Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty One
Paige
By the time the bell over the door gives its last cheerful jingle and the woman with the polka-dot umbrella disappears into the fading light, my whole body exhales like I’ve been holding my breath for fourteen hours straight.
Because I have.
I flip the little wooden sign to CLOSED, slide the deadbolt, and just stand there with my palms on the cool glass, forehead pressed to the pane.
Outside, Main Street does its summer evening thing—slow cars, groups of tourists walking down the street. Inside, Sweet Confessions smells like sugar and butter and espresso and cleaner. It smells like the life I begged the universe for, and my feet still ache so bad I could cry.
Mom made me sit twice today. “For the baby,” she said, which is how she wins arguments forever now.
She cornered me with a plate—half a sandwich, a few grapes, an oatmeal cookie I didn’t have the heart to refuse—and actually stood over me while I chewed.
Dad took a victory lap around the room talking to strangers as if he were running for office. Jason texted me a selfie with a client between sets and three flexed bicep emojis. I sent him a picture of the case at 11:00 a.m. when it was already half empty. He wrote back: HELL YES.
Now it’s just me and the fridges and the soft tick of cooling metal. The glass cases are mostly bare—two straggler snickerdoodles, one lone blueberry scone I’ll take home to Dad. Everything else is crumbs and fingerprints and a shine I scrubbed into the shelves during the last lull.
I do the closing routine without thinking. Milk jugs back into the walk-in. Syrup pumps into the dishwasher tray. Steam wand purged and wiped, group heads backflushed, portafilters polished until my face bends in their bottoms like a funhouse mirror.
I wipe the chalkboard menu down one last time—my handwriting is getting neater with practice—and rewrite tomorrow’s specials: Caramel pecan sticky buns (limited).
Lemon bars. Blueberry muffins. Honey lavender shortbread. I draw a crooked heart next to iced coffee and immediately erase it because I can’t decide if it’s adorable or desperate.
‘Hiring’, I write in small letters in the corner, then circle it. Because I can’t hold off anymore. Not after today. Not after yesterday. Not after the way my mom’s knees creaked when she crouched to grab a dropped napkin, and my dad’s back popped when he hauled a trash bag out.
They would come every day if I let them. I can’t let them.
Temps, I add beneath it. Seasonal.
“Must love butter and early mornings,” I whisper, testing the line out loud, and feel the ghost of a grin tug at my mouth. I jot a few more requirements on the pad by the register.
The bell at the back door rattles once, and my heart ricochets off my ribs. I don’t think. I grab the small rolling pin and then immediately put it down and pick up the big one.
“Hello?” I call, forcing my voice into the lower, older register that I hope sounds more intimidating.
“It’s just me,” Dad’s voice says through the door. “Forgot my sunglasses.”
I unlock it, and he steps in, hair mussed from the wind, shirt untucked. He looks at me the way he’s looked at me all day—full to bursting.
“You sure you don’t want help wrapping up?” he asks, already scanning for an errand he can snatch away from me.
“Most of it is done,” I say. “Go home and rest.”
He smiles softly. “You too.” He squeezes my shoulder, his fingers gentle in a way that reminds me of skinned knees. “Proud of you, kiddo.”
There it is again. The wobble. I swallow it back. “Thanks, Dad.”
“You lock up and come home, all right?”
“I will.”
When he’s gone and the back door is locked again, the bakery feels emptier. I turn on the little back-of-house radio I keep for company and set about finishing up the rest of my tasks.
My wrists twinge when I hoist the last bag of trash to the dumpster. “Okay,” I tell my body. “Enough of that.”
Back inside, I rinse my hands, scrub under my nails, and look at my face in the little mirror by the sink.
I look like a raccoon that fell into a bag of flour. I splash water and pat my skin with the roll of paper towels until I look marginally human.
I do a last sweep before turning off the lights and stepping out of the building. I lock the door behind me and turn to my car in the backlot.
My eyes slide over to the Pint, which is going strong and will be for hours. I should just go home. I need the rest.
But…
I tell myself I’m just going to peek in.
I know I’m lying.
The Wandering Pint is warm and cozy but bursting with life. A game on the TV, full bar, people gathering and laughing.
I step inside and scan the room.
No Ben behind the taps. My pulse dips and then spikes because wanting to see him this badly feels unwise.
Mark catches my eye, lifts his chin in greeting. “Hey, Paige,” he says over the heads of two guys arguing about darts. He leans across the bar. “You looking for Ben? He’s in the office if you want him. Back hall, door’s open.”
I say thanks over the din of the room and weave my way through the tables to the back and into the narrower, quieter hallway.
The sound of the bar fades a little more with each step. Ben’s door is cracked. Warm light spills in a triangle across the scuffed floor.
I stop on the threshold and look.
He’s hunched over the desk with a pen in his fist, scowling at a stack of paper like it personally offends him.
The sleeves of his navy tee are pushed up, tan forearms flexing as he braces the paper, jaw tight, a lock of hair falling onto his forehead because it refuses to do otherwise.
His brow is furrowed in that concentration face that always does things to my insides.
He looks like everything I shouldn’t want and everything I do, all at once.
“Hey,” I say, voice soft.
His head snaps up. The scowl dissolves so fast it makes my head spin.
“Hey,” he says back. He sets the pen down but keeps his hand on the papers, like he has to finish one motion before he can start another. “You’re still vertical. That’s a good sign.”
“Barely,” I admit. “Thought I’d… pop in.” I lift a shoulder, try to pretend my heart isn’t hammering at the sound of his voice. “Mark said I could come back.”
“Yeah.” His mouth does that ghost of a smile. “Paperwork ambushed me.”
I step inside and nudge the door closed with my heel.
The click of the latch is soft. He notices. His eyes flick to the door, then to me, then back to my face with heat in his eyes.
“How’d the rest of the day go?” he asks. “You look—” He stops himself just shy of saying wrecked. “—like you worked your ass off.”
“I did.” I take two steps closer. “Worth it.”
His gaze warms. “It was packed every time I looked over.” He tips his head, searching my face. “You okay?”
I nod. “I will be.”
For half a second, we hover there, good intentions separating us. Then he looks me up and down and licks his lips, and that’s it for me.
I round the desk in three strides; the chair squeaks as I swing a knee over his lap and lower myself onto him, palms braced on his shoulders. His breath leaves him in a rough exhale that is absolutely not a protest. His hands find my hips like they belong there.
“Paige,” he says, a warning and a welcome in one syllable.
I kiss him.
All the noise in my head cuts like someone pulled a plug.
His mouth is warm and familiar in a way that makes my ribs ache, the scrape of his stubble sharp against my skin.
He tastes like mint and coffee and something that is just him, and the low sound he makes at the back of his throat drives straight to my core.
He tightens his hands and pulls me closer, and the chair complains again as I press into him, chest to chest. I feel him smile against my mouth when I nip his lower lip, and he tilts his head, deepening the kiss, one hand sliding up my spine to anchor me, the other at my waist.
It’s ridiculous how easy this is. How my body remembers him like a language I only had to hear once to be fluent.
When I finally break away for air, we’re both breathing like we ran here. He rests his forehead against mine for a beat, eyes closed, smile crooked. “Hi,” he says, voice rough.
“Hi,” I say, my voice husky.
He opens his eyes, and whatever he sees on my face makes something hot flare in his. “Come here,” he murmurs, like I’m not already there.
He surges up out of the chair in one smooth move, mouth finding mine again, hands holding me securely as he stands. I laugh into the kiss and loop my arms around his neck.
The edge of the desk presses against the backs of my thighs. He sets me down on the paperwork, utterly scandalizing his to-do list, palms sliding up my thighs. Paper crinkles under me, a pen rolls and clinks to the floor. And he is all heat as he stands between my legs.
“Ben,” I moan.
“Mm.” He kisses me again, slower now, like he’s remembering I have to breathe. His thumbs stroke lazy paths along my legs through denim, and my brain empties of everything that isn’t this.
“Your invoices are going to have my butt print on them,” I manage, breathless.
“Best thing that’s happened to my invoices,” he says, amused, and then his mouth is on my jaw, my cheek, the corner of my mouth again, like he can’t decide.
I tip my head back and let the office ceiling blur. Out in the bar, someone laughs, a chair scrapes. His hands bracket my hips, and his body presses into mine.
I slide my fingers into his hair and tug gently, and he makes that sound again, the one that sparks heat down my spine.
His mouth parts on a rough little breath, and I tip mine to meet it, kissing him slowly, then deeper, then slowly again, like we can’t decide what we want.
I angle his face with my fingers and kiss the corner of his mouth, the line of his jaw, the spot just below his ear that makes him shiver.
He answers with a low sound and a tighter grip, thumbs stroking lazy paths at my waist that make my stomach flicker.
“Paige,” he murmurs against my cheek.
“What the fuck?”
The words hit me like a freight train. I freeze, fingers still tangled in Ben’s hair, and then everything happens at once—my heartbeat in my throat, Ben’s breath stuttering against my cheek, the squeal of the hinges as the office door finishes swinging open.
Jason stands in the doorway, one hand fisted white around the knob, the other hanging uselessly at his side. He takes us in—me on the desk, Ben braced between my knees, papers creased and crooked under my thighs, my mouth kiss-reddened, his shirt rumpled—and something shuts down behind his eyes.