Chapter 18 Burnt Edges
BURNT EDGES
Audrey
Dawn slides under my curtains like a nosy neighbor peeking through blinds, soft and pale and way too early for a Sunday that technically opens late. My body doesn’t care. Bakers are Pavlov’s dogs—first hint of light, and I’m upright, already tasting cinnamon in a future that hasn’t started yet.
And of course, it doesn’t help that my first thought is of the bundle of heat lying heavy and comforting against my back like a weighted blanket with his arm slung over my waist, last night still warm on my skin.
Jack’s breath tickles the spot where my shoulder meets my neck.
I don’t move. Not because I’m savoring the moment—okay, also because I’m savoring the moment—but because I promised myself I wouldn’t read into it.
Last night was… God. Better than great. The kind of great that ruins you for mediocre.
The kind that makes you grateful your bed is sturdy and your downstairs neighbor is an empty kitchen.
A different me—last year’s me—would already be running a postmortem in my head, itemizing regrets and the exact cost of letting a man like Jack Lourd anywhere near my life.
This me, the one dawn finds with sex hair, fuzzy socks, and an armful of man, closes her eyes for one audacious breath and admits it: I wanted it. Him. For keeps.
A minute. That dream gets one more minute.
I stare at the ceiling and count my heartbeats until one minute becomes two. Then, repeating the words it’s temporary, I untangle myself, inch by careful inch, like defusing a bomb with a frosting knife.
Jack’s arm loosens. He makes a low sound that curls down my spine. I still, breath caught halfway in my throat. His fingers flex against my stomach as if checking I’m still there, then relax.
Feeling very much a coward, I slide my legs over the side of the bed and wince at the icy kiss of floorboards. December has claws. But I welcome the pain. It helps clear my mind that’s been muddied by my heart.
I tiptoe toward the dresser, hooking a finger through my bra where it dangled off the drawer pull like it tried to escape and failed. The radiator along the far wall rattles, and a bike bell chirps softly as the paper boy—another early riser—cycles past my window.
The mattress shifts.
In the mirror above the dresser, I watch Jack’s hand land on the bed where my hip had been a minute ago, patting blindly.
“Come back” comes from the pillow, gravel-soft, like a rumor. The hand drifts to the warm spot I left and flattens there, possessive and unselfconscious, like it owns that square foot of cotton now. “Stay.”
I bite the inside of my cheek. He’s more than half asleep. Definitely not thinking clearly.
But I am. Now at least. And I don’t have any more of those lazy, sticky mornings that stretch into noon if you let them.
“Go back to sleep,” I whisper, already stepping into panties, already constructing the scaffolding of my day. “I have to get downstairs.”
Eyes still closed, he slides his body across the sheets, his torso off the bed, held up by his tensing and drool-worthy abs as he extends his arm again, this time riding up my thigh.
His warm palm makes a lazy slide north that makes me think I’ll need new panties if he drifts any higher.
“I can”—the word dissolves around a yawn—“help.”
I lean over and cup his cheek, his stubble sharp just like his jawline. “Go back to sleep, Hollywood.” I say the last mostly to remind myself where he’s from and where he’s returning to.
He wraps his hand around my thigh, pulling back until his body’s back to lying on the bed, my leg up against the mattress.
His hair is a riot. His mouth is a sin. One eye slits open, heavy-lidded amusement sparking even through sleep. Heat pools low in my belly, traitorous. “You come back to sleep.” He smiles into the pillow. “Or just come back and we can not sleep.”
Amanda’s voice floats back from last night, all glitter and a hundred-watt smile after caroling.
“Go help Amanda.” I aim for breezy and land somewhere near brittle. “The library thing. She mentioned it. She’ll need you.”
Silence. Then, muffled into the mattress, “Amanda doesn’t need me.”
A humorless smile pulls at my mouth. Of course she doesn’t. That’s not the point. The point is remembering that I don’t need him.
How I can work the counter without him leaning there like he owns it, how to pipe buttercream without feeling eyes on me like a warm hand, how to breathe without the inhale hitching when the bell over the door rings and it’s him, it’s him, it’s him.
Extracting myself from his grasp, I catch the corner of my sweater where it’s draped over the chair.
Snow white, soft from too many washes. It smells like vanilla and the ghost of smoke from our brief flirtation with my ancient oven when I forgot a pan of pecans last week because I was too busy staring at Jack’s forearms peeking out from his rolled-up shirtsleeves as he worked on his laptop.
I tug it over my head and try not to get distracted now by how much more of him is peeking above my sheets or how my apartment smells different now, faint soap and cedar layered over everything like an afterthought.
“She’s your client.” Voice firm, I hunt for my other sock, finding it kicked halfway under the bed, and my fingers brush cold wood and a memory of his knee knocking against mine, his laugh low and shocked when I dragged him closer by the waistband.
Focus.
“That’s why you came. For Amanda. For your job. In Los Angeles.” I flatten my voice to bakery-counter neutral. “So go… support her.”
He rolls to his back, giving up on persuading me with a sigh. The sheet slips. I resist the instinct to look because I already know what happens if I do and I need to be standing upright with pants on if I have any hope of surviving the next five minutes.
“Speaking of Los Angeles…” The words stretch as he wakes.
I can feel him surfacing, the way a soufflé rises in the oven—slow and steady.
He scrubs a hand over his jaw. Stubble rasps. “I might have to head back soon. Take care of some things. But”—his voice tries to soften the blow with a promise—“I should be back before Christmas.”
I stop breathing.
I expected this. I told myself all last night that he and I were temporary.
That men like Jack don’t detour into small-town bakeries and decide to stay because the croissants are good and the sex is better.
Men like Jack have lives with capital letters: Deals.
Clients. Deadlines. Cities that eat you alive and call it love.
And yet my sweater suddenly feels too tight.
The room tilts in microscopic degrees before righting itself.
I fumble into my jeans, buttoning them with fingers that don’t want to work.
“Don’t rush.” I find my voice in the same place I keep my inventory lists—practical, unsentimental.
Steadying my hands, I reach for the rest of my clothes. “Don’t come back on my account.”
Silence again, but not sleepy now. Awake. Alert. The kind of quiet that notices details, that puts things together. I don’t look at him, but I feel his frown like a hand pressed between my shoulder blades.
“Audrey.” My name, careful, whereas he usually says it like he’s tasting it.
How did I not realize that until now?
I grab an elastic off my nightstand and smooth my unbrushed hair into a ponytail that would make my mother complain about proper presentation. “I have prep.”
My Crocs peek out from under Jack’s shirt strewn over the chair by the door, and I slide my feet in, the familiar homecoming sending a wave of bone-deep familiarity through me so strong I wobble. Cranberry red. Blue cupcake charms. Ridiculous, and mine.
Stepping into the doorway, I plant myself there like a stop sign. “Batter to mix. Cakes to cool. Frosting to whip. People will be lined up when I flip the sign.”
He sits, the mattress protesting. “I can—”
“Take the morning. Sleep. Then… the library.” I shrug like it doesn’t matter. Like I don’t care when the sudden sting behind my eyes says I care too much. “Or whatever.”
He is fully awake now, I can feel it, the heat of his gaze on the back of my neck like the oven when I open the door too early. “Amanda doesn’t need—”
“Go.” The word comes too hard, too fast, the truth slipping out before I can dress it. “It’s your life. Your work. The thing that brought you here.” I half turn, too much of a coward to fully face him. “That’s not a bad thing, Jack. It just… isn’t mine.”
He swings his legs over the side of the bed. His feet hit the floor, the sheet dragging across his thighs. I force my eyes to my Crocs, but the picture is there in my mind anyway: long lines, warm skin, the low V of muscle disappearing under the soft white cotton of my bedding.
My palms go damp.
From the corner of my eye I watch him scrub both hands through his hair and leave it standing in defiance.
Good. Be ridiculous with me for one second longer.
“What happened between last night and now?” His voice is soft, not accusing, which makes it worse. “Because six hours ago, you—”
“Weren’t thinking,” I cut in, because if I let him finish that sentence I’ll be back in that bed and the bakery will open late and the gossip mill will spin into a cotton-candy tornado.
“Which is rare for me, and probably overdue, and”—a laugh scrapes its way out of my chest—“spectacular. No regrets. But I have a business to run. And a town with very loud opinions and very short attention spans.”
He stands. The room gets smaller without moving. “I don’t care about the town’s—”
“I do.” I give him my back, my one hand squeezing the door trim like a support beam to my sense of reason. “Just… just don’t come to the bakery today.”
A hard breath. That’s the only sound he makes.
I exhale everything I have left and stalk down the hallway, my hand grazing across the wall as I go to keep me steady.