Chapter 37
THIRTY-SEVEN
DAHLIA
They’d salvaged the butter catastrophe by starting over with fresh dough, and Cal had improved marginally on his second attempt, which mostly meant he’d gotten flour on half his face instead of all of it.
The kitchen looked like a bomb had gone off, but it was the good kind of chaos.
Creative chaos. The kind Dahlia associated with her best late-night experiments.
She slid down to sit, back against the cabinet, legs stretched out in front of her. Cal lowered himself beside her with a grunt that might have been lingering soreness from his injuries.
“I haven’t done a thing like this in years.” His head tipped back against the cabinet door, eyes half-closed. “Maybe ever.”
“What, make terrible croissants at two in the morning?”
“Laugh until I can’t breathe. Failed at a thing without caring about the outcome. Spent hours with someone being.” He turned his head to look at her. In the lamplight, with butter stains on his shirt, he looked almost boyish. “I forgot this was possible.”
“The midnight bake tends to have that effect.” Dahlia pulled her knees up, wrapping her arms around them.
“It’s the only time I let myself play. Experiment.
Make things that might not work. During the day, everything has to be perfect.
Customers have expectations. The reputation matters.
But at night...” She shrugged. “At night, I’m me. ”
Cal was silent for a long moment. The oven hummed, croissants slowly puffing into golden crescents behind the glass door.
“Paris,” he said finally. Just the word. A door held open.
Dahlia’s breath caught. “You already know about the letter.”
“I know the facts.” His voice was low, careful. “I’m asking what you want. What you feel when you let yourself want it.”
The question was harder than anything he could have asked about deadlines or logistics. She stared at her hands.
“Like I’d finally be doing something for myself,” she said at last. “Something she wanted for me.” She traced a pattern in the flour on the floor. “And terrified. Because it means admitting I want a thing I gave up on a long time ago.”
Cal was quiet, waiting.
“Because I’ve already decided not to go.” The words came out flat, resigned. “The bakery needs me. My friends need me. The town is under threat, and I can’t—”
“Stop.” Cal scooted sideways, turning to face her. His hand found her chin, tilting her face up until she had no choice but to meet his gaze. “Listen to yourself. The bakery needs you. Your friends need you. The town needs you. When does Dahlia get to need anything?”
Her eyes burned. “That’s not how it works.”
“That’s exactly how it works.”
“I’d be gone for six months.” Her voice cracked. “The bakery—”
“Will survive. You have staff. You have friends who’d help. And you have—” He stopped, uncertainty crossing his face. “You’d have someone to come back to.”
Dahlia’s heart pounded. “You’re going back to Seattle.”
Cal was quiet. The silence stretched, filled with the soft hum of the oven and the distant sound of waves against the shore.
“Maybe not,” he said finally.
Dahlia stared at him. “What?”
“Maybe not.” Cal exhaled slowly, like he was releasing weight he’d been holding for a long time.
“I built Ursa Consulting from nothing. Poured everything I had into making it successful—my time, my energy, my health. I told myself it was about proving I was more than my father’s abandoned legacy.
But the company became the legacy. The only thing I was building was my own prison. ”
He turned to face her fully, his knee pressing against hers on the flour-dusted floor.
“I came here planning to fix the sleuth and go back. Clean up my grandfather’s mess, defeat Magnus, and return to my real life. But this is my real life. The sleuth. The town. The people who actually know me, not the version I perform in boardrooms.” His voice dropped. “You.”
“Cal...”
“I’m not saying I have it figured out. The company needs transition planning.
The sleuth needs an alpha who’s actually present, not one with a foot out the door.
There are logistics.” He caught both her hands in his, holding them like treasure.
“But for the record? If you go to Paris, I’ll be here when you get back.
And if six months in Paris turns into a year, or a career, or a whole new life—I’d rather figure out how to be part of that than go back to building walls in Seattle. ”
Dahlia’s lungs forgot how to work. The words kept echoing in her head, rearranging everything she thought she knew.
“You barely know me.” The words scarcely carried.
He lifted her hands to his lips, pressing a kiss to her knuckles that cracked the last of her defenses wide open.
“And I know that you’re the first person in years I haven’t wanted to run from. That I’ve spent two hours failing at croissants and it’s the best night I can remember.” His lips quirked. “Also, you make incredible croissants, even when your assistant is actively sabotaging the dough.”
Dahlia laughed—a wet, shaky sound that was half sob. “They haven’t even come out of the oven yet. They might be terrible.”
“Then they’ll be terrible.” He smiled—that rare, genuine smile that transformed his tired face.
“And we’ll eat them anyway. And it’ll be perfect, because it’s before dawn, and I’m sitting on a flour-covered floor with the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met.
And for the record? I’m choosing this. Choosing you. Whatever that means.”
She kissed him.