My secret baking notebook.
I placed it on the tiny counter beside the sink, the laminate chipped at the edges, and flipped it open. The pages were soft and smudged from years of late-night experiments, dotted with flour fingerprints and cocoa stains I’d never managed to scrub out.
I wasn’t much of a drawer, but I was proud of the rows of hand-drawn cupcakes and swirls of frosting I’d sketched in pencil. The pages of notes about flavor balance, texture, and bake times were the most important to me, though. My recipes.
A messy doodle of a cinnamon-apple crumble bar caught my eye. I’d almost perfected it, but I’d never be sure until I had the money for real cinnamon sticks instead of the off-brand powder. And Pink Lady apples, since they had the sweet-and-tart balance I wanted and kept their shape in the oven. I’d also love to use Irish butter for a richer flavor, but I didn’t see that happening anytime soon either.
My fingertips brushed the drawing, and a warmth spread through my chest that had nothing to do with the humid apartment.
Baking had always been my safe place. My constant.
I remembered sneaking over to Ms. Halliday’s across the street when I was twelve, pretending I wasn’t escaping the yelling inside my own house. She’d taught me how to cream butter and sugar by hand, to fold batter gently, and to coax magic out of simple ingredients. Back then, I’d sold cookies at school to buy lunch when Mom forgot to give me money.
Those hours in the kitchen with my neighbor were some of the happiest moments of my childhood.
I grabbed a pen and started refining the crumble bar recipe, adjusting measurements, jotting down fixes, imagining what it might taste like if I ever had a real kitchen to test it properly. Or the time.
For a few precious minutes, the exhaustion melted away. It was just me, my notebook, and a dream I’d never learned how to let go of.
But dreams took things I didn’t have.
Ever since my scholarship fell through, culinary school was a fantasy. One I could barely stand to think about.
I closed the notebook softly and rested my palms on top of it, breathing through the ache in my chest.
Micah’s face flickered through my mind, uninvited.
The way he’d watched me earlier. The quiet intensity. The softness under all that muscle.
I shoved the thought away. I couldn’t afford to get starry-eyed over the football player who basically signed my paychecks.
Not with so much depending on me.
I slid the notebook back into its hiding place and finally let myself sag. I needed to get some sleep. Tomorrow would come too soon, and I’d work myself right back into exhaustion.
3
MICAH
Ilearned a long time ago that a linebacker’s greatest weapon wasn’t speed or brute force—it was patience. Reading an offense, waiting for the guard to lean his weight, watching the quarterback’s eyes right before the snap. Striking the moment the gap opens and you lay somebody out. If you missed it by half a beat, the running back was celebrating in the end zone.
That same patience carried me through the week after I first met Rylin.
When I left practice Tuesday afternoon, my legs still ached from sled work, my shoulder throbbed where a rookie tight end had tried to prove a point, and my belly was growling for the Micah’s Monster Melt I pretended was off-limits during the season. Plus, Monday’s full-contact practice still rang in my bones, but soreness never kept a linebacker off his feet. And it sure as hell wasn’t keeping me out of The Tight Line.
The subway rumbled beneath Midtown as I walked the last block. My shirt clung to me by the time I shouldered through our glass door, and the deli’s blessed AC hit me.
Twenty-six hours after I’d walked out of The Tight Line, half drunk on the sound of her laugh, and I was back again. Oneof the other servers I’d briefly met when he was hired, Derek, waved from the host stand, but my eyes had already found the only thing that mattered.
Rylin.
She was wiping down a four-top near the window, her hips swaying to the beat, and the sight of her punched warmth through my chest. I tracked her every step, my eyes sweeping over her, not missing a thing. The cheap, threadbare sneakers were patched with silver duct tape at the sides and across the toe, where the sole had started to separate. The way her ponytail swung even though it was already drooping loose from the morning rush. That stubborn smile pushed against the tired. Her makeup was freshly done, but it didn’t hide the shadows that still smudged the skin under her eyes.
When she noticed me, hesitation flickered behind her hazel eyes. One day wasn’t enough to erase her caution. I wasn’t deterred, though. I raised a hand, nothing more, and slid into the same booth as yesterday. She finished busing her table before approaching, a pen already in hand.
“Back already?” A hint of amusement colored her voice, but the guardrails were still up. Obviously, nobody got close to her without earning it. Which would make it all the more special when I finally breached those walls of hers.
I grinned, sinking into the vinyl booth. “I’m starving. And how could I own a place where I didn’t crave the food?” Winking, I added, “And the service.”
