Page 167 of A Taste of Vanilla

She’s stillat the bakery at 11:47 p.m.

The bakery has been closed for five hours. The chairs are stacked on top of the tables, the pastry case is empty, and the lights out front have been dimmed to a soft glow.

The sidewalks are dark except for the spill of streetlight outside Saints & Sinners. Every few minutes, I hear Oliver moving around on the other side of the wall, shutting down the bar with the same quiet irritation he applies to everything else.

The problem is Halston.

She’s in the kitchen alone, wearing an oversized sweatshirt that keeps sliding off one shoulder, with flour on her cheek, her hair twisted into a knot that looks like it’s losing an argument with gravity, and the expression of a woman trying to outrun pain by baking through it.

That’s not how that works.

I stand at the doorway between Oliver’s bar and the prep kitchen, hiding the production clipboard I told myself I was only returning.

I was lying.

The clipboard isn’t why I’m here. Sure, I wanted to go over production and what we could have adjusted if a day like today happened again.

But Halston is the reason I’m here.

She doesn’t notice me at first. Music plays low from the speaker near the sink. Something with electric guitars and a man screaming about whether someone’s husband knows. Halston hums under her breath while she stirs a bowl of glaze, her movements quick and a little uneven.

There are so many things on the table. Too many things.

Three trays of scones. Two bowls of cookie dough. Tart shells. A lemon curd. A saucepan of syrup cooling from the stove. Notes tucked into the shelf.

She becomes less organized the more scared she is.

When she’s happy, her chaos has orbit. It’s instinct. It moves around people and around joy. When she’s afraid and hurting, the orbit breaks. Ideas scatter everywhere, and she tries enough things that failure cannot find a single target.

“You should be upstairs,” I say.

She jumps, the spatula clattering against the side of the bowl, one hand flying to her chest. “Warren!” She points the spatula at me, a line of glaze sliding down the handle toward her wrist. “You can’t just stand silently in doorways at midnight.”

“I spoke.”

“After lurking.”

“This isn’t lurking.”

“You were doing that emotionally repressed gargoyle thing you do.”

I shake my head. “I don’t even know what that means.”

“Oliver does it too, but with a little more judgment and less thigh.”

I stop, and her eyes widen.

The music keeps playing, and the kitchen feels like it’s shrinking.

She turns back to the table. “Forget I said that.”

I don’t think I can. “No.”

“Warren.”

She mutters something under her breath that sounds an awful lot likeGerman spreadsheet vampire.

I step in and place the clipboard on the table, and her gaze drops to it.