Chapter 19
CUT!
Audrey
Monday is for maintenance.
No more tree cutting, Winter Market, or other distractions no matter how handsome or festive they might be.
The CLOSED sign sits in the window while I’m in the back—calibrating, testing, perfecting. Sheet pans dry in formation. The mixer bowl gleams because I made it gleam. “Day off” means margins and measurements.
I like it this way.
Parchment slides. A bench scraper whispers. The oven ticks a satisfied cooldown.
A shadow crosses the front glass.
Knuckles, three measured taps. Not tentative. As if sure that the owner is just on the other side despite the sign.
I should ignore it. I don’t. Habit has me wiping my hands as I walk past the counter toward the door.
Jack.
He’s forsaken his sleek cashmere trench for his reindeer bait coat again.
He never came to the bakery yesterday. Just as I asked. Just as I wanted.
But the way my heart double-times makes me wonder if I should’ve been more final. Should’ve put a stop to all distractions sooner.
Turning the lock, I step back, the bell above the door giving a guilty jingle as Jack steps inside, snow glittering off his shoulders.
“Hey.” He smiles—if you can call it that— before looking behind me at the spotless front case, then past it to the kitchen’s military order, and something in his face softens before it steels.
His greeting feels ominous and a lot more serious than what our holiday fling calls for. “Hey.”
I flip the lock again before leading the way through the swinging door, feeling the need to be surrounded by my kitchen equipment— the things I know how to work and run with elite proficiency.
The small kitchen swallows us: stainless and tile and the faint bite of cleaner. I set the spatula down and flatten both palms on the prep table to keep them from doing anything embarrassing. “So how was the library reading—”
“I was going to tell you about the client.” His voice lands sharp and careful on the tile between us. “I meant to. I was going to explain—”
“There’s nothing to explain.” I shift a tray a half inch like proximity is a math problem. “But congratulations.” I stare into my wavering reflection in the steel prep table. “Scott Evans. That’s huge.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see him studying me, like he’s cross-examining a witness who won’t sit.
“Congratulations?” He’s leading the witness.
“You seem to think I’d be angry.” I force myself to meet his eyes. “I’m not angry, Jack.” My tone, like my smile, comes out laminated—bakery-counter smooth. “I went into this knowing it wasn’t permanent.”
He opens his mouth then closes it. The sentence he had dies without a sound.
“I was always honest about what I wanted.” I drop my eyes to the seam in the steel so I won’t have to see his. “And you were honest about who you are.” The smile I paste on is glassy and wrong. “And we both know a Hollywood agent-lawyer isn’t part of the life I moved here for or want.”
I glance at the oven door to my left, its reflection clear enough to see the muscles in Jack’s jaw moving like a storm under his skin.
He looks around like the room might help him like it does me, inventorying the racks, the scales, the lined-up spoons.
“An imaginary life. With an imaginary man.” His voice is too gentle for how sharp it lands. His eyes flick back to me like he already regrets the words but can’t pull them back. “That’s what you moved here for. A postcard husband in flannel with a moral compass that always points to your door.”
Heat prickles under my skin, rising in a rush that feels like tormenting goosebumps. I grab the towel draped over the counter, twisting it hard enough to wring out water that isn’t there.
“Two years ago you moved here, Audrey. And how far along is that dream?” He drags a hand through his hair, leaving it mussed, the clean-cut Hollywood polish slipping. His mouth twists as if the words taste bitter. “That carefully laid out plan with no room for negotiation or deviation?”
The words lodge in my throat. I press the towel flat against the counter, trying to smooth away the sting of them, but my fingers tremble too much.
“And with the way you work”—a breath, a wince—“with how much of a perfectionist you are, do you think you’ll ever find it? Him?”
It’s hard to swallow.
His eyes catch mine, steady and unblinking, daring me to argue. “Even if he’s right in front of you, I doubt you’ll see it.”
We stare at each other for a beat with nothing but the hum of the refrigerator and my own pulse.
“Maybe I won’t.” My voice floats out, light as powdered sugar so he won’t hear the crack in it.
“Maybe I never will.” I set the towel aside with deliberate care, like the gesture alone can prove I’m steady.
“But not wanting to build a life around flight times and clients isn’t a flaw. It’s a boundary.”
“I wasn’t calling it a flaw.” He breaks his stare, scrubbing a hand over his mouth. “I just…” He leaves his thought unfinished. Like us.
Reaching for a cooling rack I don’t need, I slide it between us like a shield. “Neither of us are wrong. We’re just wrong for where we’re headed.”
He leans on the opposite side of the table, palms braced, the two of us bookending a battlefield we built together. “I could—”
“Don’t.” It’s sharp enough that he goes still. “Don’t offer to flip your life to make me feel safe about mine.”
His eyes narrow, the lawyer seeing the weakness in the opposition’s argument. “So you’re scared.”
“Of course I’m scared.” The truth of it is hot and humiliating. “I have a business that works because I work it until my feet go numb. A town that can’t whisper. A mother whose spreadsheets are a love language. I don’t have room for a man who leaves.”
He takes that without flinching. “I haven’t left.”
“Yet.” I aim for kind and hit honest. “And I’m not mad. I’m grateful. I—” The words stop as my heart stumbles. “It was great while it lasted.”
“Was.” He tastes the past tense, grimacing like it’s a bad drink. His gaze flicks to the wall clock, to the door, back to me. “So this is what, audit day? You close the books and write me down as a seasonal expense?”
“That’s unkind.” My words lack the vehemence of truth.
“I’m trying not to be.” He closes his eyes, his voice fraying on an exhale. “I’m trying very hard not to be.”
We hang there in the quiet kitchen, two people pretending not to collapse.
Finally, Jack straightens, moving the way a man does when the punch he didn’t block has landed. His eyes flick to the immaculate sink, the knives in their slots, the neat parade of cooling shells. “It seems you have your picture, and I’m not in it.”
The echo of my words—spoken without venom—is somehow worse.
All I can do is nod.
He obliges by pushing off the table. Not angry. Tidy. Moving through my kitchen with confident, careful steps, pausing only when he reaches the door.
I wait for him to say something. Something brave. Something stupid. Maybe both.
Instead, the moment of silence passes like a final farewell before he unlocks the door and the cold comes in and carries him out.
I stand where he left me, in a kitchen so clean it feels sterile—and just as empty. The table gleams—no flour dust, no stray sprinkle, no proof I didn’t imagine him with his sleeves rolled up and his hand on my lower back telling me I’m out of parchment when I’m not.
The timer for our relationship that I never set goes off in my head.
I hit it with the heels of my palms, rubbing them into my eyes until the burn subsides. Until I can count the week’s orders I memorized in my head. Until I’m positive that I won’t be adding extra salt to my treats with my tears.
Getting to work, I line up a row of whoopie pie shells so straight it hurts. Then I line up another.
Perfect little halves, waiting for someone to put them together.
Jack
The Haven’s room key is heavier than it needs to be. It thunks the desk when I drop it, an accusatory little paperweight beside my laptop and a glass of water I forgot to drink.
I drop my shapeless-but-warm coat over the chair and stare at myself in the full-length mirror on the wall. No tie, no Brioni—just a hand-knit scarf and the kind of fatigue that makes even good decisions look guilty.
I pull out my phone and draft a text: I took on Evans as a client because—
Stop. Delete.
I try again: I didn’t go into this thinking it was temporary—
Stop. Delete slower.
“I went into this knowing it wasn’t permanent.”
What’s the point on explaining when she already made it clear I’m not what-who she wants?
Dropping onto the bed, I check my inbox. Three messages from LA, one from a studio attorney with a subject line that reads like a threat dressed as a favor. I flag them all and answer none before crunching up off the bed to move to the desk and open my laptop.
When you can’t fix a problem, open a spreadsheet. Tabs march across the bottom like good intentions: Permits. Budget. Contacts. Listings. I open the spreadsheet labeled HH—Vet Relocation.
I’ve never been remotely interested in real estate as a profession, and yet I built this file under the guise of helping a friend.
Clicking Listings, I find the real reason I started this file in the three houses I flagged for my personal what-if project.
Fenced yards. A swing set in one photo. A mudroom that looks like it could survive a childhood of hockey players.
I drag the “Houses” tab toward the trash icon, hover, let it go—then pull it back like a coward and rename it “Misc.” Congratulations, me. I’ve rebranded denial.
A calendar reminder pops up: WPAD— schedule posts (pre-set). I already did that, but I check anyway. The social media captions are still there, cheerful and as unassailable as Eileen was when she helped me with them.
Buy one, gift one to help the Harbor Veterinary Clinic move!
Try the Peppermint Bark Whoopie—Love at First Sip staff favorite!
Nothing says holidays in Maine like Making Whoopie.
I close the laptop like it burned me.
Suitcase on the bed. I toss shirts in like I’m mad at them.
The Brioni folds crisply, almost smug about it.
On the dresser, a Haven boutique bag I forgot I bought—flannel, impulse purchase when I bought the coat.
It’s the kind of thing you wear when you’ve decided to look like you belong here.
I pull it out and hold it up. Could be a twin for the one Eli was wearing earlier.
I hate it. But I pack it anyway.
Phone buzz.
Amanda: How’d it go?
I type: Fine.
She types back immediately: Liar. The bubbles tell me she isn’t done. If that were true you’d be in town right now and not sulking at the hotel.
I turn it off, not understanding why I get cell service when I don’t want it but can’t when I do.
All part of Hideaway’s charm, I guess.
No phone. No laptop. No work. Just the kind of silence that lets you replay the recent gut-wrenching transcript line by line.
“…a Hollywood agent-lawyer isn’t part of the life I moved here for or want.” Audrey said it calmly, like she’d lived with the verdict long enough to make peace with the sentence.
What if she’s right? What if everything she said was what I refused to accept the whole time I was playing the part of a local and doing my best impression of a forever family guy? What if leaving now makes her life lighter? Easier? More complete?
I can live with the weight of missing her if it means she gets her happily-ever-after.
Even if it means I don’t.
It takes a night of tossing and turning in my Haven bed, all high-thread-count sheets and downy quilts wasted on a man too restless to sleep, before I finally call time of death on my future in Hideaway.
Gathering the rest of my things, I zip up my suitcase and pocket the key. I don’t even check airline departure times. I’ll wait for whatever flight is next when I get there.
Killing the room lights, I shoulder my coat and head downstairs. The lobby smells like fir and patchouli, and when I check out early, the clerk gives me a sympathetic nod I pretend not to understand.
Outside, the BMW chirps. Snowbanks wear Sunday’s storm like heavy collars, and the plows have since carved the road into a narrow, patient lane. I point the rental toward the airport and let caution set the pace.
Ten under the limit. Wipers metronoming. Headlights stitching a tunnel through the gray.
I keep my phone dark so I don’t get Amanda’s earful and because there’s nothing I can say that won’t make this harder for Audrey— or myself.
Plenty of time, then, for the rerun. And not the heartbreak.
I replay her laugh during my cloven-crush disaster at the farm. The constant sprinkle of flour or cocoa powder on her cheek. How her brow pinches in concentration over the smallest details when she bakes. And the way she looked past me to the life she’s building and didn’t blink.
Okay, a little of the heartbreak.
The road curves, slow and sure.
Tightening my hands on the steering wheel, I drive it the same way.