Chapter 10
Tess
I am trapped.
I look at the kid, Maya, who is now babbling a mile a minute with Leo about mana cores and shadow magic.
She is animated in a way that makes my chest ache, because ten minutes ago, she was crying like someone had kicked her in the ribs.
Now her eyes are bright, her hands flying as she talks, and she is looking at him like he just handed her oxygen.
I look at Leo.
My useless, expensive, destructive employee.
And in thirty seconds, he does what I never do. He forms a real, immediate, human connection with a customer. Not a transaction. Not a polite smile. Not the practiced script I use to keep people from seeing the panic behind my eyes.
A connection.
Of course, he does it by being a giant, dusty nerd about some fantasy series I have never heard of in my life.
Of course.
I let out a long sigh. Gwen says she can hear it from the back sometimes and knows exactly what kind of day it is going to be.
“I can’t,” I say, because I have to start somewhere, and the truth is usually the sharpest place, “make that.”
I point to the fondant monster on Maya’s phone. Three tiers. Black. Crystalline. A sculpture pretending to be food.
“It’s 3:15,” I say. “I’m a baker, not a wizard.”
Maya’s face starts to fall. Her mouth opens just slightly, the first crack in the revived hope.
And something in me, the part that is exhausted and stubborn and stupidly full of pride, shifts gears.
“But,” I continue, my voice sharpening as I click into wartime mode, “I have three eight-inch chocolate rounds from a canceled order this morning. They’re already baked. I have a lot of dark chocolate. And I have buttercream.”
I spin, and my eyes land on Leo.
The look I give him is the kind of look that used to make men twice his size take a step back when I ran kitchens. It says you are on the edge of a cliff, and I will not catch you if you jump.
“You.”
“Yes, boss,” he says immediately, snapping to attention and accidentally raising his broom like a rifle.
I ignore the urge to laugh.
“It’s your time to shine,” I tell him. “You’re the art department.” I take a slow, controlled breath, trying not to think about how much stress this adds to my day. “We cannot mess this up. Do you understand?”
“Clear,” he says, his voice grim.
I turn to Maya.
“You,” I say. “You’re the consultant. You’re quality control. You tell us if the scepter is right.” Then I lift my voice like a siren. “Gwen!”
Gwen bursts out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. “Boss?”
“Emergency buttercream,” I bark. “Dark chocolate. I want it black. As dark as you can get it without it tasting like ash. Everyone. Go. Now. Move.”
The bakery, which has been winding down, explodes into a frenzy of controlled chaos.
It is a culinary flash mob.
My body moves on instinct. I don’t think. I do. The three chocolate rounds are already cooled. I level them, stack them, and crumb coat them in less than five minutes. Offset spatula. Turntable. Quick, efficient swipes that are pure muscle memory and stubbornness.
“It’s not going to be fondant, kid,” I call to Maya, who watches like she’s witnessing a crime and a miracle at the same time. “Fondant tastes like sugary plastic. This is real buttercream. It’ll taste better.”
Gwen fires up the massive stand mixer. It roars to life, whipping a vat of glistening, midnight black frosting that looks like a void.
“Leo!”
He jumps like he’s been shocked.
“I need decorations. The anime thing. I need stars. And a galaxy. Or something.” I can hear how unhinged I sound, and I do not care. “Get me stars. Silver. And purple.”
He stares at me, lost. “Get you how? From where?”
“Leo, think,” I snap.
I grab a piping bag, shove a star tip into the end, and scoop pale purple buttercream from the fridge. I thrust the bag at him.
“Squeeze,” I order. “Gently. From the top. Make a star. Stop squeezing. Pull up. A five-year-old can do this. I need a hundred. On this parchment. Go.”
He holds the piping bag like it is a live grenade. His big, raw, bandaged hands fumble with the plastic cone, and for one alarming second, I picture him holding a scalpel while a patient quietly accepts their fate.
He squeezes.
A giant, obscene purple blob erupts onto the parchment.
It is not a star.
It is a disaster.
Squeeze. Blob. Squeeze.
Maya lets out a surprised giggle. A real one. Bright and delighted, like she forgot she was allowed to laugh. Gwen rushes past with the black frosting and snorts.
“It’s all in the wrist, pretty boy,” she calls. “Don’t manhandle it.”
Leo’s face turns a furious red. “I’m not. I’m just…”
I am at his side now, watching the carnage. “You’re holding it like you’re trying to strangle it. Your hands are too hot. You’re melting the buttercream.” I point to his grip. “Hold it here.”
And then I do something I don’t usually do.
I put my hand over his.
It’s the first time we really touch since I grabbed his arm on day one, and the contrast hits me like a spark.
His hand is huge, clumsy, and yes, ridiculously warm.
Mine is small and strong, permanently dusted with flour, fingers calloused and sure.
The contact is startling in a way I do not have time to examine.
“Squeeze,” I command, dragging my focus back to the task. “From the top. With this hand.” I adjust his grip, firm. “This one just guides. Gentle pressure. Now stop. Pull up. There.”
He does it.
Under my hand, he produces a star.
It is lumpy. A sad star, with one point shorter than the others. But it is unmistakably a star.
“See?” I say, my voice softening without permission, closer to his ear than it needs to be. “Not a complete disaster.”
He stares at our hands, his massive one beneath mine, then at the star, then up at me. He looks like he expects me to yank it away and tell him it is still wrong.
I am scowling because scowling is safer than anything else. Still, I can feel my eyes betraying me.
Focused. Soft.
In the corner of the bakery, a college student who has been quietly studying now has her phone out. I am too busy keeping my kitchen from imploding and my customer from crying to engage, but it almost looks like she is filming.
I look back at Leo and pull my hand away.
Leo inhales like he is about to perform surgery. He tries again.
Squeeze. Stop. Pull.
Another star.
This one is better.
He looks up at me and beams, openly proud.
“I did it,” he says, like a toddler who has just mastered the potty.
I glance up. Our eyes meet. A tiny, almost smile slips out before I can stop it.
He sees it.
“Do not get cocky, Leo,” I say, forcing my voice back into business. “You have ninety-eight more to pipe.”
The student is now grinning at her screen, thumbs flying. I push the strange flutter in my chest aside and keep working.
For the next hour, we move without stopping.
Leo pipes one hundred stars with heroic concentration. His tongue sticks out slightly when he focuses, which is ridiculous and absolutely not something my brain should be recording, yet here we are.
I frost the cake with midnight-black buttercream, my spatula leaving a smooth, flawless surface. Then I take a fine brush and a pot of edible silver luster dust and paint a galaxy, flicking the bristles to form distant nebulae, mirroring the colors on Maya’s phone wallpaper.
“The scepter,” Maya says nervously. “It’s the most important part.”
Leo looks at his stars, and I watch dread settle into him. He knows it with absolute certainty. He cannot pipe a scepter. He will only make another blob.
“Boss,” he says. I look up, already irritated, because my day has been an unbroken parade of problems I did not order. “I can’t pipe it.”
“Figure it out, Art Department.”
He scans the bakery, frantic. Then his eyes lock onto the snack box Gwen keeps under the counter.
“Fruit Roll Ups. Do you have… fruit leather?” he asks.
I stare at him, baffled. “In the snack box. Why?”
He does not answer.
He grabs a red, strawberry-flavored Fruit Roll-Up and unrolls it onto parchment. He picks up a paring knife and suddenly, his hands change.
The same hands that fumbled with a piping bag go steady and precise.
This is design. This is angles.
With a few careful cuts, he transforms the flat, sticky sheet into a sharp, multifaceted crystalline shape.
It is the scepter from the novel.
Not the anime version.
The real one.
He dusts it lightly with silver luster dust, just enough to make it catch the light.
“Here,” he says, holding it up.
Maya gasps. “It’s… It’s perfect. It’s the real one. The Kael scepter!”
I just stare.
Because it is perfect.
And because I do not know what to do with the fact that my disaster employee has just solved a problem I did not even realize existed.
I take the fruit leather scepter from him. My fingers brush his, quick and accidental, and I refuse to catalog the sensation. I place it against the side of the black, glittering cake with the careful precision of a surgeon.
Then, together, we scatter his lumpy purple stars across the galaxy.
We step back.
It is not the fondant monster from the phone.
It is better.
It is a Sunrise and Salt cake. All heart. Full of imperfections. Anchored by a perfectly nerdy, accurate fruit leather scepter and a hundred uneven, loving stars.
Maya starts crying again, but this time the tears are joy.
“It’s the best cake I’ve ever seen,” she whispers.
Then she darts around the counter and hugs me with full force, burying her face in my flour-dusted apron.
I freeze.
My entire body locks up.
I am not a hugger. I am a person who weaponizes efficiency and personal space.
After a long, deeply awkward second, I pat her back like she might bolt at any moment.
“Ok, kid,” I mutter. “Don’t… don’t smudge the buttercream.”
Maya’s mom is crying too now. She digs into her wallet, hands shaking. “You don’t understand what this means to her. To us. Maya has been through a lot this year, and seeing her smile like that…” Her voice breaks. “Please. Name your price. Anything.”
I glance at the clock.
4:32 p.m.
I am exhausted. Flour, purple buttercream, and silver luster dust coat every surface. The bakery looks like it survived a small, glamorous explosion.
“It’s… ten dollars,” I say, my voice rough. “For the scepter.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she says, but she does not argue. She stuffs a crumpled hundred-dollar bill into the tip jar. “Thank you. Thank you both.”
They leave with Maya clutching the cake box like it is the Holy Grail, chattering nonstop about Lord Kael and how this is the best birthday of her life.
The bell jingles. The door shuts.
The bakery drops into sudden, profound silence.
It is a disaster zone.
Gwen, who has watched the entire spectacle with open delight, finally starts cleaning, like she has been waiting for the curtain call.
“Well,” she says, “that’s a new one. Art Department. Nice promotion. You’re a regular multi-hyphenate. Ghost scrubber, dough shaper, star maker.”
Leo is still buzzing with leftover adrenaline. He is smeared with purple frosting and dusted in silver. He looks like a unicorn met an unfortunate end on his torso.
And he is happy.
Genuinely. Simply. Stupidly happy.
“I made a star,” he says, grinning at me as he holds up his purple-stained hands like proof.
I lean against the counter, arms crossed, glaring at the mess like it has personally offended me.
Then I look at him. Frosting covered. Radiant. Ridiculous.
And I lose.
A laugh slips out of me.
It is short and rough, like a sound I have not used in a long time, but it is real. I feel it soften something behind my eyes, pushing the exhaustion back just a little.
“Yeah, Leo,” I say, the corner of my mouth lifting into an honest smile. “You made a star.”
The moment lingers. Warm. Bright.
Then I kill it, because I am me.
“Now clean up,” I say. “Everything. The floor, the bowls, the sparkle dust.”
But the air has changed. The tension is gone.
He is not just a ghost in my kitchen anymore. He is a deeply, profoundly incompetent anime nerd intern who pipes stars.
He starts scrubbing purple-stained bowls. His phone, forgotten in the pocket of his new practical jacket, begins to buzz on the counter. Again. And again. And again. It vibrates itself toward the edge in a frantic little dance.
“What is wrong with your phone?” I ask because the noise is unbearable.
I grab it and hold it up, intending to hand it over to him.
The screen is a strobing wall of notifications. Twitter. Instagram. TikTok. Dozens of texts are stacked on top of each other.
One message sits at the top.
JULIAN: DUDE. YOU’RE TRENDING. #BakeryBoo. CALL ME. The docu-crew is a GO.
My face goes cold.
The college girl.
Whatever warmth existed two seconds ago snaps into something sharp and brittle. I drop the phone back onto the counter like it’s contaminated.
Because, of course, the universe cannot let one good moment stay small.
I stare at Leo’s phone as it keeps buzzing, notifications multiplying like bacteria, and I feel the trap cinch tight around my ribs.
Because I did not ask for this.
I just wanted to bake bread.