Chapter Two | FLINT #2
Caprice stepped into the cleared space, phone away now and clipboard in hand.
“Here’s the setup. Round One: s’mores. Sunny Burns brings salted caramel huckleberry s’mores.
Flint Sparks brings classic toasted s’mores.
Joelle, Ed, and I taste. Camera gets process, final plates, and reaction shots.
Nobody monologues for more than twenty seconds, nobody sets packaging near coals, and nobody says the word rustic unless they can define it. ”
“I feel targeted,” Sunny said.
“You’re targeted. You’re also miked.”
Ed got behind the camera. Joelle stepped closer with her clipboard. I rolled my shoulders once and set my gear in order: long skewers, plain graham crackers, milk chocolate, marshmallows, a small cast-iron grate, a flat stone I’d washed that morning, and a clean knife.
The setup looked plain beside Sunny’s table.
Hers looked like a dessert case had hiked up the mountain and decided to cause trouble.
Square graham crackers with browned-butter edges.
Chocolate disks in neat stacks. A jar of salted caramel the color of old amber.
Huckleberries dark as summer dusk. Marshmallows dusted with something that smelled faintly like vanilla and smoke.
Tiny flakes of salt in a little glass dish.
Two squeeze bottles. Three spoons. Four towels.
A lot of fuss for something meant to be eaten beside a fire with sticky fingers.
Then Sunny touched one marshmallow, turned it, checked its surface, and set it in a new position near the heat.
She didn’t waste motion. She didn’t fuss for the camera.
She gave her setup the same attention I gave coals and wind, and the competence of it hit me harder than the red shirt or the apron had.
I shifted my stance in the dirt.
I’d grown up on this meadow. Not this exact clearing every day, but near enough that Cinder Ridge sat in my bones the way smoke lived in old canvas.
My dad had taught me how wind ran along this slope before I knew how to drive.
My uncles had dragged me up here to clear deadfall when I was thirteen and mad at the world.
I’d eaten burned hot dogs near these pines, hauled water through this grass, watched lightning walk the far ridge, and learned that Fire Mountain didn’t care whether a person meant well.
Sunny didn’t belong to this place yet.
But she was paying attention now.
Ed lifted a hand. “Rolling.”
Caprice stood just off-camera. “Round One of the Get Fired Up! Cook-Off. Sunny, Flint, give me the stakes.”
Sunny looked straight into Ed’s lens and smiled.
There was the brand. Bright, polished, and sharp enough to cut if a man underestimated it.
“Yesterday, a man with a fire hose murdered my dessert table.”
“I stopped a spot fire,” I said.
She didn’t look away from the camera. “Today, I’ll be avenging twelve fallen shortcake cones with salted caramel huckleberry s’mores.”
Caprice pointed at me. “Flint?”
I held up a marshmallow. “I’m making s’mores.”
A beat of silence followed.
Ed lowered the camera a fraction. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
Sunny pressed a hand to her chest. “I felt transported.”
“You’ll feel worse when I win.”
Her eyes cut to mine. “That’s the man with the hose.”
The challenge in her voice made my skin heat.
Caprice tapped her clipboard. “I need both of you to remember this is a food segment and not a county debate. Continue, but make the food visible.”
We started.
I built my first s’more the way I’d done it since I was old enough to stand near a fire without my mother threatening to tie me to a porch post. Marshmallow on the skewer.
Not shoved straight into flame like amateurs did, but held near the coals where the heat rolled clean and even.
Turn slow. Let the sugar swell. Wait for the surface to go glossy, then pale gold, then deeper.
Sunny, across from me, was working with a double skewer and a kind of focus that made the meadow narrow around her. She warmed her marshmallow high, then lowered it in stages, adjusting for the breeze before it had time to push smoke into her face.
“You’re too close to the flame,” I said.
“I’m exactly where I want to be.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“It does when I’m right.”
The marshmallow browned on one side. She rolled her wrist, smooth and quick. The color evened out.
She’d compensated before I finished the warning.
Sunny’s gaze flicked to me. “You were saying?”
“I was waiting to see if you’d fix it.”
“That’s adorable.”
“I’m known for it.”
She laughed under her breath and reached for a graham cracker. “No, you’re not.”
“No?”
“You’re known for appearing on a ridge with a hose and ruining a woman’s afternoon.”
“You were already having trouble with gravity before I got there.”
“That dessert was delicate.”
“That dessert was leaking.”
“It was expressing itself.”
“It needed supervision.”
Her grin widened. “So do you.”
The first marshmallow reached the shade I wanted.
I slid it onto chocolate and graham cracker, pressed the top down just enough to trap heat without crushing the whole thing flat, then set it on the stone for ten seconds.
Let the chocolate soften. Not melt into a mess.
Not stay hard. A s’more was timing. People forgot that.
Sunny didn’t.
She warmed her chocolate lightly near the coals before assembly. Not enough to melt, just enough to give. Then came huckleberries, a thin ribbon of caramel, a few grains of salt, and the toasted marshmallow, pressed between browned-butter grahams with her fingertips steady and clean.
It looked ridiculous.
It smelled better than it had any business smelling.
She held it up for Ed. “Salted caramel huckleberry s’more. Tart berries, soft smoke, deep caramel, vanilla marshmallow, brown-butter graham, and just enough salt to make the sweet behave.”
I looked at my plain s’more.
Graham, chocolate, and marshmallow.
Done right.
Still, her words changed the air. Even I wanted to taste the thing, and I’d been prepared to hate it on principle.
Caprice stepped in for the camera. “Flint, describe yours.”
“It’s a s’more.”
Sunny closed her eyes. “You wound me.”
“You want more?”
“Yes, I want more. Pretend the food has feelings.”
“It doesn’t.”
“Pretend I do.”
That landed somewhere I didn’t like.
Or maybe I liked it too much, because my eyes dropped to her mouth before I could stop them.
I picked up my s’more. “Classic graham cracker, milk chocolate, and marshmallow toasted slow over coals until the outside’s browned and the inside’s soft. No tricks. No ten-dollar adjectives. Just the thing people came up here wanting before somebody told them it needed a makeover.”
Sunny’s fingers stopped on the edge of her plate.
Then she smiled toward the camera. “Good thing makeovers can be powerful.”
I’d hit something.
I hadn’t meant to.
Caprice checked her watch. “Great. We’ll get tasting close-ups. Ed, catch the pull on Flint’s chocolate. Joelle, plates. Sunny, caramel drizzle again, but slower and toward camera.”
Sunny reached for the squeeze bottle.
The cap stuck.
I saw it the same second she did. A little caramel had dried at the nozzle. She twisted harder. The bottle flexed under her grip.
“Don’t squeeze it like that,” I said.
“I know how a squeeze bottle works.”
“The cap’s blocked.”
“I’m aware.”
“Sunny.”
She looked at me over the bottle. “Did you just use my first name as a warning label?”
“I used it because you’re about to launch caramel across the clearing.”
“I’m not.”
The cap gave.
Caramel shot sideways in a thin golden arc and landed across my forearm.
Ed laughed so hard the camera dipped.
Sunny froze.
The caramel was warm, sticky, and spread in a shining stripe over the skin below my pushed-up sleeve. It wasn’t painful. It was just sweet and hot in the morning sun, and my reaction to it was completely unreasonable.
Sunny stared at my arm.
I stared at her mouth, then forced my gaze back to her eyes.
Her cheeks went pink.
Caprice made an aggravated sound. “Please tell me the arm is still in frame, because I don’t have time to reset caramel.”
Joelle glanced up from the plates. “Do we need a towel?”
Sunny set the bottle down with great care. “We need no commentary.”
“You caramelized me,” I said.
“It’s an improvement. You were very plain.”
“Sunny,” Caprice said, “clean the arm, redo the drizzle, and keep us moving.”
Sunny grabbed a towel and stepped around her table. “See? Producer says I’m allowed.”
“I didn’t hear allowed.”
“I heard implied urgency.”
She reached for my forearm with the towel.
I should’ve stepped back. There was no reason to let her touch me. It was caramel. I’d had worse things on my skin. Ash. Sap. Blood. Grease. Foam. Sweat. Nothing worth a fuss.
But Sunny’s fingers closed lightly around my wrist, and my useful thoughts went quiet.
Her hand was warm. Small compared to mine, but not fragile. Short nails painted red. A faint dusting of flour or graham crumbs clung to one knuckle. She wiped the caramel from my forearm in one slow pass, and I felt the drag of the towel through my whole body.
My cock twitched again, stupid and hungry, and I locked my knees like that would make me less of an idiot.
She looked up.
We were close enough that I could see the freckles across her nose. Close enough to catch the sugar on her breath. Close enough that the white apron between us couldn’t make me forget the curves underneath it.
“You got it?” I asked.
Her thumb paused against my skin.
“Almost.”
The word came out softer than her usual banter.
Sunny released me and took one clean step back. “Right. Obviously. I was preventing a sticky emergency.”
“Public service,” I said.
“Exactly.”
Caprice stared at her clipboard. “I’m scheduling a full extra hour for Round Two if this is how long condiments take.”
The comment broke the moment cleanly. Sunny returned to her station, and I flexed my hand once before I picked up another marshmallow.