The word slid through me like a match struck in the dark.
“I haven’t heard that in years,” I said a little to breathy.
“Didn’t think I still got to say it,” he muttered quietly.
For a second, I let myself look at him, the boy I’d kissed in kitchens and back seats; the man who now built his life from the same recipes we’d once scribbled on napkins. He was steady and solid and everything I’d tried not to need.
“You shouldn’t,” I said softly, my life was a mess. He was too good of a man for me to drag him into my periphery.
“I know.” He let his hand fall, slowly, reluctantly. “Still feels good to remember.”
“Yeah,” I whispered, “it does.”
The porch light flickered once.
He stepped back first. “Be careful walking home.”
“I always am.”
He smiled, small and knowing. “That’s not the same as safe.”
I turned before I could say something I’d regret. The night air bit my lungs and cleared my head, just enough to hurt. I walked back to the loft remembering a time when I felt carefree. I stopped caring what my father thought, and I did what felt right.
Back in the loft, I set the jar of preserves beside the paper bag he’d given me earlier. Both smelled faintly of cinnamon.
My phone buzzed.
Unknown:Stop pretending to be something you aren’t.
I saved the number asDo Not Replyand texted Becket instead.
Me:Got another message. Same tone. I’m fine.
Becket:Thanks for telling me. I’ll keep an eye out. Your brother and Nico have been lying low since your father’s arrest.
I checked the balcony latch and turned off the lights. The dark was steady tonight. My pulse wasn’t. I wasn’t the girl who taught Eric how to bake anymore. She was fearless, stupid, and young. I’m the one trying to remember how to breathe around the man who stole my heart. And tonight, when he called meSunshine, part of me wondered if I’d ever really stopped being his.
CHAPTER 7
Eric
The rain started before dawn, cold and deliberate, the kind that doesn’t ask permission. It hit the bakery roof in steady rhythms, a warning wrapped in water. By the time I unlocked the front door, Main Street was already slick, the gutters churning like they meant to swallow the town. The ovens hummed behind me, low and warm, a heartbeat I could control when nothing else was steady.
Becket’s voice crackled through the radio. “Flooding near Carignan. Station Three on standby.”
I looked at the jacket hanging by the door. I didn’t wait for the official call. Storms had always been my kind of clarity. Some people ran from chaos. I ran toward it. By the time I reached the station, thunder rolled so close it shook the windows. When we got to the low side of town, a pickup was nose-down in a ditch, water rushing around the tires. A woman stood in the bed, trying to pull a soaked retriever out by its collar. I went in before I thought twice, icy water bit through my gear. The dog was slick and panicked, the woman crying, and for a few seconds we were all just noise and movement and breath. Then the dog lunged, I caught him, and the world snapped back into focus.She was sobbing against my shoulder when I got them to the embankment. I laughed once, the way you do when you’re alive and shouldn’t be.
This part of my day made sense, volunteering with the fire department was the only place that ever gave me clarity. No bakery schedules, no missing-person podcasts I played on loop, like maybe if I listened hard enough, I’d understand how my mother could leave without turning back. Just problem, action, solution. For a few hours, I wasn’t the son of a woman who took off. I was just a man who got to save somebody. When I was fifteen, Mom got in her car and drove away. Dad said he tried looking for her but once she passed provincial borders, he just let her go. He said, “You can’t force someone to stay.” I took that advice when Harmony left without saying goodbye. I call Mom the reason I stopped believing in safe endings. Becket searched for Mom, but there hadn’t been a trace of her since she walked away from us. Dad said it was better not to search, she didn’t want to be found. When I suggested maybe something bad happened to her, he would disagree and say he didn’t believe that was the case. That’s all I ever got. I couldn’t save my mom from her demons, but I learned to pull people out of storms because it was the only kind of rescue left to believe in.
By noon, we’d evacuated two families and cut through a dozen downed branches. My hands ached, adrenaline buzzed under my skin. The radio flared again with the fire chief’s voice, tight. “Bridge near Rivière Lane’s out. Watch the shoulders. Roads are slick.”
“Copy,” I said.
That’s when my phone buzzed.
Becket:Harmony messaged. Trouble at the shop. Olivier and Nico. She’s fine. I’m on my way.
Becket:Stay put. Roads are closing.
