Chapter 16
Jace
The flour situation is still happening twenty-four hours later.
I’m finding it in places that don’t make sense—under my collar, in the creases of my hands, embedded in my hair despite the shower I took that night.
It’s like she’s marked me. Like I’m going to spend the next week looking like I’ve been working with her in the kitchen instead of building furniture in my workshop.
I’m not complaining.
The new bench is finished. I’ve been building it for months, in pieces, in moments stolen between cabinet jobs and oven repairs and learning how a woman’s mind works when she’s stressed. But it’s finished now, and it’s everything I wanted it to be.
This new one I built it to her measurements.
I built it to the height where her forearms would rest at exactly the right angle.
I built it with a work surface long enough for her to roll dough without feeling cramped.
I built the storage underneath to match the way she moves through a kitchen—the things she uses first on the right, the specialty ingredients on the left, the flour at the back where she can reach it without thinking.
I built it because I’ve been watching her.
Because watching her work is the same as reading her.
Because when she kneads dough, I can see what she’s thinking.
When she measures vanilla, I can see what she fears.
When she tests the temperature of an oven by the sound it makes, I can see that she’s someone who knows things without being told them.
I built her a bench that says: I see you. I’ve been paying attention. You belong somewhere.
Every measurement says: I see you.
I have to tell her about it today. The grand opening is tomorrow. The bench needs to be there. It needs to be hers. And I need to stop carrying this secret around like it’s going to break me open. It’s just a damn bench.
I’m in the workshop when she arrives around dawn. She lets herself in—she has a key now, which is its own kind of statement—and I hear her footsteps in the main room before the truth lands: she’s coming back here.
“Jace?” Her voice is cautious. Early morning Gabby is a specific version of herself—less defended, more real. “You okay? Your truck’s been here all night.”
“I slept here,” I say. “I wanted to make sure—”
But then she sees the bench.
The moment arrives and it hits her face like light through a door. Her mouth opens. Nothing comes out. She’s stopped talking. That terrifies me. Good surprise? Bad surprise? Terrifying surprise that makes her want to leave?
She walks toward it slowly. Her hands come up. She traces the wood like she’s checking whether it’s real.
“I built it,” I say, which is obvious, and which feels necessary to say anyway.
“I measured you. I’ve been measuring you for months—” This sounds worse than I mean it to sound.
“—I mean, I’ve been watching how you move in a kitchen.
How your arms go. Where you reach. What height your shoulders are at. And I built this to fit you exactly.”
She’s running her hand across the top surface.
The wood is walnut—expensive, but this bench deserved expensive.
I’ve sanded it until it’s smooth enough that her hands won’t catch on anything.
I’ve oiled it until it glows. The joinery underneath is intricate—mortise and tenon work that’s taken me weeks.
It’s furniture that will last longer than both of us.
“Jace,” she says, and her voice is small, and she’s not joking, which means something in her has broken open. “You built me my own bench?”
“I built you a bench,” I confirm.
She sits down. There’s only one chair in the workshop, and she’s chosen to sit on the bench I built instead, and the metaphor is not lost on me. She’s choosing to test it. To trust it. To sit in something that was made specifically for her.
“The height is—” she starts, then stops.
She stands up. She walks to the work surface.
She reaches across it like she’s working dough.
Her body settles into the space like a key in a lock.
Like we were both designed to fit this moment.
“—it’s perfect. The reach is perfect. I can reach everything without moving my feet. And the storage—”
She bends down, examining the drawers I built underneath. Each one is labeled. Flour. Sugar. Specialty ingredients. Tools. The things she uses constantly, organized the way her brain works, not the way a normal kitchen would organize them.
“How long?” she asks.
“Weeks,” I say. “Since you got here, I—” I stop.
I’m about to explain that I made assumptions based on almost nothing, and that sounds creepy.
But she’s looking at me like I just gave her the thing she didn’t know she needed.
Like I’ve translated her into furniture and she’s recognizing herself in the translation.
“You’ve been building this since we met?”
“I was planning,” I say. “I was hoping. I built it for the idea of you before I knew the actual you. And then when I got to know the actual you, I kept building because it turns out you needed exactly what I was imagining.”
She doesn’t say anything. She sits back down on the bench.
She places her hands flat on the work surface.
And I can see the moment she understands—not just that I built it, but why I built it.
That this is a confession. That this is me saying: I don’t make things for temporary people.
I make things that last. And I made this for you.
“I love you,” she says.
It’s not followed by anything. It’s not qualified or hedged.
It’s just a statement of fact delivered to a bench that I built, and the truth lands: she’s not actually looking at me when she says it.
She’s looking at the wood. She’s saying it to the thing I made because it’s easier than saying it to me.
I walk toward her. She stands up. And then we’re coming together, no hesitation left. There’s no doubt left. Her hands are in my hair and she’s kissing me like she’s trying to communicate something that goes beyond words.
“Say it again,” I tell her.
“I love you,” she says against my mouth. “I’m terrified and I have a timeline and I’m probably going to panic, but I love you.”
“Okay,” I say.
We move to the workbench. Built to hold weight. Built for this. I lift her up and set her on it and she’s pulling my shirt off and I’m trying to unbutton her jeans and neither of us is moving slowly this time.
“I want you,” she says. “Right here. Right now.”
I don’t make her ask twice.
Her jeans come off. My jeans come off. She’s sitting on my workbench in nothing but a shirt that she pulls off halfway, and I’m standing between her legs and she’s reaching for me and everything I’ve been holding back is breaking open.
“Tell me,” I say. “Tell me what you want.”
“You,” she says simply. “Just you. Move.”
I sink into her and she gasps and her hands grip my shoulders hard enough to mark me, and I’m thinking clearly that I don’t care who sees these marks because they mean she was here and she wanted me and she’s not hiding it.
I’m slower than she is. I’m deliberate. I’m reading her the way I’ve been reading her for months. Her eyes close when something feels exactly right. Her fingers tighten on my shoulders when I hit a particular angle. Her breath catches right before she comes.
Her collarbone is there and I’m mapping it with my mouth. Her neck is there and I’m learning the way it tastes like her skin and salt and something that’s Gabby. Her breasts are moving with every thrust and I’m pulling her closer because I want her impossibly deep inside myself.
“Don’t stop,” she says. “Please, don’t stop.”
“Not stopping,” I say. “Never stopping.”
She’s coming and it’s happening in waves and she’s pulling my hair and making sounds that are so honest they’re breaking me. She’s gorgeous. She’s real. She’s a woman on my workbench at dawn and she’s chosen me and she’s not hiding it.
I’m close. I can feel it building in my spine, in my hands, in every muscle that’s been built to do this—to move her, to pleasure her, to be inside her and know that I’m enough.
“Jace,” she says, and it’s my name like it’s a complete sentence. Like it means: I see you. I know what you’ve been afraid of. I’m here anyway.
I come with her name on my tongue and my hands in her hair and everything else falling away. All the fear I’ve been carrying about people leaving. All the careful distance I’ve maintained. All the walls I built because my parents left in a bush plane and never came back. All of it shatters.
Afterward, we’re on the workshop floor with sawdust in our hair and our clothes scattered around us like we’re a crime scene of passion. She’s laughing, breathless, a laugh that means she’s happy and overwhelmed and fully present.
“We keep finding places to have sex,” she says. “First the bakery. Now the workshop. Very romantic. Are we going to make it through all your buildings before the 60 days are up?”
“I only have a workshop,” I say. “So probably not.”
She rolls over on the sawdust. It’s coating her skin. Her back is going to be marked with dust. She’s going to spend the day smelling like my workshop and my soap and the place where she said she loves me.
“I meant what I said,” she tells me, serious now. “I love you. I don’t know what that means for the timeline or the clause or Portland or any of it. But I do.”
“Okay,” I say.
“Okay? That’s all you’re going to say?”
“I’ve been building a bench for you for weeks,” I say. “I think I’ve communicated how I feel.”
“You could use words,” she says, but she’s smiling.
“I love you too,” I tell her. “I’ve probably been in love with you since you made the salmon scone and didn’t know it. Since you arrived in heels and looking like you were going to run. Since you started talking to Morris like he was a friend instead of a pest.”
She sits up. The sawdust is everywhere now. She’s going to be itchy later. She’s not going to care.
“We have a problem,” she says.
“Several,” I agree. “But specifically?”
“I’m supposed to be in Portland in two weeks. And I love you. Those things don’t go together.”
“They don’t have to be mutually exclusive,” I say. “You could love me and still go. People do that. Long distance. It’s a thing.”
“I don’t want long distance,” she says. “And I don’t know if I want to stay, because I’m terrified that I’ll resent you for making me choose something different than what I planned.
And I don’t know if I want to go, because I’m terrified that I’ll regret leaving this.
” She gestures vaguely at the workshop, at the bench, at me lying next to her covered in sawdust and her own intention.
“Then don’t decide yet,” I say. “You have two weeks.”
The door swings opens.
Jasper walks in like he owns the place, which he kind of does—I’ve basically let him move into the workshop. He takes one look at the two of us on the floor, sawdust-covered and partially clothed, and he approaches with his tail wagging.
“No,” Gabby says, laughing so hard she snorts. “Not the dog. We don’t get to have the dog watching.”
Jasper nudges his way between us and demands pets, which breaks the moment, but funny instead of awkward.
Gabby is petting him and laughing and I’m lying on the floor of my workshop with the woman I love and a dog interrupting our intimate moment, and I’m thinking this is what building something with someone looks like.
It’s not just the bench. It’s not just the sex.
It’s this—the willingness to sit with uncertainty, to let a dog crash the moment, to choose presence even when the future is unclear.
“This dog has the worst timing,” Gabby says. “Second only to Morris that one time with the porch.”
“Jasper’s judging us,” I say.
“He’s helping,” Gabby corrects. “He’s providing perspective. He’s saying: you two are rolling around on a workshop floor on an Alaska morning while there’s a grand opening tomorrow. Maybe get up. Maybe get dressed. Maybe go live your lives so the rest of us can have a normal day.”
I help her up. We dust each other off, which doesn’t work well because there’s still sawdust everywhere and it’s basically embedded in our skin at this point. By the time we’re dressed, we both look like we’ve been in a sawmill.
“I need to go make final preparations,” she says. “The opening is tomorrow and I still need to figure out how to introduce the bench to the space without it looking like you’ve marked your territory.”
“It is my territory,” I say. “I’m marking you with nice furniture.”
“That’s the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me while also being weird,” she says.
I walk her to her car. Jasper follows, because Jasper has decided he’s part of all of this now.
The sun is coming up over the trees. It’s going to be a beautiful day.
Tomorrow is going to be the grand opening and everything is going to change, and I’m standing here covered in sawdust with a woman who loves me and doesn’t know if she’s staying, and I’m okay with that.
I can build toward something even if the foundation is temporary.
I can love her even if she leaves. I’ve been doing it since before I knew her, building this bench that says: you’re worth building for, even if you don’t stay.
“Come by after the opening,” I tell her. “There’s something I want to do.”
“Is this more sex in unusual locations?” she asks.
“Maybe,” I say. “Or maybe just this—coming home to you. Figuring out what that means.”
She kisses me in the parking lot of my workshop as the sun is coming up and Jasper is watching us with the wisdom of a dog who knows nothing about human timelines but everything about presence.
“I love you,” she says again.
“I know,” I say. “I built a bench.”