Her brow arched. “Sounds violent.”
“Don’t worry, the casualties are mostly spoons.”
He showed her—the melting over low heat, the steady stir, the pour onto the marble slab. The rhythm of scrape and fold, dragging the shine back into the chocolate before it dulled. She didn’t scoff. She watched, lips pressed, eyes intent. Her attempt was clumsy. Too much wrist, not enough patience—the chocolate streaked and refused to gloss. She swore under her breath, and he bit back a grin that threatened to give him away.
“Not bad,” he said, gently.
“Don’t patronize me.”
“Wouldn’t dare.”
The next fold came smoother, less fight in her wrist, more focus in her hand. She caught the rhythm faster than he expected—scrape, lift, fold, the sheen returning under her stubborn persistence. He slowed his own pace until it matched hers, steady beside fierce, the sound of metal on marble finding a cadence that belonged to them both.
She muttered every time the chocolate resisted. He hummed absently, as he always did when baking. And somehow, the two sounds twined together, rough and soft, until the air in the bakery felt charged with more than just the scent of cocoa.
And then Maude did the last thing he ever expected—she sang.
Not words; just a melody, low and unguarded, spilling out of her as her eyes burned and the sound threaded through the warm kitchen air.
Wesley’s hands went still. The tune was simple, lilting,old. It slid beneath his skin, hooking deep, tugging at nerves long gone numb. His chest tightened, breath catching wrong in his lungs. He didn’t know the melody—couldn’t place it—yet some part of him leaned toward it with the certainty that he’d once known every note. It felt like home, like warmth, like safety—like something he’d lost and only now remembered to miss.
His head tilted, eyes narrowing. “I’ve heard this before,” he said, searching her face. “Haven’t I?”
Maude’s smile trembled, brittle with sorrow. She let the melody slip from her lips, quiet as a secret, until the last note faded.
Silence lingered, broken only by the hearth’s crackle and Grim’s low, contented purr.
“What was that?” His voice was careful. “A spell?”
“No.” Her throat worked. “Not a spell. A memory. A…feeling.”
“Yours?”
She shook her head, whispering, “No. Yours.”
Wesley’s brow furrowed. “Maude, I?—”
“When you hummed it,” she said quickly, eyes fixed on the chocolate as if it might save her, “back when we first met—I hated it. I thought you were just trying to get under my skin. And then I realized…it wasn’t for me at all. It was for you. Forher.”
Wesley froze. Something flickered through him—grief? Wonder? Both, knotted so tightly he couldn’t pull them apart.
Her. She meant…
His chest drew taut, ribs straining against a memory that wasn’t there. No matter how hard he reached, he couldn’t find it. He couldn’t remember his mother’s face—not the way he once had. But the song—saints, the song…it was hers.
Maude’s voice shook, but she pressed on. “I kept it. Because you gave it up. Somebody had to hold it. Somebody had to remember.”
His head shook before he realized he was moving. “Maude, I don’t—” His voice cracked. He tried again, hoarse. “I don’t understand.”
Her chin lifted, color flaring high across her cheeks. Her green eyes burned—wet, furious, unguarded—and in them lived every sleepless night, every wall she’d built brick by brick, now splitting all at once.
“It means I love you, idiot.”
The words struck like a blow, then unfurled like wings. He swayed with them, drunk, undone. His mouth went dry. He tried to laugh, to breathe, to move, but all he could do was stare—at her, at those verdant eyes burning into him as though she’d branded truth across his heart.
He felt it—her love—imprinted upon him as though the very fibers of his being had been stitched with it, indelible and irrevocable. And for once, Wesley Rivers, the man who always had a quip, a grin, an easy way out, found himself speechless.
“Say it again,” he managed at last, the plea ripping out before he could stop it. He needed to hear it—needed it the way the tide needs moon, the way hands reach for warmth in winter.
