisher.
“No!” Magda yelled, throwing out a hand to stop the overzealous PA before they could lay down a layer of foam and make the oven unusable for the rest of the challenge. She lunged forward and grabbed her cupcake tin—nearly burning herself even through the hot pad.
She hissed, flinging the cupcake briquettes into the sink and turning the faucet on full blast—and when her back was turned, the PA went to town on the oven with the fire extinguisher.
“No!” Magda wailed.
A producer rushed over and powered down the oven—and Magda could only stand and stare.
“I don’t know what happened. The oven said 325. I checked. It shouldn’t have…”
“It’s okay,” Julia said, appearing at her side. “You can use another station.”
But it wouldn’t be preheated. It would take precious time to preheat, and the clock was ticking down. The cupcakes had to cool. They had to be filled. Iced. If they were too hot the icing would melt—a total repeat of her glaze debacle.
“It’ll take too long to warm up,” Magda said, feeling a hollow emptiness as it all began to slip away. This was an Elimination Challenge. Everyone had been close after the Skills Challenge. If she didn’t have cupcakes to serve, she was going home.
On a challenge that was supposed to be honoring Aunt Lena. She had failed. She had let everyone down—
“Use mine.”
Mac’s voice seemed to echo in the sudden quiet that had taken over the kitchen as everyone stared at Magda’s station with horror.
Magda turned to him, her eyes wide. “What?”
“My cupcakes come out in two minutes. Then it’s all yours. Already preheated to 325.”
Which meant her cupcakes could go in as soon as she could get the batter ready. Relief surged through her so fast she was almost dizzy.
“Thank you.”
Magda had never made batter so fast in her life. She didn’t think. She didn’t worry about impressing the judges. All that mattered was having something to serve them.
So she went for angel food.
Classic. Boring.
And she flew.
The cupcakes went into Mac’s oven and she whispered “Thank you” again as she rushed back to her own station to set the timer and salvage her neglected icings and fillings.
She’d never paired guava curd with an angel food cupcake before, but what the hell?
When her timer went off, she raced back to Mac’s station and there they were—pale and perfect. Magda whispered a silent prayer of thanks to the cake gods, and then grabbed the muffin tin and rushed back to her station to frantically cool, fill, and ice them.
The clock was ticking down. Two minutes. Not enough time.
A serving plate landed on her station.
Mac. He’d gotten her one from the pantry.
She said thank you without looking up—and quickly plated her cupcakes, finishing them in place.
“Ten… Nine… Eight…” Jeffrey Flanders’s voice rang over the room as Magda’s hands flew over the piping bag.
“Five… Four… Three…”
Oh God. Her heartbeat felt like thunder. Her hands were shaking so damn hard and the icing was starting to waver.
“Two… One… TIME!”
Magda threw up her hands.
And burst into tears.
They weren’t delicate tears. They were gulping, hyperventilating sobs, and she couldn’t make herself stop.
She’d held on to herself until time was called, but then everything she hadn’t let herself truly feel for the last half hour had come crashing down on top of her all at once and she completely freaking lost it.
Arms closed around her, warm and comforting—she didn’t even know whose. She couldn’t breathe.
She knew there were cameras on her. She knew she was falling apart on national television right now over a freaking cupcake and there was no way this wasn’t making it into the final edit. But she still couldn’t get herself under control. Magda never lost control. Mac was the only person who ever made her lose her cool—but this wasn’t Mac. This was everything else.
This was how badly she’d wanted this experience to be something other than what it was. This was all the frustration and aggravation of the last ten days. This was all the pressure of trying to make her town and her family and her friends proud. This was how badly she wanted to be seen and admired. How badly she wanted to be special . And how much she felt like she was just being told over and over again by different people and in different ways that she wasn’t. That she never would be. That no matter what she did, she would never be able to escape the basic boring invisible thing that was her .
That her loneliness, her not-enoughness was her fault. All the freaking fear. All the longing. All the hope she had put into this experience. That it would change things. That it would change her.
All that shattered hope.
And she had shattered.
The stakes felt ridiculously high—and even knowing they weren’t didn’t help her breathe.
“It’s okay. We’ve got you,” a deep voice murmured—and Magda latched on to that voice.
It was Mac. She was tucked against his chest. Sheltered. Safe. She could fall apart here, and his arms would hold the pieces together. Mac had her.
One of his large hands rubbed a circle on the small of her back. You’re all right , that hand said. I’m here.
But then she felt other hands on her shoulders, and the “we” managed to penetrate the panic. She lifted her cheek from where it had pressed against his shirt.
“We” wasn’t just Mac. It was Leah. And Walter. And Abby. And even Eunice—who was even shorter than Magda. All of them forming a human shield around her, protecting her from the cameras, and holding her at the center of their huddle.
And suddenly she wanted to cry for a whole new reason.
God, she loved these people.
Yes, she’d only known most of them for less than two weeks, but they were her freaking soulmates. They were her rocks. And she didn’t know how she would have done this without them.
“Thank you,” she whispered brokenly, when she could form words, touching their hands gratefully and using her apron to wipe away her tears.
Mac was the first to drop his arms—as if he knew that she had a hard time managing her emotions when he was touching her. Leah lingered the longest, keeping her arm around Magda until the producers realized they weren’t going to force her to move away and let them walk to the Proving Room arm-in-arm.
The cameras continued to circle Magda in the Proving Room, moths to the flame of her emotional collapse.
She kept waiting for Julia to appear, to drag her away for a confessional where she would probably burst into tears again, but when Julia finally did appear, she didn’t pull Magda away, instead crouching in front of her.
She put her hand over Magda’s, as if trying to ground her—and Magda had the strange sense that Julia really was on her side. Then she spoke.
“It was Celsius.”
“What?”
“Your oven was set to Celsius. We don’t know how it happened. The judges have been made aware of the situation and they will take that into account during judging.”
Magda shook her head, uncomprehending. “How could that happen?”
“We aren’t sure. It might have been a malfunction. We’ll know to check all the ovens for that in the future—”
“325 Celsius… what is that? Six hundred degrees? Do the ovens even go that high?”
“Six hundred and seventeen. We’re not sure it got that hot—”
“But it was enough to turn my cupcakes to charcoal.”
“It was.” Julia confirmed.
And Magda would have been eliminated. If not for Mac.
Again.
Her gaze went to him, across the room.
Why had he done that?
She couldn’t make him out. He competed with her. He made her crazy. And he helped her, without hesitation. And then his arms, that feeling of protection. Of safety…
She’d worked so hard at hating him for the last decade, but now they were here, yanked out of their usual routine, and everything was different. He was different.
She didn’t know who he was anymore. But she had the strongest feeling he was the man he’d always been. And she had no idea how to feel about him anymore.