Chapter 8 Zoey
Zoey
"Oh, shit."
I bolt upright, tangled in the comforter, heart hammering. Shit. My alarm didn't go off.
The bakery. The ovens. The bread that should have gone in three hours ago.
I grab my phone from the nightstand and the screen glares back at me.
6:52 AM.
My body doesn't want to move, but somehow my brain fires up immediately.
It thinks about yesterday. About him.
I can't believe I kissed Colt Lane. I can't believe the taste of him, the sound that rumbled from his chest when I let him close the distance and do the exact thing I'd been picturing through every quiet minute I spent next to him in that hospital room.
I press my fingers to my lips.
They're still tingling. They're still tingling.
"Get a grip, Zoey," I whisper to my ceiling. "You've got a business to run. It was one kiss."
I throw the comforter off and swing my legs over the side of the bed, catching a glimpse of myself in the dresser mirror.
My hair is a disaster. Debbie's beautiful blowout has morphed overnight into something that looks like I lost a fight with a washing machine.
My old sleep shirt is twisted sideways, one shoulder completely exposed, and there's a crease on my cheek from the pillowcase that makes me look like I've been branded.
At least I'm smiling.
Not a normal smile. Not a polite, customer-facing, thanks-for-shopping-at-Butter-Batch smile.
A stupid, dreamy, dopamine-soaked smile that has no business on the face of a thirty-four-year-old woman who has bread to bake and a child to feed.
"Mom?"
Morgan appears in the doorway, already dressed in leggings and her favorite Snow Leopards tee—the one with Samuel Voss's number on the back that her uncle Beck shipped from across the country. Her braids are lopsided from sleep, and she's studying me with a confused look on her face.
"What's going on? You slept in."
"I know. I'm sorry, baby. Alarm didn't—"
"You never sleep in."
"I know."
Morgan tilts her head, eyes narrowing. "And you're smiling weird."
I snap my mouth shut. "I'm not smiling."
"You literally are. Right now." She points a finger at me. "It's creepy."
"It's not creepy, Morgan. It's called a pleasant morning expression. You should try it sometime."
"It's called suspicious." She backs out of my bedroom and drops her backpack on the kitchen table before climbing onto her stool and pulling a box of cereal toward her. "You gonna tell me what happened yesterday?"
I slide into my fluffy bunny slippers and follow her into the kitchen.
"Nothing happened."
"Uh huh. Your face says otherwise."
I turn away from her, busying myself with coffee because looking at my daughter right now feels like being cross-examined by a tiny, ruthless attorney.
The coffee machine sputters to life, filling the apartment with that rich, dark, slightly burnt scent that is genuinely the only thing holding my sanity together most mornings.
I grip the counter and take a steadying breath.
It was just a kiss. One kiss. It doesn't have to change anything.
Except it already has. Because I can still feel his hands on my jaw, the calluses on his thumbs from years of gripping hockey sticks, and the way his forehead dropped to mine afterward like he needed to stay close or he'd fall apart.
God. The way he looked at me.
Not at my body. Not past me to something more interesting. Not through me like I was furniture, the way Daniel used to.
At me.
"MOM. Oh my God!"
I jump, sloshing coffee over the rim of my mug. "What?!"
"I said, can you sign my permission slip? Field trip to the nature center next week." Morgan is waving a crumpled piece of paper at me while simultaneously pouring milk into her cereal with her other hand. "Mrs. Briggs says if it's late again, she's calling you."
"She wouldn't dare."
"She absolutely would. She called Tyler's mom last week and Tyler said his mom cried when she hung up."
"Well, for your information, I'd love to give that Mrs. Briggs a piece of my mind." I snatch the permission slip, scrawl my signature with a flick of the pen, and shove it back across the table. "There. Signed."
Morgan studies me for another three seconds, then shrugs and starts eating.
I exhale, thinking I've escaped.
"It's Colt, isn't it."
Damn this child.
"Morgan, please. It's early and—"
"It's fine, Mom." She crunches through a mouthful of cereal, chewing with her mouth so wide open I could conduct a full dental exam. "I'm just saying. You look happy. It's nice."
Something warm and terrifying blooms deep inside.
Before I can figure out what to say to that, a sound from downstairs makes us both freeze and look towards the top of the stairs.
Morgan's eyes go wide, and her spoon freezes halfway to her mouth.
"He's early!"
I slap a hand to my forehead. Fuck. I don't even have time to change.
"Go brush your teeth!"
Morgan bounces to the bathroom and I catch my reflection in the mirror across the messy apartment.
I'm still in my ancient sleep shirt, the one with the faded cartoon muffin on the front that says I LOAF YOU, and a pair of cotton shorts that barely qualify as clothing.
My hair is still a bird's nest and my face is bare of make up. Even my legs are completely exposed from mid-thigh down.
And now Colt Lane is standing in my bakery.
I grab my robe off the back of the chair, knot it tight, and shove a hand through the disaster on my head. Maybe it's a badger. Please let it be a badger. A raccoon. A possum with rabies.
Anything but the man whose mouth I haven't stopped thinking about since yesterday.
I pad toward the stairs, and of course, he's standing there in a Snow Leopards jacket that's unzipped over a white tee. His sandy hair is perfectly styled, and those blue eyes find me the instant I appear at the bottom of the stairs.
They travel down. Slowly.
From my tangled hair to the scrappy robe to my bare legs and back up again, his gaze leaving a trail of heat everywhere it lands.
"Please explain, Mr. Hockey Boy…" I roll my eyes at him as I approach, still rubbing the sleep away. "…how you suddenly became better at rising before the sun than a woman who's been doing it her whole life?"
He smirks. Damn him.
"And good morning to you too, sunshine."
His voice is low and warm and curling with amusement, and my tummy does a full swirl that's absolutely not good with no breakfast.
"It's seven in the morning, Lane. I'm not even—" I gesture vaguely at my entire situation. "I'm not dressed."
"I can see that." His eyes drop to my legs again, lingering for a moment before coming back up with a spark that makes my throat dry. "And I'm not complaining."
I open my mouth to fire back something sharp, something that will remind both of us that yesterday's kiss was a momentary lapse in judgment and not a binding contract…
But then Delaney Evans appears behind him.
"Sorry to just barge in so early!" Delaney breezes past Colt, tablet in hand, blonde hair impeccable. "I was on my way to The Den and I saw Colt sitting in his care reading."
I look to Colt, unable to let that opportunity slide. "You can read?!"
He clutches his chest like I've shot him.
"That hurts. I'll have you know I read at a very impressive level."
"You know cereal boxes don't count, right?" I bite back.
"Pretty sure he was reading his own self-indulgent diary, Zoey. Don't give him too much credit." Delaney snorts without looking up from her tablet. "Any who, when I saw his car out front, I figured I'd kill two birds before you opened up for the day."
She stops and looks at me. At my sleep shirt and bunny slippers.
"Oh… Aren't you expecting customers soon, Zo?"
I close my eyes. "I slept in, Del. I might be a bit late to open up today."
"You slept in?" Her icy-blue eyes flick to Colt with laser precision. "Interesting."
"It's not—"
"No judgment. None at all." She's already tapping her tablet, pulling up whatever presentation she's been crafting since before dawn.
"But maybe throw on some pants before Harold picks up his delivery?
Just a thought." She finally glances up, that razor-sharp smile aimed squarely at me.
"Wouldn't want the poor man dropping his sourdough. "
"Pretty sure Harold's seen worse," I offer helpfully.
Colt is grinning. That devastating, dimple-popping grin that makes my pulse do things it absolutely should not be doing at seven in the morning.
"I'll start the ovens," he says, like he's been working here for years instead of days.
He brushes past me toward the back, and his hand grazes my hip. It's absolutely not an accident. Not even close. The touch is brief, deliberate, warm through the thin cotton, and it sends a bolt of electricity straight through me that nearly makes my knees give out.
He doesn't look back. Just keeps walking, rolling his sleeves up as he goes.
Those goddamn forearms.
"Zoey?" Delaney's voice snaps me back and I realize she's seated herself at the window table, tablet propped up, legs crossed, looking like she runs the world and is just letting the rest of us live in it. "You still with me?"
"Yep. Right here. Totally present."
I am not present. I am standing in my bakery in my underwear thinking about Colt Lane's hands.
A warm shiver runs through me, and I decide that I absolutely cannot do this dressed the way I am.
"You know what? I need to make sure Morgan is nearly ready to go. Give me two minutes," I manage, and bolt upstairs to change before I completely disintegrate. "I'll be quick!"
By the time I come back down, dressed in jeans, a semi-clean tee and an apron, Colt has the ovens warming and a batch of my premade croissant dough pulled from the walk-in fridge.
He's reading the label on my vanilla extract when I breeze past to resume the impromptu meeting with Delaney.
"This is from Madagascar," he murmurs, turning the bottle in his hand. "Fancy."
Our eyes meet across the kitchen, and the air between us thickens instantly. The kiss hangs there, unspoken, louder than anything either of us could say.
His gaze drops to my mouth. Just for a second.
My stomach flips. Hard.