Chapter 18
James directed the beam of the flashlight toward the chair, illuminating my path.
“You didn’t have to do this,” I said, even as my stomach growled for the entire forest to hear.
He set the flashlight on his chair and switched it out for a lantern, then grabbed a pair of tongs and crouched over the pit. “I wanted to.”
My stomach somersaulted.
In the safety of the dark, I watched him turn over one crinkly foil packet, then another, wishing I knew what lay behind those words.
I thought of all the times I’d stolen glances at him during my tween and teenage years.
Countless. Apparently, not much had changed, and yet, at the same time, everything had.
I wasn’t an obsessive teenager anymore, infatuated with someone who hardly noticed me.
But what was I?
He pulled the packets off the fire and set them on a small bed of rocks to the side of the pit, then opened the blackened foil with the tongs, moving with the ease of someone who’d done this many times. How many nights had he spent over fires like this one? How many dinners had he made—alone?
Or maybe he hadn’t made them alone. Maybe he had coworkers who did forestry things with him. Women coworkers, even.
I shouldn’t hate hypothetical strangers so much.
He opened a small cooler I hadn’t noticed and pulled out a soda, which he tossed to me. He transferred the foil packets to plates, set a camp fork and knife on each, then brought me mine as my mouth began to salivate.
“Careful—it’s hot. Especially the carrots.”
It wasn’t a pretty meal, but I’d never smelled anything so appetizing in my life.
I poked a piece of sausage and a potato with my fork, blew on them, then took a bite.
I was a baker, not a cook, and my tiny electric stove wasn’t equipped for complex recipes even if I had been, not to mention that I just hadn’t had time for anything but quick eats.
I raided my parents’ house for leftovers sometimes.
I had a standing dinner invitation from May, but I’d been trying not to blur the line between business and pleasure too much; and by the time the dinner hour arrived, I was usually ready to crash out on my bed anyway.
This meal was a royal feast compared to what I’d been eating recently.
Only with great effort did I keep from moaning. I’d eaten potatoes and sausage before; I knew their flavors. Or I thought I had.
James sat across the fire from me with a forkful of food, but he glanced up. “There’s salt and pepper if you want it.”
I shook my head. I didn’t want to change a thing about the flavors in my mouth. “You get to eat this on a regular basis?”
He laughed. “This is one of my better concoctions, but yeah.”
“And here, I’ve been feeling bad for you, thinking you’d been eating charred hot dogs every night.”
“I’ve had my fair share of those.”
I pushed around my food with my fork, exploring the different components as I chewed another bite. Sausage. Potatoes. Carrots. Butter. Garlic. But the sum was so much greater than its parts. “What did you do to this?”
“It’s all in the sauce and seasonings.”
That I could believe. It was the little things that made the difference in baking—room temperature eggs, chilled dough, a sprinkle of salt.
Undoubtedly, James had learned to nail the flavors and cooking times with trial and error. He’d had years to do it.
“Did you and your dad come here a lot?” I asked.
“We tried to. We’d come for tinfoil dinners or s’mores maybe once a month.”
I hesitated before asking my next question. “Is it hard to be here?”
His gaze flicked to me. “It was. Until a couple weeks ago, I hadn’t been back since he died.” There was a pause. “I avoided it, just like I avoided home. And Autumn Ridge.”
“Is that why you left?” I could hardly believe my daring, but I needed to understand James—to find some kind of harmony between the man who sat across from me and the one who’d betrayed my brother’s trust in such a painful and selfish way.
“After he died and then what happened with your brother, everything felt tainted here. I tried to convince Mama to leave with me, but she wouldn’t.
She couldn’t. She said the farm was all she had left of Dad.
It made her feel connected to him. But for me, it was torture.
” He shook his head, playing with his food. “I had to get out.”
I nodded. Was it just his dad’s memory and the falling out with Ryan that had tortured him? Or was it the pain of heartbreak from Lily too? James must’ve thought he had a fighting chance with her to do what he’d done, but she’d stayed with Ryan.
That was a lot of heavy emotion to carry.
“What brought you back this time?” I asked.
“Archer,” he said. “And Mama’s stubbornness.
Even though she didn’t want to leave Autumn Ridge, she supported me in leaving.
She never wanted me to feel like I needed to be here for her sake, so she wasn’t honest with me about the issues at the farm—or her health.
She made Archer swear not to tell me, either.
And he didn’t. But his hints were enough that I figured something might be up.
I just hadn’t realized the state she was in. Or the farm.”
“She sure loves having you around.”
There was a pause. “I’ve missed her. I shouldn’t have abandoned her.”
“You didn’t abandon her, James. You were dealing with a lot.”
“So was she.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
The fire crackled, the embers glowing and warming the front of my legs, while the backs were cooled by the night air.
“Ready for dessert?” James asked.
“There’s dessert?” I scooped up the last big bite of food and shoveled it into my mouth.
“Of course.” He took our foils and put them in a black garbage bag, then opened up the cooler. “I was going to make a cobbler, but I figured you’d like this better.”
I craned my neck to see what he had.
He pulled out the long, thin metal rods he’d bought at the hardware store yesterday, then a bag of marshmallows.
“S’mores?” I said with excitement.
“The best s’mores.”
“Can you improve upon normal s’mores?” I asked.
He handed me my roasting stick—it was even skinnier than I’d realized—then the bag. “You’ll have to let me know.”
The s’more marshmallow game had improved measurably over the past decade. They made rectangular shapes specifically meant for the dessert. But the ones James handed me weren’t perfect rectangles to complement a graham cracker. They were regular old mini marshmallows.
He smiled at my frown. “I’m telling you, Sadie—your life changes tonight. You’ll never go back to Jet Puffed.”
I shot him a skeptical look. “Is that a promise?”
“You can take it to the bank.”
Sitting across from each other, we threaded tiny marshmallows onto our roasting sticks like toddlers stringing cheerios onto yarn.
“This feels wrong,” I said.
“Trust the process.”
“Fine, but only because that dinner was fantastic.” I was still skeptical.
One benefit became clear quickly, though: the mini mallows browned quickly.
James set his finished roasting stick aside, then crouched down, busying himself over the cooler again. “Bring your marshmallows over here when you’re ready.”
I obediently made my way to him with my ridiculous-but-perfectly-browned mini marshmallow shishkebab.
“Set it right on top of this,” he instructed. “I’ll close it over the top, then you pull out the stick.” He shifted so that his shadow no longer covered what was in front of him.
He’d sliced a croissant in half and slathered a generous helping of Nutella across the top half.
Toto, we weren’t in Kansas anymore. But I was catching the vision.
I set my marshmallows on the un-Nutella’d half, and he closed the top half over them, pressing firmly. I pulled the stick, which came out with only trace evidence of the marshmallows.
James took the stick from me and handed me the s’more—or whatever you called this concoction—then slid his marshmallows onto his.
I inspected the croissant in my hand, then took a bite.
He did the same a few seconds after, and we chewed, our gazes on each other.
The flaky butteriness of the croissant, the crunch and chew of toasted mallows, and the smooth, hazelnutty chocolate mixed in my mouth.
Once I’d swallowed my first bite, I sat in silence for a few seconds. “You’ve ruined me. The mini marshmallows are a stroke of genius.”
He raised his s’more. “More toasty crunch.”
“The ratio of toastiness to marshmallow was off before, and I hadn’t even realized it. Add in Nutella, which is in a different league than Hershey’s, and the delectableness of a buttery croissant, which doesn’t crumble into a million pieces at the first bite? A true trifecta.”
The corner of his mouth lifted. “You really do like marshmallows, don’t you?”
“I love them. I have the palate of a toddler.”
“Guess I do too. But I think we’re in good company.”
I laughed. “Not according to Mrs. Keller. She hates marshmallows. They’re on her blacklist, along with anise and marzipan.”
James shrugged. “I like all three.”
“Me too,” I whisper-hissed. “Don’t tell Mrs. Keller or she might fire me.”
“Your secret’s safe with me.”
Our gazes held for a few seconds, then James took another bite of his croissant.
I looked at what remained of my special s’more, but specifically at the warm stickiness of the browned mallows.
An idea struck me. Mrs. Keller hated marshmallows and refused to let them anywhere near the products at her bakery. But I loved them—so did a lot of people, like James said—which raised a question: why hadn’t I used them in any of my products?
“What is it?” James asked, watching me through slightly narrowed eyes.
“You gave me an idea.”
“Did I?”
“Yeah. I mean…it might not pan out, but…” My pulse hummed. “I’ve been frustrated with the maple blondies. They feel boring.”
“Sadie—”
“No, really. My assessment, not yours. But I haven’t been able to figure out what they’re missing. Until now.”
James smiled. “Marshmallows?”
“Is that dumb? Be honest.”
“Do you think it’s dumb?”
I didn’t answer right away. It was hard to hear my own thoughts over what I knew Mrs. Keller would say. But it didn’t matter what she said. The maple blondies wouldn’t be connected to her in any way.
So, the question remained: did I think it was a dumb idea to add marshmallows to my blondies?
“No,” I said. “I think it’s brilliant.”
“Me too.” He reached his s’more across, and we cheers’d.
The embers glowed more dimly by the minute, and James started packing things up. I set aside the blanket on my lap and got up to help, chafing my shoulders as the chilly air set in farther from the warmth of the dying fire.
I almost asked if we could put another log on the fire.
I was enjoying this excursion into the forest too much to want to leave.
Heading back to the small confines of my familiar apartment after fresh air, good food, and nature in all directions sounded like a snooze fest. Maybe that was for the best, though. I was sleep deprived, after all.
“Thank you for this,” I said, folding up the blanket. “I really needed it.”
James’s smile made my heart skip. “Me too.”
I took in a big breath, like I might be able to store up some fresh air in my lungs, and it turned into a yawn.
“Am I gonna have to carry you back?” he asked.
The image of me in his arms as he walked through the dark forest flashed across my mind. “No,” I said at the tail end of the yawn. “I’ll just sleep here.”
“Yeah?” James draped his folded blanket over his arm.
I set mine on top of it. “Why not? After this camp dinner, I’m basically Bear Grylls, right? Sleeping under the stars is novice stuff.”
“Completely.” He stopped and looked at me, his eyes narrowed curiously. “Would you really do that?”
My heart did a flip. I’d definitely been joking.
But suddenly, I wasn’t sure.
I’d driven stick shift, had dinner in the woods, and was about to do the unthinkable by adding marshmallows to my pastries.
Anything was possible.
“Isn’t it too cold?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I’ve camped out in three feet of snow before.”
“Yeah, but you’re you. I’m…”
He cocked a brow I could barely see in the diminishing light.
“Boring,” I finished.
“I can’t think of anyone I’m less bored by, Sadie.”
I couldn’t find a response. I was trying too hard to understand what it implied.
“Do you want to sleep outside? Because I can definitely make that happen.”
I opened my mouth wordlessly, my heart was hammering.
Was I really considering sleeping in the woods on a whim?
“It’s an experience you’ll never forget,” James said.
“For good or bad reasons?”
He chuckled. “I promise you won’t regret it.”
He’d made a couple of promises tonight, and so far, he was batting a thousand.
He watched me with a keen interest—and something a lot like hope.
I pulled in a deep breath, then let it out quickly. “Why not?”
His mouth stretched into the biggest smile I’d seen yet.