Chapter 12
Tess
I watch him.
I’m stressed. Furious at the world. Sleep-deprived in a way that makes time feel like it’s folding in on itself. And yet I watch him.
I storm back from the front counter, fresh off an encounter with a TikToker demanding a free pastry for exposure, as if my landlord accepts exposure as legal tender.
My face is a mask of thunder. My jaw hurts from clenching.
My shoulders hurt from existing. I stalk toward the back, ready to find fault, prepared to yell at him, the author of my misery.
And then I just stop.
And watch.
He is in his corner, back to the chaos of the shop, his ridiculously expensive black T-shirt stretched taut across broad shoulders. He is working. Not on his phone. Not complaining. Not doing that helpless-rich-man stare, waiting for someone else to solve his incompetence.
He is shaping dough.
Pull. Scrape. Turn. Fold.
And the infuriating thing is that his movements are no longer clumsy. Not oafish. They are economical. Smooth. He has rhythm. The bench scraper becomes an extension of his hand, just as I taught him, and the fact that he listens makes something inside me itch.
He lifts a twenty-pound tub of dough, twenty pounds of eighty-percent hydration, living, sticky chaos, with an easy, practiced motion. On the first day, that same tub would have made him stagger like a newborn deer. Now he hefts it, shifts it, sets it down like it is part of him.
He divides it. His cuts are clean. He shapes. It is competence. Almost attractive competence.
I hate incompetence. I am allergic to it. I hate clumsiness and inefficiency, and the way they make my life harder because I do not have time. I do not have the emotional budget to drag grown adults across the finish line of basic functioning.
“Are you having fun?” Gwen suddenly appears behind me. I turn and see the grin on her face.
“I was just making sure he is not messing things up,” I lie.
Gwen nods and heads back to the oven.
For the past week, I have watched this business-minded billionaire transform, through sheer stubborn repetition, into a competent worker. Not a baker, not yet, but a worker. Someone who shows up, does the task, and does not whine.
And I find myself watching his hands.
The way he handles the dough is gentle yet firm and confident. The way his fingers curl and release. The subtle push and pull that turns a sticky surface into taut perfection in a few controlled movements.
I find myself watching his forearms, always coated in flour, muscles flexing with the rhythmic pull and fold.
I find myself watching the line of his back, the way he hunches in absolute concentration, brow furrowed, tongue stuck out just a little at the corner of his mouth, like an overgrown child doing math homework.
Completely unaware he is being watched.
And it annoys me. It annoys me that I find it attractive. It infuriates me that, despite the chaos he brings to my life, a tiny, traitorous part of me is impressed.
He isn’t a joke.
He isn’t a tourist.
He is, impossibly, working.
Our shift is almost over. The last of the influencer-tourists finally leave, and I lock the door at three p.m., hours early, because we sell out of everything and I am simply done. There is nothing left in me to smile at another person asking if we still have the billionaire intern.
Gwen is finishing up, muttering something about needing a beer after her shift. Or maybe five. I do not correct her math.
The bakery is silent except for the low hum of the coolers.
Leo is in his corner, finishing his final task: pre-shaping the boules for tomorrow morning. He has a row lined up on the floured steel table like obedient little soldiers.
On my way to my office, I stop.
I walk over, arms crossed, and pick up one of his boules.
It is perfect.
That word lands in my brain with a strange, reluctant thud.
I prod it. The tension is right. The surface pops back. I flip it over. The seam is on the bottom. Neat. Tight. Centered. This is not a C-plus. Not even a B-plus. It is an A-minus. It is good.
Leo stands there, panting slightly, wiping sweat and flour from his forehead with his forearm. He looks serious, focused, exhausted in a way I recognize the good exhaustion, the kind you earn.
“They’re ok?” he asks.
His voice is rough. He has not spoken in hours.
I look at the boule. I look at the row of eight other perfect boules. I look at him, floury hands, calloused, serious, exhausted.
Something inside me cracks, just a little. The wall of ice I have built since the news van, the circus, the comments, and the one-star reviews shifts imperceptibly.
“They’re not sloppy,” I say. In my language, this is the highest compliment.
He lets out a breath. A small, proud smile touches his lips.
And the crack widens.
Because I cannot reconcile the two Leos.
There is the Leo from the social media circus, the walking PR hazard, the billionaire who accidentally turns my bakery into content.
And then there is this one, the one who has, in ten days, mastered the single most difficult fundamental skill of my craft through sheer repetition and bruised ego.
I need to know.
I need to test him.
“You think you’re good,” I say, voice sharp, a challenge.
He looks up, startled. “I… I’m learning.”
“You’re consistent,” I correct. “But are you fast?”
Before he can respond, I dump a brand-new twenty-pound tub of eighty percent hydration dough onto the table. It lands with a wet, intimidating thwack.
“The true test is speed and consistency,” I say. “Twelve boules. Eight hundred grams each. I’m timing you.”
I pull out my phone, open the stopwatch app, and hold it up. My thumb hovers over Start.
Leo looks at the mountain of wet, sticky dough. This is ten times harder than pre-shapes. This is the final shape. This is the real thing. This is what separates someone who can follow instructions from someone who can actually do the work.
He looks at me. My eyes are unreadable because I do not know what I am hoping for. I am not even sure I want him to succeed.
He takes a deep breath. He nods once. He dusts his hands.
“Ok,” he says.
“Go,” I say, and I hit Start.
He moves. Not like me, not like Meemaw used to do. His hands are not lightning-fast blurs. He isn’t magic. But he is good.
He divides the dough with clean, confident cuts. He weighs each piece on the digital scale: 802 grams, 798 grams, 801 grams. Adjustments are minimal, quick, and efficient.
Then he starts to shape.
Because I am standing right there, timing him, making his muscles tense with pressure, he does something that should not make me feel anything but irritation.
He starts muttering.
Pull. Scrape. Turn. Fold.
“Ok… first one,” he whispers, hands moving. “Dough-kachu. Nice and tight.”
He seals the seam and places a perfect boule on the tray.
I blink. “What… what did you just say?”
Pull. Scrape. Turn. Fold.
“Squirt-dough,” he mutters, focused. “He’s a little wet. Gotta… gotta build the tension.”
Second boule. Perfect.
“Are you…” I say, my voice a mix of disbelief and, God help me, amusement. “Are you naming them?”
“It helps me focus,” he grunts, already on the third. “This one’s… Charm-flour-der. He’s got fire. Needs a tight seal.”
Pull. Scrape. Turn. Fold.
“Bulba-dough.”
Pull. Scrape. Turn. Fold.
“Meowth. That’s right.”
Pull. Scrape. Turn. Fold.
“And… Snorlax.”
This one is particularly large, a perfect 805-gram monster. He shapes it with an extra loving pat.
“He’s a masterpiece of gluten structure.”
Something in my chest does a tiny, traitorous flip. I am smiling. A full, genuine, unguarded smile. My hand comes up to cover my mouth, but it does not help because he can see it in my eyes.
I’m laughing.
I finish laughing, then laugh more because I don’t know who I am anymore.
He finishes. He places the twelfth boule “Dough-drio” on the tray with a decisive thump and looks up, breathing hard.
“Done.”
I look at my stopwatch. I look at the tray of twelve perfectly shaped, identical boules. I look at him.
He is covered in sweat. His black T-shirt is soaked through, clinging to his chest. His face is a mask of pure triumphant exhaustion.
“Twelve minutes,” I say. My voice is quiet, and that scares me a little. “Twelve minutes, twenty-four seconds.”
I walk over, inspect them, and prod Snorlax. It is, infuriatingly, a masterpiece of gluten structure. I can’t find a single flaw. Not one. He has done it. He has mastered the bench scrape. He has earned it.
I stand there looking at him, and for one moment, the circus, the van, the comments, and the hashtag melt away. In this moment, he isn’t a billionaire. He isn’t an intern.
He is… a baker.
I don’t say it out loud because I’m not insane.
Instead, I turn and walk to my tiny back office.
Leo stands there panting, and I can practically feel him wondering if he failed, because he always assumes he’s about to be punished.
I come back holding a sheet of cheap, brightly colored stickers, the kind kindergarten teachers use to bribe children into behaving.
I walk right up to him, so close I can smell the sweat and flour on him, the yeast in the air, the cardamom that seems to live in this bakery and in my skin.
I reach up and, with a firm thwack, slap a single shiny gold star sticker onto his floury, sweat-damp T-shirt. Right over his heart.
Leo looks down at the dumb ten-cent sticker. He looks up at me.
My face is serious, because my face is always serious when I’m doing something I don’t know how to do.
But my eyes, traitors, are dancing.
“A… a gold star?” he asks, voice thick. I hate how proud he looks. I hate it because it makes my own chest feel tight, as if something is trying to bloom there.
This stupid sticker means more to him than the hundred-million-dollar bonus his father gave him last year, and I can see it.
“Don’t get cocky, intern,” I mutter.
But the smile is back, tugging at the corners of my mouth.
“It was… B-plus work. At least.”
Leo is about to say something when Gwen walks in.
“Where’s my sticker, boss?” she asks, surprised while observing us.
“Gwen, you get a pension. He gets a sticker.”
I hear Leo chuckle.
Gwen gasps. “This is discrimination,” she says as she zips up her coat. “I’m leaving. I have a long night of absolutely nothing ahead of me, and I can’t wait. See you, weirdos, tomorrow.”
“Bye, Gwen,” Leo says, pointing proudly at his star.
“Goodnight, Gwen,” I tell her as I head toward our locker room. Locker room is a generous term for a space barely larger than a closet.
Inside are two dented metal lockers, a wobbly stool, and a shelf with an ancient, sputtering microwave.
It is humid from the day’s baking and smells like yeast, old coffee, and cheap cinnamon-scented air freshener.
It is intimate in the way you do not realize a space is intimate until there is one other person in it, and you cannot stop brushing against them.
I am at my locker with my back to Leo, untying my filthy apron.
Leo is at his locker, grabbing his keys and wallet. The space is so small that we keep bumping into each other.
His arm brushes my shoulder.
I turn, and my hip bumps his.
“Sorry,” he mumbles.
“You’re in my way,” I mumble back.
The air is thick.
The tension that has been building for days, the anger, the viral video, the frantic work, the competence, coils in this tiny six-by-six-foot space like it is alive.
“So,” Leo says, his voice a low rumble. He leans back against his locker like he is trying to give me room, but it only cages me in more. “A gold star. I’m officially a B plus?”
I scoff, but I am smiling, my face soft in the dim light.
“It was B plus work,” I say. “Your seams were consistent.”
“Just B plus?” he teases, his voice dropping. “After Snorlax? He was beautiful. You know he was.”
I laugh. A real, unguarded, rusty laugh. The one that makes Leo look at me a certain way. It comes out of me like I have no control over it.
“You’re ridiculous, Leo,” I say. “Snorlax.”
The laughter fades.
The hum of the coolers grows louder, then fades into the background. We are just looking at each other now. He is not the snobby businessman. I am not his boss for a month.
We are just a man and a woman covered in flour, exhausted, standing far too close.
“Tess,” he says.
It is not a question.
It is just my name.
And he is not charming or media-trained in this moment. He is transparent. Earnest. Wide-eyed, like he cannot believe he is allowed to be here.
He lifts his hand.
The hand with the callouses.
The hand that used to be manicured and useless now looks like it belongs to someone who works.
He moves slowly, giving me time to pull away, to scowl, to shut it down, to run.
He gently brushes a streak of flour from my cheekbone. His rough fingertips graze my skin.
I do not flinch. I do not pull back.
My eyes flutter shut, and I lean in, just a fraction. A millimeter.
Permission.
He lowers his head. I tilt mine up.
I can smell him, yeast and sweat and flour, and something warm and human.
I feel his breath on my lips. Our lips are a centimeter apart. A whisper.
The world is gone. It is just this tiny, hot, flour-dusted space and this moment that feels like it could change everything or ruin everything.
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
The sound hits like a physical assault. The loudest, most obnoxious, most violent noise in the universe.
The main oven timer. The final bake. The hearth loaves.
We spring apart as if shot. We stare at each other, horrified, chests heaving.
My face turns a beautiful, mortified dark red. Leo looks like someone dumped a bucket of ice water over his head.
“The bread,” I stammer. My voice is a squeak.
My boss-mask tries to snap back into place, but it sits crooked and cracked because my heart is still pounding and my mouth still tastes like his breath.
“The hearth loaves. I… I forgot. I set the timer. I have to…”
I don’t finish.
I shove past him, my shoulder colliding with his chest, and I bolt from the tiny room, sneakers squeaking on the tile.
If I stand there one second longer, I will do something reckless.
I cannot afford to be reckless.
Not here.
Not with him.
Not with the ovens screaming and the world outside waiting to turn anything we do into a hashtag. Waiting to make fun of me. I wonder why someone like Leo would even want to be with someone like me.
The timer keeps beeping as I race to the kitchen to silence it, and my skin still tingles where his fingers brushed my cheek.
I hate how much I want to go back.