Chapter 6 #2
I stare at him, and he exhales, running a hand over the back of his neck, my response locked in my chest.
“My mom was a TV presenter. Big smile, perfect hair, and a happy marriage. That was the story everyone bought. Behind closed doors, it was screaming, drinking, doors slamming hard enough to shake the walls.” His voice lowers, losing the easy charm completely.
“I grew up watching people perform happiness for cameras while everything rotted underneath, and I swore I’d never do that.
My videos are messy because that’s me. You see the flour on the floor, the cat stealing food, the dumb jokes, the screwups.
All of it. Sometimes that means I embarrass myself in front of a few million people, but at least it’s mine. ”
The words settle between us, and something in my chest aches because he isn’t giving me a polished version of himself. He’s offering me the cracked piece underneath.
“I’m trying,” I whisper. “It’s just… it’s always been hard. I’ve always been this way. The anxiety, the hiding, the convincing myself that if I stay inside long enough, nobody can hurt me.” I pick at the butterfly strip on my arm. “It’s not a great strategy.”
His gaze drops to my fingers, and he pulls them away from the scratch, then lifts his attention back to my face. “It’s a survival strategy,” he says. “There’s a difference.”
That’s when Damien returns from his bowl and attempts to climb between us. He gets one paw on Brody’s thigh, one on mine, and stands there, a furry bridge, trilling with the insistence of a cat who has noticed that attention is being directed at someone other than him and finds this unacceptable.
Brody lifts him with one arm, settles him on the counter, and pushes the remaining pull-apart out of paw range. Damien sits upright and stares at us, golden eyes unblinking, paws together, a tiny fluffy chaperone.
“Okay,” Brody says, turning back to me. “If anyone asks how we met, we need a story.”
“You moved in next door.”
“Boring. We need a meet-cute.”
“Did you really just say that?”
“I read romance novels. Don’t look so surprised.” He leans against the counter, eyes wide, his knees bracketing mine more tightly. We’re not exactly touching but close enough that every tiny movement feels like the real thing.
“Picture this,” he says. “Farmers’ market. I’m carrying too many bags. A rogue avocado escapes and rolls across the pavement. You step on it and go down. I drop everything to catch you, and in the craziness, my sourdough starter in my jar falls, crashes, and explodes all over both of us.”
“That’s super dramatic and not how sourdough works.”
He winks at me, and that small gesture has me missing a breath. “It does in romance.”
“Sounds sticky.”
His gaze flicks to my mouth, just for a second, and my body responds like it has been waiting for permission all night. “Most good things are.”
My brain forgets how to be a brain.
He grins as if he knows exactly what he’s doing. “We’re standing there covered in fermented dough and smashed avocado, and our eyes meet. Then I say, ‘I think my starter likes you.’ And you say—”
“I’m not sure this sounds real and—”
“You say, ‘That’s the most aggressive avocado I’ve ever met,’ and I fall in love on the spot.”
I laugh, loosening every tension in my body, which makes Damien’s ears flatten with concern. My knees bump Brody’s.
“That’s the most absurd and cheesy thing I’ve ever heard,” I say, though I can’t stop laughing.
“Nobody questions a story that specific. The weirder the details, the more real it sounds.” He taps the counter, his knuckles close enough to brush mine. “Okay, that’s established. Now, the basics. Star sign?”
“Virgo.”
“Scorpio.”
“Oh.” I sit up, and my knee slides against the inside of his. Heat flashes straight through me. “That’s actually an intense combination. Virgo overthinks everything. Scorpio feels everything. It’s either incredible or catastrophic.”
His shoulders square, and he leans in closer just as Damien places a fluffy paw on his shoulder. “Which one are we?”
“Ask me after Saturday.”
His eyes darken, and the charged little silence that follows isn’t innocent. It hums between us until I become aware of how far forward I’ve leaned as well.
“So,” he says, stretching his back, Damien’s protective paw returning, while I’m gawking at Brody’s T-shirt across his chest, across all those broad, angled muscles. “Tell me about the love for food. Where did it start?”
“My grandmother.” I grab onto the question like a lifeline, even though his knees are still on either side of mine and I’m struggling to think about anything else. “She ran a bed-and-breakfast on the coast, and I spent every summer in her kitchen learning to cook by instinct.”
His expression softens, and he’s reaching for his tea, sipping on it, watching me. “She never used recipes. She’d taste and adjust and taste again, and when I asked how she knew it was right, she’d say, ‘Your tongue knows before your brain does. Just trust it.’ ”
Brody’s gaze holds on mine, then his attention tumbles to my mouth again. “That’s exactly how I cook.” His voice has gone rough around the edges, sending shivers of excitement down my spine.
My fingers curl against the edge of the stool. “Is that how you ended up doing ManBaker?”
“Yep.” He reaches for another piece of pull-apart, tears it in half, and offers me the bigger piece. I take it, and our fingers brush during the handoff, only a second of contact, but my stomach flutters hard.
Brody doesn’t let go immediately.
Neither do I.
For one suspended moment, we sit there with bread between us, our legs touching, and his thumb resting lightly against the side of my finger like he’s testing how much heat one accidental touch can hold.
Apparently, a lot.
“How did it all start?” I ask.
“With a taco food truck in Austin,” he says, voice lower than before, his attention still on where our hands meet.
“Bought it with bartending money, parked it near the UT campus, and made breakfast burritos until the engine died.” The corner of his mouth lifts.
“I was filming clips of myself cooking in the truck before anyone was paying attention. Phone propped against a jar, terrible lighting, just messing around.” He gestures toward Damien, who’s curled into a loaf on the counter, tail wrapped around his body.
“The first video that blew up wasn’t even supposed to be posted.
Damien knocked a whole bowl of pancake batter off the counter mid-shot, and instead of cutting, I just kept rolling.
People loved the disaster more than any recipe I’d ever made. ”
“The birth of @DamienKnocks.”
“Exactly. After that, I stopped trying to be polished. People don’t want perfect.
They want real—the cat pushing flour off the counter and me swearing and the sourdough rising wrong.
All of it.” He tilts his head, and his knee presses a little more firmly against mine.
Not enough to trap me. Enough to make me wonder what it would feel like if he did.
“That’s what I loved about your book, by the way.
It’s not a chef telling people how to cook.
It’s a granddaughter telling people why cooking matters. ”
My heart races at his compliment, something I never expected, and it’s ridiculous because I can handle praise.
I have handled reviews, interviews, and strangers telling me my recipes made them cry.
But from him, the words slide deeper within my feelings.
They’re intimate, and I guess I’m not used to such compliments from Alphas. More specifically, from Louis.
“Where’s your family?” I ask.
“Nashville. Mom’s remarried, happy, settled. We talk every Sunday.” His jaw tightens fractionally. “My dad’s… around. We don’t talk much.”
The shift in his energy is subtle but unmistakable. “I’m sorry.”
“Ancient history.” He rolls his shoulders, shaking it off.
He refills our glasses from the jug. “You trained properly, right?” he asks, settling back against the counter.
“Seattle. Two years. Then I worked the line at a couple of restaurants and discovered that professional kitchens were slowly dismantling me.” I turn the glass in my hands, needing something to look at that isn’t his mouth or his forearms or the way his body takes up all my attention. “So I started writing.”
“That’s incredible, Claire,” he says with an impressed grin.
“You’ve built ManBaker into a huge empire,” I say, trying to make the feeling smaller before it spreads. “My little cookbook feels humble next to that.”
“Millions watch me bake shirtless with a cat. You wrote a book that will be shared with generations, with families, and cherished.” He holds my gaze, and his hand tightens around mine just enough to make my breathing change. “Don’t rank us. What you built matters.”
I stare at him, and I don’t know what to say. The pull-apart is demolished. The iced tea is nearly gone. “It’s late. I should go. I think we’ve covered everything.”
“Dress code?”
“Dressy and comfortable. No tie unless you feel compelled.”
“I’ve got it.” He winks, stands, scoops Damien off the counter, and deposits him on the couch. He immediately stretches out and begins aggressively ignoring us.
Brody walks me to his front door, opens it, and waits while I step just outside.
The night air slips cool over my bare legs, the street quiet beyond the front yard.
He follows me out and pulls the door closed, leaving us tucked beneath the door’s overhead cover while the whole neighborhood around us is sleeping.
He steps forward and turns to face me, but he’s closer than I expect, standing between me and the front yard, his attention settled fully on my face. My back is now flush with the door.
Somehow he’s even closer than he was a second ago. Inches away. The shadow of stubble along his jaw draws my attention, his chest rising and falling, while mine is in a race.