Chapter 15 #2
His other hand comes up. It finds my jaw. His thumb brushes my cheekbone. And the moment lands—this is the shift from working-together to something else. This is the moment where proximity becomes intention.
I’m terrified and excited and my mouth is doing something weird where it’s opening and closing like I’m one of those salmons I put in the croissants.
“Your turn,” he says quietly. “To be sure.”
I nod. Or maybe I’m trembling and I think I’m nodding. It’s hard to tell when someone has their hand on your face like you’re something they’re trying to see clearly.
I reach up. I find the collar of his shirt.
My fingers are shaking and I’m suddenly aware that I’m wearing an apron covered in flour dust and my hair is in a bun and I probably smell like vanilla and burnt sugar, and then he’s kissing me and none of those things matter because his mouth is warm and certain and he tastes like coffee from hours ago and something that’s uniquely him.
This is different from the kiss in the flour storm.
This is deliberate. This is in the daylight, in my kitchen, with the soufflés cooling on the rack and the shelf installed and the whole town probably knowing we’re somewhere kissing because nothing is secret in Ashwood Falls and I don’t care. I don’t actually care.
His hands are learning my body like it’s work he takes seriously. One hand stays on my face. The other drops to my hip, pulls me closer. I’m stepping into him without deciding to. My hands are in his hair, and he makes a sound like maybe that’s better than everything else he’s been thinking about.
“Okay?” he asks, pulling back just enough to make sure.
“More than okay,” I say. “I’m having a stroke, I think. Is that okay? Should we be worried about that?”
He’s laughing. His forehead is against mine and he’s laughing and victory settles in my chest.
“You talk a lot,” he says.
“I’m nervous,” I say. “When I’m nervous I talk and also I probably make jokes because my brain is currently not connected to my mouth and also my heart is doing something concerning and I think I might levitate, which seems impractical given we’re in a kitchen.”
“We can move,” he says.
The back room is small. There’s a couch that Dotty donated because she said a business owner needs a place to rest, and there are shelves with spare supplies, and there’s flour—so much flour.
Bags of it, stacked in the corner. Evidence of my hobbies and my fears and my tendency to prepare for every worst-case scenario by accumulating ingredients.
He’s kissing me again before we even sit down. His hands are on my apron, trying to figure out how to get it off, and I’m laughing because the knot is complicated and he’s taking it seriously, like untying my apron is the same as unlocking a door he’s been thinking about for weeks.
The knot gives. The apron drops to the floor between us. And his hands are on my waist, over my shirt, and the warmth of his palms is a physical thing I feel through the cotton.
“God, you’re beautiful,” he says, and his voice is rough, scraped low in a way that goes straight through me. I want to make a joke about flour dust and imperfect soufflés, but his mouth is on mine again and the jokes die somewhere between my brain and his tongue.
I pull at his shirt. My fingers find the hem and drag it up and he helps—arms above his head, one efficient motion—and then he’s standing in front of me without it.
Sawdust on his collarbone. A line of sweat down his sternum.
His body is work. Not gym work—real work.
The kind that comes from building things with your hands every day, from carrying lumber and sanding joints and lifting beams into place.
His shoulders are broader without the shirt, and there’s a scar along his left rib, faded white, that I want to ask about but not now.
Now I press my fingers to it and feel his stomach tighten under my hand.
“Your turn,” I say. My voice comes out steadier than I feel.
He undoes buttons on my shirt. Slowly. Deliberately.
Like he’s trying to see what’s underneath and also trying to go slow, which creates this tension where we’re both operating at different speeds and it works.
He opens my shirt and pushes it off my shoulders and his eyes drop and I watch his face change.
“Gabby.”
“I know. Flour bra. It’s a whole look.”
He’s not laughing. He’s looking at me like I’m something he built in his head and the real version is better.
His thumb traces the edge of my collarbone, down, over the strap of my bra.
He leans in and his mouth is on the bare skin above the cup and I’m gone.
Demolished. A building that has lost its foundation.
“We should probably go somewhere more comfortable,” I say, which is absurd because I’m also unzipping his jeans. My hands are shaking and I’m working the button loose and the zipper down and I can feel him through the denim and my entire body responds to that—a pulse that starts low and spreads.
He kicks his jeans off. I shimmy out of mine, which is less graceful than I’d like—there’s a moment where one leg gets stuck and I have to hop and he steadies me with a hand on my hip and neither of us comments on it, which is generous.
We’re on the couch. Skin against skin. My bra still on, his boxers still on, and we’re pressed together in this narrow space and everything is warm and urgent and close. His hand is on my thigh, moving up, fingers spread. My breath hitches.
“Is this okay?” he asks.
“This is so okay,” I say. “This is the most okay anything has ever been. I’m about to be inappropriate and I need you to understand that my brain is currently offline.”
He’s kissing my collarbone. “Still talking,” he murmurs against my skin.
“Can’t help it. So there’s this thing where when I get nervous or scared or excited, I keep talking and I can’t stop and usually I say things that are completely nonsensical and right now I’m excited and nervous and terrified and happy all at the same time, which is a lot of emotion for one body, and I think you should know that I’m going to say weird things, like for instance, your hands are—”
I stop. Because his hand has slipped under the waistband of my underwear and his fingers find me and the sentence collapses into a sound I’ve never made in this kitchen.
“Like that?” he asks. Low. Close to my ear.
“Like—yes. Like that. Exactly like—” My hips roll against his hand. His fingers move with a patience that borders on cruelty. Slow circles. Deliberate pressure. He’s learning me the way he learns wood grain—methodical, attentive, reading every response.
I reach for him. My hand slips into his boxers and wraps around him and he makes a sound against my neck—this sharp exhale, almost a groan—and his hips press forward into my fist. He’s hard and warm and he pulses against my palm and the fact that my hand on him draws that sound out of his chest makes something expand in mine.
“I haven’t done this in a while,” I tell him, which is true and terrifying and important information.
“Neither have I.” His forehead is against mine. His breath is uneven. “But I’ve been thinking about it.”
“For how long?”
“Weeks,” he says. “Maybe longer.”
My bra comes off. His boxers come off. My underwear joins the flour-dusted apron on the floor. And the vulnerability of that—of being completely bare with someone who still has his hand on my face like I’m something he’s trying to see clearly—is almost too much.
He reaches for his jeans. Wallet. Condom. I watch him roll it on and there’s something about the practiced efficiency of it, the way his hands are steady even though his breathing isn’t, that makes me want him more than I’ve wanted anything since I landed in this town.
I pull him down. He settles between my thighs and pauses—his weight on his forearms, his mouth an inch from mine.
“You’re sure,” he says. Not a question exactly. A confirmation.
“I’m sure.”
He pushes into me slowly. Not slow like he’s being careful—slow like he wants to feel every inch of it. My breath leaves me in one long exhale. My hands grip his shoulders, fingernails pressing crescents into his skin, and I’m full of him in a way that rearranges something fundamental.
He stays still for a moment. His jaw tight. His eyes on mine.
“Move,” I say. “Please move. I’m—”
He does. He pulls back and pushes in again, deeper, and my hips rise to meet him.
We find a rhythm—not immediately, not gracefully—but in the way two people figure out a shared language when the stakes are high and the couch is small.
His mouth finds my neck. My legs wrap around his waist. The couch creaks under us and I’d be embarrassed about it if I could think about anything other than the place where his body meets mine.
He’s slower than I need. Taking his time. Reading me., every angle that makes me gasp. His hand slides between us, finds the spot his fingers already mapped, and presses. I arch against him and my vision blurs and my mouth opens on his name.
“There,” he says against my skin. Not a question.
“There. Yes. Don’t you dare stop—”
He doesn’t stop. He quickens—his hips hitting mine harder now, his breath ragged—and I can feel him losing the careful control he walked in with.
His hand stays between us, circling, pressing, and the dual sensation—him inside me, his fingers on me—builds until I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.
“You’re—” he says, and his voice breaks. “When you’re honest like this—”
I come without warning. It crests hard and sudden—a wave that starts deep and breaks everywhere at once, my whole body tightening around him, his name broken into syllables against his shoulder. My fingers dig into his back. My spine arches off the couch.
He feels it. I know because his rhythm stutters, because his hand grips my hip hard enough to anchor us both, because his head drops to the curve of my neck and he says my name once, rough and low, like a confession.
Three more strokes. His body goes rigid against mine. He shudders—a full-body tremor that I feel everywhere—and buries himself deep and holds there, his breath coming in sharp bursts against my collarbone, his hands gripping me like I’m the only steady thing in the room.
We stay locked together. Breathing. His weight settles onto me and it should feel heavy but it doesn’t. It feels like the exact amount of pressure my body has been asking for. His heart hammers against my ribs, or maybe that’s mine. Hard to separate them when we’re pressed this close.
He exhales. A shaky, disbelieving sound. His lips move against my shoulder—not a kiss, not words. Something between the two.
After—I don’t know how much after, time is doing something weird—I’m lying across the couch with my leg hooked over his hip and his arm around my ribs and there is so much flour. We’re covered in flour. It’s in my hair, on his skin, marking where we’ve been.
“We match the pastries now,” I say dreamily.
He laughs. A real laugh, the kind that moves his whole body and makes me bounce slightly against him.
“That’s what you’re thinking about? Pastries?”
“We’re croissants. Golden. Flaky. Dusted in powder.
He kisses the top of my head. “You’re weird.”
“You’re in me,” I point out. “Still. Technically. So you’ve chosen to be with the weird.”
He’s still inside me and soft and I should probably be self-conscious about any of this but instead I’m aware that I have exactly two weeks left on the 60-day clause and after that, I have to choose. Stay or go. Build something with this person or walk away from it.
The panic starts quietly. A small voice in my head doing math. Forty days are already past. Forty-one. Something around there.
“Hey,” he says, pulling back just enough to look at me. “Where did you go?”
“Nowhere,” I say. “I’m right here.”
But I’m also running calculations. I’m also thinking about Portland and timelines and the conversation Patrice just had with me about choosing.
I’m also thinking about how if I stay, I’m choosing him, and if I leave, I’m choosing the life I hadn’t planned before I knew him. And both choices feel impossible.
“You got quiet,” he says.
“Good quiet,” I tell him, which is a lie. It’s worried quiet. It’s terrified quiet. “Just happy quiet.”
He doesn’t believe me. I can see it in his face. But he also doesn’t push, which is Jace’s gift—the ability to sit with something difficult without needing to solve it immediately.
We lie there, covered in flour, sticky and comfortable, while the panic does its quiet work in the back of my mind. Six weeks. Forty-one days and only a few left. A decision that’s coming whether I’m ready for it or not.
“We should probably get dressed,” he says eventually.
“Probably,” I agree.
Neither of us moves.
The flour is going to be everywhere. There’s definitely flour on his hair now too.
We’re both going to smell like vanilla and sex and failure on my part to maintain professional kitchen standards, and I don’t care.
I’m holding onto this moment like it’s going to end, because of course it’s going to end—everything ends, and I have the timeline to prove it.
He extracts himself reluctantly. We both dress. He helps me get the flour out of my hair, gently, like he’s done this before, or like he’s always known how to be careful with things that matter.
By the time the kitchen is somewhat back to normal, it’s nearly eight o’clock. The vanilla bean is still sitting on the counter. The soufflés are still perfect in their cooling rack. The shelf is still beautiful on the wall. Everything is as it was, except everything is completely different.
“Grand opening,” he says as I’m locking up.
“In three days,” I confirm.
“After that?”
“After that I have less than two weeks to decide if I’m staying or selling.”
He nods. He doesn’t ask which one I want. Maybe he already knows. Maybe I look like someone with one foot out the door, and the other foot is just visiting.
“Okay,” he says. “We’ll figure it out.”
I want to believe him.
The sky is still full of light even though it’s after eight. I’m going to spend the night stress-baking, probably. I’m going to make something complicated that doesn’t need to exist, because that’s how I solve problems I can’t articulate.
It’s already been six weeks. Forty-one days. A man who builds things to last and a woman who’s recently learned how to leave.
The panic hums quietly in my chest.
The grand opening is three days away. And after that, the real reckoning begins.