“I can’t.”
It’s true and terrifying and completely out of my control.
She’s quiet for a beat. “You know what’s unfair?” she finally asks.
“What?”
“You get to look at me like that with your whole...” She waves a hand vaguely at my face. “Steady, decent human being situation. And I’m over here trying not to think about two different men’s hands while kneading dough. It’s very distracting. You’re very distracting.”
The flush on her neck deepens.
“Good,” I say.
She throws a dish towel at me She feels it too.
Whatever this is, she feels it too.
Day four, I kiss her.
I don’t mean to.
We’re in the kitchen, her kitchen, the bakery kitchen, the one that’s starting to smell like butter and sugar because she’s been testing recipes all morning.
She’s testing a recipe, muttering to herself as she adjusts measurements.
“Okay so if I’m Zoey Carter, small-town baker, I can’t just... no, that’s stupid, Zoey wouldn’t do ironic banana bread, she’d do... fuck, I don’t know what Zoey does. Does Zoey even like bananas? Who IS Zoey?”
She looks up, realizes I’m listening.
“Sorry. I’m having an identity crisis via produce. Very normal. Extremely stable.”
And there she is. Stevie, underneath all the grief, still talking to herself, still spiraling, still herself.
“Zoey likes what you like,” I say.
She blinks at me. Then smiles. Small but real. “Yeah. Okay. Zoey likes bananas.”
There’s flour on her cheek. Just a small smudge, white against her skin, and I reach out without thinking to brush it away. My thumb touches her cheekbone.
She goes still.
And then I’m kissing her.
I don’t decide to do it. My body just moves, closing the distance between us, my mouth finding hers like it’s something I’ve done a thousand times before instead of something I’ve been trying not to think about for months.
She makes a small sound, surprise, maybe, or relief, and then she’s kissing me back.
It’s soft. Slower than I expected. Not the desperate crash of two people giving in to something they’ve been fighting, but something gentler. It feels less like breaking a rule and more like finally doing what I should have done all along.
Her hands come up to my chest. Just resting there, feeling my heartbeat.
I cup her face in both hands. Tilt her head slightly. Kiss her deeper.
She tastes like sugar cookies and coffee and something that might be tears.
When we finally break apart, we’re both breathing hard.
“Saul,” she whispers.
