Chapter Thirty-Seven
M ac’s hands were shaking.
They started out with a Skills Challenge, as was traditional—but it felt like a freaking race. Sixty minutes and they had to make a soufflé. A freaking soufflé . Outside. On a May morning that hadn’t started to warm up yet—which was a little like trying to bake in the middle of a walk-in refrigerator with no time to redo anything that went wrong.
There were heat lamps around the tent to try to compensate for the chill, but there seemed to be a gap in the tent flaps immediately to his left that kept letting in a frigid breeze.
And there was an audience.
Mac had always loved cooking—but it had never been a spectator sport before, and there was something incredibly distracting about the gasps and murmurs and rustles of several hundred observers. He had to fight to keep his attention on his task, struggling to remember which steps he’d already done.
His only saving grace was that he’d practiced soufflés yesterday with Magda. He knew what to do.
It was just the doing it that was the trick.
He was aware of Magda at the station next to his—Tim to his left and Eunice on the other side of Magda to the right—but he tried to keep his focus on his hands. Cameras popped up in his face periodically—sometimes with producers and sometimes without—asking him how he was feeling, if he’d ever made soufflé before, and what it would mean to him to win a quarter million dollars. Just in case he was likely to forget what was at stake here. When the cameras weren’t on him, he tried to hum show tunes—which usually calmed him down—but he couldn’t even remember the lyrics to his favorite songs. All knowledge of Hamilton had been wiped from his brain.
This actually caring and trying thing sucked .
It was so much easier to be Fun Mac. Easygoing Mac. Devil-May-Care Mac.
But he did care. It wasn’t even about the winning. It was about knowing he’d put his all into this moment. That he’d let himself want it. That he’d been as brave as Magda was.
He let himself glance over at her then. Her soufflé was in the oven and she was crouched down in front of it, staring at it like she could will it to perfection, and his heart lurched.
It’s really good to see you in love.
Ever since his grandmother had said it this morning, the words had been floating around in the back of his thoughts. And the funny thing was… they didn’t feel wrong. They felt right. Ridiculously, perfectly right.
He was in love with her. And it felt like he had been for a while. He hadn’t come for the money. He’d come for her. And now that he knew, he wanted to tell her.
Magda looked up, catching him watching her, and flashed him a smile—before a timer went off at his station.
He had a soufflé to finish. Telling her he was madly in love with her would have to wait.
“And… time !”
Magda already had her hands in the air, staring down at her chocolate soufflé. It was good. She knew it was good. It was one of the things she and Mac had practiced yesterday—though there hadn’t been a timer and cold breezes and a crowd of spectators then.
The crowd cheered, and Magda looked up at her friends and family, half-laughing with relief and residual adrenaline.
Eunice was at her side seconds later, and the final four were being herded back to the little tent. “How’d yours go?” Magda asked Eunice as Mac fell in beside them.
“Okay?” Eunice said, the word more question than answer. “I might have overwhipped my eggs, but it didn’t collapse, so yay?” She made a wincing face. “And yours?”
“Decent?” Magda responded with the same degree of certainty. “It looks right, but we won’t know until they take a bite. Mac?”
Usually he would make a joke at his own expense, at ease with his mistakes, but now he just shook his head. “I don’t know if it’s better to know what you’re doing or not know what you’re doing. Knowing involves a lot more panic.”
Magda laughed, taking his arm automatically—though they were out of view of the audience now, ducking into the little tent.
They were immediately split up and siphoned off toward the row of director’s chairs that had been set up as confessionals while they were baking. Tim was already sitting in one, talking about his years of experience making soufflés in the best kitchens. Magda squeezed Mac’s arm and headed to her own chair—but instead of Julia, Greg sat down across from her.
“Where’s Julia?” she asked, looking over to see that Mac wasn’t being interviewed by her either. “Is she busy?”
Greg smiled, but something about the gesture seemed off. Fake. “Julia isn’t here.”
Magda shook her head. “But I saw her. She’s in the stands.”
“What I mean is she isn’t here as a producer. Just a fan.” He gave her another fake grimace. “I’m afraid she was let go.”
The kitchen footage. Magda felt the blood drain from her face. “Why?”
“Sometimes people just aren’t a good fit. Now, we don’t have much time before judging, so let’s talk soufflé!”
“No.”
Greg blinked. “I’m sorry?”
“I need to talk to Julia—”
“As I said, she isn’t with the production any longer—”
Magda dug in her heels. “I’m not talking about the bake until I talk to her. I saw her in the stands. Go get her.”
“Look, I know you two bonded and all, but we’re almost to the finish line. How did you feel when you heard that the final Skills Challenge was going to be soufflé?”
“This will go a lot faster if you just go get Julia.”
Greg forced another smile. “Tell you what. I’ll send a PA for her, and we’ll talk until she gets here.”
Which meant he had no intention of sending the PA, and she was going to be conveniently rushed back to be judged before Julia arrived. “I’ll wait.”
Greg glowered. And called over a PA.
Five minutes later, Julia appeared beside that same PA.
“Hey,” Julia said, when she got to Magda’s side. “Are you okay?”
“Are you?” Magda demanded. “You got fired?”
“Don’t worry about that,” Julia insisted. “It had nothing to do with you.”
Which Magda didn’t believe for a second. “When?”
“Friday night. About ten minutes after I talked to you. And honestly? I was relieved. I am not cut out for this new version of Cake-Off . But I couldn’t miss this.” She grinned. “I had to cheer you guys on.”
She didn’t seem heartbroken. If anything she seemed lighter. Less stressed than she’d been for the last several weeks. But Magda still felt like it was all her fault. That she’d been reckless, and Julia had been punished for protecting her privacy.
“What are you going to do next?”
“Honestly?” Julia said, “I’m trying not to think about that. Maybe I’ll pitch a cooking show with one of my new favorite bakers.” She bumped Magda’s arm with a smile. “But in the meantime, I just want to see one of my favorites win this thing. You can do this, Magda.”
Magda glanced back at the chair where Greg was waiting with zero patience whatsoever. “I should probably…”
“Go talk soufflé. And good luck.”
They hugged quickly, and then Magda rushed back to her chair.
She barely had time to talk through the Skills Challenge before they were called back for judging—now that there were fewer stations to clean, the space between baking and judging had gotten shorter.
They reentered the main tent to another roar from the crowd, and Magda smiled nervously, waving. She lined up to face the judging, holding Mac’s hand on one side and Eunice’s on the other. “We’ve got this,” she whispered to them. And the judging began.
For the first time all season, they weren’t told who had ranked where in the Skills Challenge. The judges marked their scorecards, but no results were read aloud, and the comments were so vague it was impossible to tell who had come out on top.
And before they could react they were ushered back to their stations.
The final bake of the season was always a marathon, and this year was no exception. Six hours. An edible illusion that had to be at least two feet tall.
Mac had decided to go with bread, because, well, he was good at bread. He could make a picnic basket out of braided breads—which would have an actual baguette, quiche, and tiny little tea cakes inside it. He wasn’t going to be able to compete when it came to airbrushing fiddly little decorations onto an illusion cake, so he was going his own way.
And he didn’t have time to think about anything else. He had kneading and proving and mixing to do—and it was going to take every second of the time allotted, so there was no point thinking about Magda. Or the fact that playing on repeat in his head was “If I Could Tell Her” from Dear Evan Hansen . That particular song… it was all about wishing you could tell someone that you loved them. Which felt glaringly on the nose.
He hummed as he kneaded, listening to the sound of Magda’s voice as she described her illusion. “It’s going to be a dog, with a cupcake on its nose—I adopted my dog, Cupcake, around the same time I decided I wanted to try to come on Cake-Off , so it felt wrong that I hadn’t done any bakes dedicated to her. This dog is going to be a little smaller than she is, but not by much. Four tiers of raspberry white chocolate sponge with lemon buttercream icing.”
Eunice was making a dragon out of chocolate cake, and Tim had decided on a ginger-lemon Parthenon.
Mac chatted up the cameras when they came by, but then all of his focus landed on his hands, and the rest of the world faded away. It felt like he blinked and suddenly Jeffrey Flanders was calling out, “Fifteen minutes!” as he assembled his basket.
Hamilton had been playing on repeat in his head for the last hour, and Mac focused on his hands as he carefully decorated his basket. He thought the basket was firmly on the table, but he was so focused on the part right in front of him that he hadn’t noticed the back edge creeping off the edge of the counter.
Until it started to tip.
The audience gasped.
“No-no-no-no!” His instinct was to reach for the basket handle—but it was just a cinnamon twist, delicately attached to the rest of the basket with a caramel glaze. If he grabbed that it would just break off, and if he grabbed it anywhere else, the basket would probably break in half under the pressure—it was already filled with goodies that were weighing it down—
A pair of hands was suddenly there, catching it and sliding it back onto the counter.
“Oh, thank God.” He met Magda’s eyes across his station and blurted, “I love you.”
She laughed. “You’re welcome,” she called, already moving back to her station to put the finishing touches on her masterpiece.
“I meant that!” he called after her.
She glanced over her shoulder, her brow wrinkling for just a second before she threw back “Save it for the judges, Romeo! Now stop distracting me.”
He’d have to tell her again, to make her believe it, but for now he grinned, turning his attention back to his basket as Jeffrey Flanders began counting down—this time joined by the entire audience.
When the time was up, Mac raised his hands—and felt all the tension drain out of his body. It was over. They’d done it. There was nothing left to do but wait for the judging.
He turned toward Magda—and she was already moving toward him.
It wasn’t thought. It wasn’t premeditated or planned. He just sank his hands into her luscious curls, bent his head, and kissed her for all he was worth. And Magda fisted her hand in his apron and dragged him closer to kiss him right back.
Mac was only aware of the hoots and cheers from the crowd when Eunice jokingly shoved at his arm. “Get a room, you two!”
And then Magda was hugging her friend and they were all laughing and Magda was shouting, “We did it!” And he couldn’t help picking both Magda and Eunice up and swinging them around.
Confessionals. Clean-up. Final judging.
It was almost over.
The producers started herding them back to the tent, and one of Mac’s hands took Magda’s, waving to the crowd with the other. In the small tent, the producers pointed them toward the confessionals—but Mac stopped her with his hand tightening on hers.
“I wasn’t joking. When I said I love you.”
“Mac…” Her eyes were wide, and he rushed on.
“I think I’ve been in love with you for fourteen years—even when I didn’t want to be. Or maybe it was just the potential for love, and it wasn’t until Cake-Off that I fell. Head over heels. I don’t know. You make me crazy, but we go together like maple bacon jalape?o and blueberry crumble muffins. Two things that really shouldn’t work, but absolutely do, and now that I’ve had them together, I don’t want to have them apart.”
She stared up at him, speechless, but he had enough words for both of them.
“I’m not brave like you,” he went on. “You were right. I wasn’t afraid of letting people down—I was afraid of them letting me down. Don’t want things you can’t have. If you don’t try, you won’t be disappointed, right? So I told myself I didn’t want you. I adapt, I take life as it comes, but I don’t chase dreams. Not like you do. You put your heart on the line when you were eighteen years old and you didn’t let the fact that I was an ass stop you. I just took what life handed me. But I don’t want to do that anymore. And I’m not saying you’ll never let me down, or that I won’t let you down. I’m saying I love you enough to want to try .” He met her eyes, holding them. “When I think of my future, when I let myself dream, all I want is to bake muffins with you.”
Magda’s baby-blue eyes were swimming with tears, but her smile was magnificent. “You, Mackenzie Newton, are so cheesy,” she said as she draped her arms around his neck. “And salty. And sweet. All my favorite flavors.” He laughed, but she wasn’t done. “You are such a good man. And everyone in this town knows it—including me. Which has made it really hard to keep hating you all these years. These last five weeks have been a whirlwind. A month ago, I thought I hated you. Fourteen years ago, I thought I loved you. But that was just a crush. What I feel for you now is bigger and wilder and more real than anything I dreamed up back then. I was scared to want this, because whenever I’ve wanted things in the past, it’s never worked out. But that’s the thing about baking and love. It’s all about the timing.”
He grinned, bending his head to kiss her, and she said the words he was never going to get tired of hearing against his lips. “I love you, Mackenzie Newton.”
He was smiling when he lifted his head. “I’m glad you told me now. Because after I win this thing, I would think you were only after me for my money.”
Though the truth was he was convinced she was the one who was going to win. He’d always thought she would.
She smacked him on the bicep, and he laughed.
It didn’t even bother him when he heard Stephen asking a cameraman, “Did you get all that?”
He kind of liked the idea of the whole entire world knowing Magda was the love of his life.
The producers split them up then to talk about their final bakes—and their feelings for each other. Then it was back into the tent for judging, another wait as the judges deliberated, and finally—racing the light to get the results announced before it got dark—they were hustled back into the tent for the announcement of the winner.
Stephen told them to line up in a row, but Mac stood behind Magda, hugging her shoulders from behind as she held on to his arm with one hand and Eunice’s hand with the other. The producers must have liked how it looked because they didn’t make them move.
The judges and Jeffrey Flanders took their marks.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this was, without a doubt, the closest finale in Cake-Off history,” Alexander Clay began—and to hear those words from a judge who was not given to Flanders’s level of hyperbole was almost jarring. “The competition has never been so fierce. We went back and forth, parsing the tiniest little details to make our decision. And we’d like you all to know that on any other season, any one of you could have won.”
“As Alexander says, it came down to the smallest things,” Joanie agreed. “An incredible flavor…” Mac’s breath caught. They’d always talked about his flavor. “An impressive technique…” That had to be Magda, right? Or maybe Tim… “But in the end, the baker who won today was the one who just elevated to the next level, stretching themself and really taking us all by surprise.”
Mac tightened his arm around Magda’s shoulders. It had to be her. She deserved this. She’d worked so hard. And her winning would feel like him winning. He stared at the judges, willing Jeffrey Flanders to say her name as he opened his mouth.
“The winner of the Archrivals Edition of The Great American Cake-Off is…”