Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Paige
The last of the laughter trails out the door with my brother, my mom, and my dad. Jason slaps the doorframe on his way out, muttering something about “cinnamon roll interest payments” with a grin that hasn’t changed since we were kids.
Mom promises to bring the quilt she’s working on to throw over one of the mismatched chairs in the corner, and Dad insists that the plumbing under the prep sink “sounds funny.”
While I’m grateful for the hours they’ve spent here this afternoon making every surface shine, I practically shove them all out before they can start up again.
Now it’s quiet.
My kitchen.
It sinks in and practically makes me giddy.
Everything has been delivered and installed, all the furniture I have has been sanded, painted, and set out.
The counters shine, the floors still smell faintly of lemon from the scrubbing.
My arms ache from scouring every inch, sweat still drying at the back of my neck, but none of it matters.
For the first time, the space feels finished. Real. Mine.
I tug open the drawer where my measuring cups now live, feeling a small spark of satisfaction at how smoothly it slides. Everything has a place. Everything is ready.
Time for the first real test.
I pull the big glass bowl close and start the dough for cinnamon rolls—my promised payment, my ritual, my way of christening my kitchen in my bakery. Flour dusts into the air, settling over the counters I just scrubbed, and I don’t care. The smell of yeast, warm water, and sugar fill the air.
My hands know the motion so well that they don’t even need my brain. Stretch, fold, knead. Again and again, until the dough tightens under my palms and springs back when I press my thumb into it.
The silence is strange. Earlier, the kitchen had been full of noise—Jason clattering pans, Mom asking where I wanted her to stack boxes, Dad whistling as he checked seals on the oven doors.
Now, the only sounds are the slap of dough against the counter and the deep rumbling of the oven as it heats up.
It feels good.
I set the dough in a greased bowl, cover it, and leave it near the warming oven to rise.
My hands itch with impatience, so I move on to the filling: butter, sugar, cinnamon, and a pinch of cardamom because I like the way it rounds out the spice.
I cream it together until it’s a fragrant paste, rich and sweet.
Somewhere in the back of my head, I think about Ben.
I don’t want to. I’ve spent the last few weeks keeping my head down, focusing on paint and fixtures and permits, on ovens and shelving and bulk orders of flour and sugar.
Whenever I caught myself drifting toward him—toward that night, toward the mess we made of something we shouldn’t have even started—I pushed harder on the work.
But then he walked in with that toolbox.
I press the spatula into the mixture harder than necessary, scraping the sides of the bowl with sharp strokes. He didn’t have to help. He could have kept walking. And yet there he was, shoulder to shoulder with delivery guys, muscling my fridge through the door.
I don’t want him taking up space here. Not in this kitchen. Not when it finally feels like mine.
When the dough has doubled, I roll it out on the floured counter, pressing the rolling pin into the pliant mass until it stretches wide and even. The cinnamon butter spreads under my spatula in thick ribbons, and I breathe in the scent like it might steady me.
But my stomach shifts unexpectedly. Not hunger but something else. A small wave of queasiness rolls up the back of my throat.
I pause and take a cleansing breath.
It passes after a moment, leaving me blinking down at the dough. Weird. Usually, the smells of baking ground me, make me hungry, calm me.
I shake it off, roll the dough into a tight log, and slice the spirals clean.
They land on the tray in neat, expectant rows.
By the time they’ve risen again, I’ve convinced myself the nausea was nothing, maybe I just needed water.
I gulp from the bottle on the counter, the cool liquid soothing, and slide the tray into the oven.
The smell is instant. Warm, sweet, spiced. It fills the kitchen, seeps into the walls, giving the building its first taste in years. My shoulders drop an inch, the ache in my arms forgotten.
This is why I do it. This is what I want my customers to feel when they walk through that door. Like they’ve entered somewhere safe and irresistible.
I lean against the counter, arms folded, watching the glass. The rolls puff higher, edges turning golden, sugar bubbling. My stomach twists again.
I press my palm flat against it.
No.
Not now. Not here.
The smell has never turned my stomach before. Never.
I back away from the oven and sit heavily on the stool by the prep table, forcing steady breaths. Maybe it’s just exhaustion. We’ve been at this since morning, scrubbing and polishing and lifting and rearranging. My body isn’t used to standing this long, not yet.
That’s on top of weeks of nonstop work to get Sweet Confessions ready for the opening in a couple of weeks. All I need now are a few more pieces of furniture and the sign.
Still—the nausea lingers. Not sharp, not overwhelming. Just… there. Rolling my stomach occasionally.
I rub the heel of my hand over my chest and look around the kitchen. The gleaming appliances, the stacked pans, the neat shelves. This is supposed to be joy. This is supposed to be the first page of the new story I’ve been aching to write.
The timer dings.
I push to my feet, a little slower than usual, and open the oven. Steam rushes out, fragrant and hot, and the nausea surges with it. My mouth waters—not with hunger, but with the awful anticipation of being sick.
I grit my teeth and slide the tray onto the rack. The rolls shine, perfect and golden, sugar melting into dark stripes. They look exactly the way I wanted them to.
And yet, when I lean down to inhale, my stomach flips again.
I stagger back, hand gripping the edge of the counter.
What the hell?
I’ve been baking since I was a kid. I’ve been elbow-deep in buckets of cinnamon, clouds of flour, vats of buttercream. My whole life smells like this, tastes like this. And never, not once, have I felt nauseated from it.
I sink onto the stool again, eyes on the rolls cooling on the rack. They’re gorgeous. They’re the kind of rolls I promised my family, the kind of rolls that should christen this kitchen. But my body recoils at the thought of biting into one.
Something inside me curls tight, uneasy.
I rest my head in my hands and breathe slowly.
It could be nothing. It could be the heat, or the fact that I skipped lunch, or the leftover exhaustion from weeks of pushing my body harder than I should.
But the doubt lingers.
And beneath it, something I don’t want to name.
I close my eyes and continue to take deep breaths, the thought sinking into my mind like claws.
Something is different.
Something is changing.
And I don’t know yet what it means.