She steps closer, close enough that I catch the scent of her perfume. It’s citrussy and something warm. "That's beautiful, the symbolism is going to resonate with everyone here."
"It needs to," I say quietly. "The wildfires hit this town hard; many people lost homes and businesses. Some lost more than that."
She glances at me, and I can tell she wants to ask, but she doesn't push. Instead, she just nods. "Then we make sure this cake honors that."
The way she says we does something to my carefully controlled boundaries.
I pull out the base layers I baked yesterday and set them on the turntable. "The first step is leveling and layering. Everything has to be even, or the whole structure becomes unstable."
"Sounds like life," she murmurs.
I glance at her. "Yeah, it does."
She pulls out her camera and starts filming while I work. I try to ignore the lens, but it's hard to ignore her. I watch the way she moves around me, finding angles. I see the way she bites her lower lip when she is concentrating, and the way she quietly encourages me with small sounds of approval that make my hands less steady than they should be.
"You are a natural on camera," she says after a few minutes. "Most people get stiff, but you just keep working like I'm not here."
"I'm pretending you are not here," I admit.
She laughs. "Is it working?"
"Not even a little bit."
The confession slips out before I can stop it, and her smile turns softer and a little warmer.
"Good," she says quietly.
I focus on the frosting, spreading it between the layers with careful strokes. The repetitive motion usually calms me, but today my pulse is doing something erratic every time Piper shifts closer.
"Can I ask you something?" she says after a while.
"Sure."
"Why a phoenix? I know it represents renewal, but was there something specific that made you choose it?"
I pause, spatula in hand, and consider how much to tell her. Most people in Valentine know parts of my story, but not many know all of it.
"My wife died three years ago," I say finally. "During a wildfire evacuation. There was a pileup on the highway, the traffic stalled, and I was two miles behind her and couldn’t get through."
Piper goes very still. "Dylan. I'm so sorry."
"It was chaos," I continue, surprised at how steady my voice sounds. "There were sirens everywhere. People were shouting. Cars were trying to reverse through the smoke. I lost her in the middle of all that. And ever since then, anything involving fire, or smoke, or evacuation alerts feels like that night all over again."
She sets her camera down gently on the counter. "That is a level of loss most people don't come back from."
"I came back," I say quietly. "For Maddie, but some things linger."
She moves closer until she is standing right beside me, and then she does something I don’t expect: she touches my arm. It’s not a brief pat or an awkward gesture; it’s a real touch, her fingers wrap gently around my forearm, warm and grounding.
"You went through something impossible," she says. "And you are still here, creating something beautiful for your town. That takes strength."
Her words settle into a place in my chest that has been empty for a long time.
"Thank you," I manage.
She squeezes my arm once more before letting go, and I immediately miss the contact.
"So the phoenix," she says, giving me space to breathe, "is about the town rising from the ashes. But it's also personal."
