“Yeah,” he says. “I can see that.”
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 buildingthings 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.