Chapter 15
fifteen
. . .
The Black Coffee Empire Has Fallen
HALSTON
There are three things that I know for certain by nine fifteen on Wednesday morning.
One, Barrett Whitaker has terrible taste in food.
Two, my bakery is not dying, despite what my anxiety and a few extra empty tables would like me to believe.
Three, Warren King is a liar.
Not a huge liar. Not about taxes or murder or whether he secretly has a second family in Munich that also gets production schedules with five billion columns.
But a liar all the same.
Because no man who keeps looking at the coconut syrup like a soulmate gone to war hates sweet coffee as much as Warren claims to hate sweet coffee.
He stands at the prep table with his sleeves rolled up his forearms, his stupid notebook open beside him, and a black coffee sitting untouched next to it.
Untouched.
Criminal.
I narrow my eyes at him from my place in front of the espresso machine.
He doesn’t look up. “Stop staring at me.”
“I’m not staring.”
“You are.”
“You have no idea what I’m doing. You haven’t even looked.”
“You get quiet. It’s unsettling.”
“I get quiet all the time.”
His pen pauses, and his eyes find mine. The look he gives me is so flat and unimpressed that I feel it somewhere in my belly.
“Fine,” I say. “Rarely. But it happens.”
“No.”
“Once.”
“No.”
“I… slept. Once.”
“That’s not quiet; that’s being unconscious.”
I point the milk thermometer at him. “You’re being way too hostile for six in the morning.”
“You’ve been accusing me of coffee crimes.” He says it like he’d rather be discussing quite literally anything else.
“I wouldn’t be accusing you if you weren’t committing them.”
His gaze flicks to the coconut syrup and back to me. “I drink black coffee.”
I roll my eyes. “You’re saying it like you’re desperate to convince yourself of the fact.”
“It’s a preference.”
“Okay.”
His mouth moves just a little, but it’s enough, and I hate how fluent in Warren King’s microscopic emotions I’ve become.
He looks back at his notebook. “We’re not discussing my coffee.”
“Oh, we absolutely are.”
“We’re discussing the menu.”
“Your coffee is part of that.”
“It’s not.”
“Your coffee lies are important to the overall health of this place. A coconut latte is one of my signatures this week, and you secretly want one.”
“I don’t.”
I pick up the coconut syrup and shake it once. His eyes dart to it.
I gasp.
He looks immediately irritated. “Halston. I do not.”
My name feels like a warning, and heat moves down my spine.
We’ve been pretending that night never happened.
None of it. Obviously the kiss happened.
I can still feel his lips on mine if I stop and let myself think about it for more than half a second.
The way his hands rested at my waist, and the low sound he made when I pulled his hair and the careful way he stopped himself from taking more than he should even though it broke me.
Warren did the honorable thing, even if it was the last thing I needed in the moment. But it hurt my feelings.
He had kissed me like he was willing to forget every boundary, then looked at me like I was just another item on his list to assess. Too messy. Too likely to cause issues.
And on the other hand, I feel guilty. Why was I so ready to throw my best friend’s feelings on the subject out the window?
But it’s been a long time since I’ve felt wanted. Not like this.
And now we’re building a menu together. Romance is dead.
I set the syrup down harder than necessary, and Warren exhales through his nose.
I walk over and look over his shoulder. The notebook is divided into columns. One side says “concept,” and the other says “execution.”
My side of the prep table is covered in pink sticky notes, a highlighter, three pastry sketches a half-eaten banana, a coconut milk carton, and a ribbon I may use for packaging if Warren stops calling ribbon “nonessential material waste.”
He points to the page. “We need three items.”
“I want five.”
“Absolutely not.”
“You say no far too often.”
“And you suggest five far too often.” He looks down again. “Three items.”
“Four.”
“Three and a drink.”
“A drink is an item.”
“It’s a beverage.”
“It still requires you to prep something.”
“Barely.”
“You’re making coconut syrup from scratch.”
“Why would someone come here and buy something when they could just order the syrups online and make twenty lattes at home for the price of two?”
“You have a million other things to do for those three food items, Hal. You need to stick with three.”
“Like what?” I shift my weight, my hip hitting the table.
“Like the banana pastry cream. And the pink and blue packaging.”
“I have dreams to uphold.”
Warren looks at the ceiling for a second, as if asking a higher power for strength, and then returns to his notebook. “Three food items and one drink.”
I gasp. “Did you just compromise?”
He sighs. “I’m making an adjustment.”
The thing about fighting with Warren is that it should be miserable.
It can be terrible, sure. The other night was awful and left me standing in my kitchen after midnight with swollen lips and a bruised heart, wondering how a man can want me so badly and still make me feel like I’m a problem he has to solve.
But most of the time, it’s like striking a match against stone.
I pick up my sketch and slide it across the table. “This one.”
Warren looks down.
The sketch isn’t good, exactly. It’s cute, though. A rectangular laminated pastry with rounded edges and banana cream in the center. Toasted sugar on top and a tiny drizzle of blue vanilla glaze with a pink sugar bow.
Warren studies it.
“What?” I ask.
“I’m thinking.”
“That’s terrifying.”
“I think it needs less cream than you have here.”
I lean over and tap the sketch. “It’s supposed to feel like a little too much, though. It’s joyful. Soft and nostalgic. Banana and vanilla.”
“And it can be. It just needs a tiny bit less banana cream to balance it all out. It’s a complicated pastry that shows that you’re serious about craft while also being playful.”
He considers this, and the fight leaves his face. “Okay,” he says finally.
I’m about to do a victory dance when he adds, “Can we reduce the cream by twenty percent?”
“No.”
“Ten.”
“Five.”
“Eight.”
“Seven.”
He pauses.
“Was that another compromise?” I smile.
“It’s math.”
“I just enjoy winning.”
He looks at me then. Really looks, and the tension snaps back so sharply that I almost feel it run through me like fire. His eyes are dark and steady, and he looks tired of control. Something that says every single one of our touches is running through his head. My hands in his hair.
“You should be careful,” he says calmly.
The side of the table digs into my hip harder. “About math?”
“No.”
I lift my chin. “Maybe I don’t really like careful.”
For one reckless second, I think he may make a move.
But then the tension breaks, and he looks down at the notebook instead. “Seven percent,” he says.
I blink. “What?”
“Cream reduction.”
I blink again, and laugh.
“Fine,” I say. “Seven percent.”
We spend the next few hours testing the pastry. I name it seven times, and Warren rejects four of the names immediately.
We settle on The Vanilla Standard.
“That works,” he says after a moment of weighing it on his tongue.
When it’s done, Warren makes several notes for the next batch. Unfortunately, he’s right, and it needs less cream for the benefit of its structural integrity.
The folds need to be better, and the top of the pastry dough needs a better vent cut.
The second try is better.
The third is perfect.
We shift our focus to the drink. A coconut latte.
It takes less time, but I already know exactly how I want it.
Homemade toasted coconut syrup, vanilla bean, and a pinch of salt. Two shots of strong espresso and oat milk. Cold foam with coconut cream in it and toasted coconut sugar dusted across the top.
Warren insists on testing the ratios, but I insist on following the vibes.
We meet somewhere in the middle, which is becoming quite the theme.
I pour the first test latte into a glass and slide it toward him, but he just stares at it like it may expose him as a murderer in court.
“Drink,” I demand.
“I don’t need to.”
“You wanted to test ratios.”
He glares at me.
“It’s a latte, Warren. Not a bridge you have to jump off of.”
His large hand wraps around the glass, and I watch his fingers with the intensity of someone deeply sexually deprived.
Because I am.
There’s something deeply rude about someone having hands like that and then not using them.
He takes a sip, and I watch his mouth.
His eyes flick to mine as he sets it down.
“It’s too sweet.”
“Liar.”
“It is.”
“You liked it.”
He looks away.
“You liked it,” I say, softer this time.
“I’d say you may want to recalibrate your espresso machine. Make sure the espresso is as strong as these beans are supposed to be.”
“Dirty talk to me, Warren,” I joke with an eye roll.
His lips thin. “Hal.”
We test the ratios three more times. By the fourth, Warren’s black coffee is still untouched, and his mouth has found three other ways not to say he likes coconut.
I name it The Runaway Coconut Latte.
He rejects it.
“Why?”
“It sounds like the coconut escaped the drink.”
“It did escape. From the tyranny of black coffee.”
“Halston.”
“Coconut with Commitment.”
“No.”
“Tall, Dark, and Coconut.”
He sighs and considers this one before rejecting it.
I cross my arms. “Then what do you suggest?”
He looks at the drink.
It’s beautiful. Soft white foam and toasted coconut are sexy.
“Coconut Bloom,” he says after a moment.
I pause.
“Damn it,” I whisper. “That one's really good.”
“I know.”
The drink sells out in two hours. The pastry sells out in one.
By lunch, the photo Marley took when she arrived has been shared by three different local food accounts, two regulars, and one Vipers player who captions his picture, “Barrett who?”
Oliver cautiously calls it inflammatory, while Marley insists that it’s organic reach.