Chapter Six | FLINT
Chapter Six
FLINT
By six Sunday evening, I’d retied the white apron over my clean dark henley twice and still didn’t know what to do with my hands.
The final cook station waited under the gold light of Cinder Ridge Meadow. My cast iron, knives, butter crock, flour, and empty skillet sat in a straight line. Caprice held the sealed envelope at the center table, her thumb already tucked under the flap but not tearing it open until Ed had focus.
Yesterday, that money had been the point.
After the wardrobe reset, Sunny stood across the clearing in a cream sleeveless blouse with red piping, cuffed dark denim, and cognac lace-up ankle boots with enough tread to keep me quiet about footwear.
Her copper curls were pulled high with a navy scarf.
She looked bright, sharp, ready, and so much like the woman who’d slept against me last night that I picked up a towel and folded it before I forgot where the cameras were.
I wanted to win.
Fire Mountain always had something that needed fixing or funding, and twenty-five thousand dollars could do more good than another filmed argument about marshmallows.
Sunny wanted it too. She’d earned the right to want it. Every inch of her had fought to turn a ruined shoot into something bigger.
I couldn’t hand it to her.
She’d hate that, and I’d hate myself for treating her like she needed me to step aside.
If my food beat hers, it had to be because I’d done my best. If her food beat mine, I’d stand there and take it like a man who respected her.
Either way, I needed Sunny to look at me after the score and still see someone worth choosing.
Caprice clapped once beside the center table. “This is the final round, people. I need cameras up. Nobody sees that card until Ed tells me he has focus.”
Ed shifted behind his camera, ball cap low, headset crooked, one hand on the lens. “I have focus. Whether any of you have focus remains an open question.”
Joelle stood near the ingredient table with her clipboard, wearing a pale blue utility shirt, dark shorts, and the same calm expression she’d had while moving hot pans, sponsor product, and Sunny’s temper all weekend. “Cameras are rolling. Ingredients are covered. Both stations are cold.”
Sunny lifted her hand. “I’d like the record to show I’ve touched nothing hot.”
“The day is still young,” Ed said.
“I’m choosing to hear confidence in that.”
I looked at her station because staring at Sunny on camera would get me in trouble with the woman, the producer, and my own concentration.
Her table was set up cleaner than it had been Friday.
It still looked like hers, with peach-colored towels, a small glass bowl of honey, a white apron tied neatly at her waist, and a line of utensils with enough space between the pretty and the practical.
She’d listened.
That made me want her worse.
Caprice stepped into the marked center area, her black cropped pants dusted with meadow grit and her sleeveless white top already wrinkled from production stress. Statement earrings swung against her neck when she lifted the envelope higher.
“Round Three,” she said toward Ed’s camera. “The final mystery round of the Get Fired Up! Cook-Off. The score is tied one to one. Sunny took Round Two with elevated campfire-main magic. Flint took Round One by making everyone believe marshmallows had moral value.”
“That’s correct,” I said.
Sunny pointed at me without looking away from camera. “He’s very proud of his goo discipline.”
“Goo discipline wins rounds.”
“It wins concerns.”
Caprice snapped her fingers. “I need both of you to save thirty percent of this for usable footage. The final prompt is sealed, neither competitor knows the theme, and the winner takes the twenty-five-thousand-dollar prize.”
She tore open the envelope.
Sunny’s shoulders went still. Mine did the same.
Caprice pulled out the card, read it, and smiled in a way that meant trouble with a shot list.
“Breakfast for Dinner.”
Sunny blinked once. Then slowly, beautifully, she grinned.
My hands went to the flour before I finished thinking. Cast-iron biscuits. Sausage gravy. Eggs. Bacon. Potatoes crisped hard at the edges. Food a crew could eat after a long day, heavy enough to hold a man upright and simple enough to prove it knew what it was.
Across from me, Sunny reached for cornmeal before Caprice finished reading the rest.
“Competitors have ninety minutes,” Caprice said.
“Use the supplied ingredient table and your declared prep bins. Each final plate needs one main campfire breakfast-for-dinner dish and one supporting element. Judges are Joelle, Ed, and me. Camera gets process, plating, and tasting. Nobody invents a fire tornado for visual appeal.”
Ed adjusted his headset. “That was one suggestion.”
“It was a terrible suggestion,” Joelle said.
“It was a phrase, not a plan.”
Sunny tied her apron tighter. “Breakfast for Dinner? Caprice, this envelope has taste.”
“The envelope is currently the most cooperative person on set,” Caprice said.
I reached for flour. “This works.”
Sunny’s eyes cut to mine. “It would. You look like a man who considers gravy a love language.”
“It says what it needs to say.”
“Usually while sitting on a biscuit and blocking an artery.”
“Are you scared?”
“I’m never scared of beige food.”
I should’ve fired back faster. Instead, I watched her scoop cornmeal into a bowl, her fingers steady, her mouth curved. Her stance stayed planted in the packed dirt. She measured, stirred, and took her place across from me without giving an inch to the mountain or the camera.
My chest tightened.
I looked down at my station and cut cold butter into flour with two knives because I knew how to do that without giving away too much.
Ed moved between us, filming the tables. “Flint, what are you making?”
“Cast-iron biscuits, sausage gravy, eggs, bacon, and firepit potatoes.”
Sunny made a sound from across the clearing. “That isn’t a dish. That’s a lodge menu.”
“It’s dinner.”
“It’s breakfast.”
“That’s the prompt.”
She laughed and poured buttermilk into her bowl. “I hate that you’re technically correct.”
“You say that a lot.”
“You earn it a lot.”
Ed swung the camera toward her. “Sunny, what are you making?”
“Cornmeal griddle cakes with peach compote, whipped honey butter, and candied bacon.” She looked straight into the lens. “It’s sweet, savory, smoky, and bright enough to convince breakfast it should dress up for dinner.”
“See?” I said. “That dish needs a speech.”
“It deserves one. Yours needs a napkin and a cardiologist.”
Caprice checked her stopwatch. “Your ninety minutes have started, so please threaten each other while working.”
Spoons hit bowls. Flour rasped under my knives.
Sunny’s whisk tapped fast, then slower as the batter came together.
Bacon met my skillet with a low hiss. Coals shifted under the grates, sending up steady heat that rolled over my knuckles.
The evening sun slipped lower behind Fire Mountain, turning the meadow grass from dry gold to copper.
I pressed biscuit dough together without overworking it. My mother had taught me that when I was ten. Push too hard and biscuits got tough. Leave them alone too much and they fell apart. Good dough needed hands that knew the difference.
I cut clean rounds with a tin cup and laid them in a buttered skillet.
Across the clearing, Sunny tested the heat over her griddle with her palm held high above the surface.
She didn’t crowd the station. She didn’t set towels near the coals.
When wind moved through the meadow, she paused, checked the smoke, and shifted her bowl two inches away from the heat before stirring again.
“You moved that bowl before I said anything,” I called.
Sunny looked up. “I’m growing as a person.”
“You’re learning fire behavior.”
“That too, but mine sounds cuter.”
“It is cute.”
Her spoon stopped.
So did mine.
Ed made a quiet noise from behind the camera.
Sunny recovered first. “Careful, Flint. Compliments this close to open flame may be regulated.”
“I checked the permit.”
Her smile softened at the edges. “Good. I’d hate to be fond of a reckless man.”
My fingers tightened around the biscuit cutter.
I folded the dough scraps and cut the last biscuit. “You should keep stirring.”
“You should keep pretending that didn’t affect you.”
“It didn’t.”
“You’re cutting that biscuit like it owes you money.”
I looked down. The tin cup was still in my hand, pressed into dough that had already been cut.
Ed shifted his camera toward my table.
I lifted the cup and set it down carefully. “Technical adjustment.”
Sunny laughed, low and warm, then turned back to her griddle cakes.
Her batter hit the cast iron with a soft sizzle and spread into clean rounds.
Sunny watched the edges, not the camera. When the first cake bubbled, she waited one more breath before flipping it. The underside showed a deep golden crust, not pale, not burned.
I wanted that work rewarded.
Then I looked at my biscuits rising in the skillet, the bacon curling beside the potatoes, and the gravy starting to thicken. I still wanted to win.
My hand stopped over the sausage spoon. I flexed my fingers once, wiped them on my apron, and made myself keep cooking.
Sunny glanced up right then. Her attention held across the heat shimmer and folding shadows.
For one quiet stretch, the cameras had only silence. She looked at me, then at the prize table, then back to me, and I had to trust that both could matter.
We both looked away at the same time.
Caprice cleared her throat. “That was either very useful or very legally complicated. Ed, tell me you had focus.”
“I had focus,” Ed said. “Nobody had audio because nobody said anything.”
“That’s tragic.”
“It was my favorite part of the weekend.”
Joelle checked her watch. “Sixty-eight minutes.”
That snapped me back.