Chapter 14
Jace
The bakery smells like butter and yeast and her.
Gabby has made salmon croissants for the soft opening.
This fact alone tells me something has shifted in her.
The salmon croissant was a joke—the worst thing she could accidentally bake, the embodiment of fusion failure—and now it’s her flagship item.
She’s leaned into the disaster. Claimed it. Made it beautiful.
The line outside wraps around the block by nine-thirty AM.
There’s maybe forty people standing outside in the early summer heat, and more are arriving every few minutes.
People I recognize from Ashwood Falls. People from other towns.
People who heard that the new bakery is doing something different, something special, something that shouldn’t work but does.
I’m supposed to be working—there’s a cabinet job waiting in the workshop, something about hidden drawers and precision measurements, something that’s been sitting there for a week while I’ve been here instead.
But I’m here anyway. I stayed because she asked if I could help, and because staying is the only thing that makes sense.
She moves through the space like she’s built it.
Like she knows exactly where everything is.
The way she talks to customers. The way she handles the croissants like they’re real things she made instead of happy accidents waiting to happen.
She introduces herself. She asks people what they usually bake.
She listens when they answer like their favorite dessert is important information.
Trace is in line. Patrice is holding Brooklyn and trying to examine everything through the glass case. Jax is narrating the sales numbers like he’s invested in this venture personally. Maybe he is. Small towns are like that—your success is everyone’s success, your failure is everyone’s failure.
“Unprecedented croissants!" Jax shouts. "Salmon pastry phenomenon! Market saturation!"
I’m standing in the corner near the baker’s bench I built.
The one with the thick maple top and the tool drawer that closes without sticking.
It replaced the old one—Edna’s, thirty years of use, warped at the corners, a split running down the front leg.
Not worn charming. Worn unsafe. I’d been meaning to replace it before Gabby even arrived.
Now it’s kindling behind the workshop. I was supposed to be helping customers, but instead I’m watching her work.
She moves like she’s had this job for years. Pulls a tray from the case. Sets it on the counter without hesitation. Slides the croissant onto a paper sleeve. Each motion is confident. She knows where everything is. She knows how her hands work in this space. The kitchen has stopped rejecting her.
Three weeks ago, she was terrified to use the oven.
Now she’s running it like she built it.
Ryder comes in with Piper, and he immediately heads for the salmon croissants like a man with a purpose. He buys four. Four. He tastes one, closes his eyes, and turns to Piper with the expression of someone who has just experienced something that changes his mind about food in general.
“Holy shit,” he says.
Piper laughs. She reaches over, breaks off a piece of his, and tastes it. She closes her eyes too. Everyone does. The salmon croissants do something to people’s faces. They make them honest.
By ten-fifteen, the salmon croissants are gone. Completely sold out.
She works the register without flinching when money changes hands. She doesn’t look surprised that people want to buy what she made. She’s stepped into something.
Marnie comes in wearing a hat that’s trying to hold down hair that’s trying to escape.
She’s been in the garden all morning—I can see the dirt under her fingernails from here.
She takes one look at the remaining pastries and asks for two of whatever has the most butter in it.
When Gabby hands her a croissant that’s not salmon, Marnie bites into it and says, “God, girl, you’re going to ruin me for all other bakers. ”
She’s not joking. She means it.
By ten-thirty, she’s sold out of everything that has fish in it.
A woman I don’t recognize comes in asking for a salmon croissant and Gabby tells her, “I’m sorry—they sold out about ten minutes ago.
” The woman’s face falls. It’s genuine disappointment.
Like she came here specifically for this one thing and now it’s not available and the world has become slightly smaller.
Gabby says, “But if you want to try something else—” and she’s pulling out a pastry that I think is the fireweed honey éclair she was stress-baking last week.
The woman takes it. Tastes it slowly. She closes her eyes. When she opens them, she’s looking at Gabby like she’s discovered something valuable.
She buys two.
Marnie comes in around ten forty-five and orders the last cinnamon roll. She eats it right there at the counter, standing next to the glass case, and says, “This is better than my own baking, and I hate you a little for that.”
It’s a compliment. In Ashwood Falls, that’s definitely a compliment.
By eleven, she’s sold out, period. The cases are empty.
The line outside is disappointed but not angry.
Disappointment that says we’ll be back. She’s made revenue that seems significant—I don’t really understand money in this way.
I understand wood and labor. I understand things that hold their weight.
But I understand that people came here for something she made, and they’re leaving satisfied, and that’s a kind of weight too.
The baker’s bench I built is being used.
She’s rested her hands on it between rushes.
She leans against it when she’s tired. She touches the edge of the drawer sometimes, absentmindedly, like she’s checking whether it still works.
It does. I built it to last longer than she’s planning to stay, which is a decision I made and haven’t regretted yet.
She locks the door to count the register. And I see it.
The leather journal is sitting on the counter, still open to pages from days ago, and she’s not updating it.
She’s not writing in it at all. No more tallies.
No more running count of financial survival.
The ledger was her fear made visible—all those little marks tracking whether she could make it. And she’s stopped marking.
I don’t know what that means. I don’t know if she stopped marking because she’s decided she’s staying. I don’t know what the silence in that ledger is saying.
But I know it matters.
I move the bench. Test. See if she’s mapped the space as hers. If she reaches for it again and finds it in a new spot, it means she’s already thinking of it as hers. It means she’s mapped the space like it belongs to her.
She reaches for it. She stops. She looks at the new position and adjusts. She doesn’t ask why I moved it. She moves with the space like she’s mapped this space already.
I also notice she hasn’t mentioned the kiss.
It was days ago. She kissed me in a kitchen full of flour dust, pulled back like she was checking whether what she’d done was real, and we’ve been existing in the space since then like nothing happened except everything happened and we’re both pretending to be fine with the pretending.
I’m not fine with the pretending.
I’m standing in the corner of the bakery, trying to look like I’m not watching her, except I’m absolutely watching her.
The way she moves. The way she listens. The way she’s somehow taken a terrible idea—salmon in pastry—and made it matter.
The way she’s started to belong to this space like it’s always been waiting for her hands.
Around two o’clock, Morris wanders by the bakery window. He’s doing his late-morning patrol of the town, checking what’s new, what’s changed, what might be edible. He pauses at the glass, his massive head at eye level, and stares at Gabby like he’s evaluating her.
She laughs. Walks over to the window. She reaches into the small pastry bag she’s been saving and pulls out a piece of croissant. She leaves it on the outside windowsill—a small offering from the baker to the moose who eats buildings.
Morris eats it. Deliberate. Thoughtful. Like he’s considering the flavor profile.
He looks at Gabby. She looks at Morris.
They have a moment.
It lasts maybe three seconds, but it’s real. Then Morris ambles away, satisfied, and Gabby stands at the window with her hands on her hips like she’s made a deal with an actual moose.
“You’re feeding him,” I say.
“He’s part of the town ecosystem,” she says, not turning around. “Also he’s beautiful and terrifying and I’m pretty sure we’re friends now.”
“You can’t be friends with Morris. He eats everything.”
“Not the salmon croissants,” she says. “He seemed to appreciate it. Maybe he’ll stop eating my porch.”
He won’t. But I don’t tell her that. I like watching her believe in the possibility that kindness might change things. That feeding a moose a piece of pastry might be enough to make it stop eating buildings.
After the soft opening, when the last customer has left with whatever remains, I’m still here. I stayed because I was supposed to help her clean, which is a lie I told myself because I didn’t want to leave.
She sits down at the small table in the back, where she eats her lunch when there’s time. The table is worn wood, the chairs don’t match, there’s flour dust on everything from this morning. It’s not fancy. It’s just a place where people eat.
I sit across from her.
The light is coming through the window at an angle that makes everything look temporary. Golden. Like the sun is in no hurry to move on and the day is stretching long enough to contain something true.
“That was incredible,” she says, and she sounds like she’s still surprised. “I made salmon croissants. I made them, and people bought them, and nobody died. Yet.”
“Nobody dies from salmon croissants.”