“I woke up this morning to twenty-three texts,” she says, and her voice strains with control. “From strangers. I have eight hundred new followers on the bakery’s Instagram, and every single one of them is asking, ‘Where is the hot guy?’ ‘Why is he with you?’ And that’s not even touching the insults.”
The fact that she is emotional hits me harder than the words. She points a trembling, flour-dusted finger toward the front window.
“There is a van across the street,” she says. “It says Channel Five News on the side. At four forty-five in the morning. For my bakery.”
I look.
She is right.
A white van sits in the pre-dawn gloom; a dark shape slumped in the driver’s seat. Waiting. Like a predator. Like a consequence.
“This is my life, Leo,” she whispers, and something in her voice fractures, not into tears, but into something white hot and unyielding. “This is my business. My home. It is not the goddamn set for your Midnight Mavericks redemption arc. You didn’t just lie to me. You used me. You used my bakery. And you used that kid.”
“I didn’t.” The denial tears out of me, sharp now, defensive, wounded in a way I hate. “I didn’t know. I didn’t ask anyone to film us. I don’t want a docu crew. That was the Mavericks crew. I told them no.”
“But they are here.” She gestures at the window as if it were an accusation painted in white. “You brought this circus here, Leo. You and your dare. You dragged your world, all glass and steel and cameras and branding, into mine. And you ruined it.”
My throat tightens.
“I can fix it,” I say, because fixing is what I do. It is what I have been trained to do since I was old enough to understand that problems are solvable if you have enough resources. My hand fumbles for my phone, thumb hovering over contacts like weapons. Julian. Lawyers. PR. Security. “I’ll make them leave. I’ll…”
“You’ll what?” she snaps. “Throw money at it like you do everything else? You can’t unring this bell. You can’t unpost the video.”
Then she looks at me with something deeper than anger. A bone-deep exhaustion. The kind that goes beyond eighteen-hour days, butter prices, and razor-thin margins. Something older. Something like the knowledge that the world will always choose spectacle over substance, and she will be the one paying for it.
“You’re a sellout, Leo,” she says. “You will never be anything else. You don’t fix things. You buy them. Or you break them.” Her voice drops. “And you are breaking my bakery.”
I have no answer.
Because she is, in a way, right.
My world follows me like a shadow. I can close deals, shutter factories, reroute supply chains, and still feel like I am moving through clean white air. I step into her bakery, her warm, living, flour-dusted life, and the cameras arrive like flies.
I have broken this.
“I can’t fire you. The entire internet will come after me if I do. So, here’s the new rule,” Tess says, and her voice is dead now, stripped of anything soft. “You are not a person. You are not Leo. You are a ghost.”
The words land in my chest like weights.
“You stay in your corner,” she continues. “You will touch dough. And nothing else. You will not come to the front of the shop. You will not speak to a customer.” Her jaw tightens. “If a camera crew comes in here, you will go into the walk-in freezer, and you will stay there until I tell you to come out.”
Her gaze never wavers.
“Your dare is for a month. Fine. You will serve your time. But you will do it in the dark, where you cannot contaminate the rest of my life.”
She takes one step closer, and the distance between us feels like the edge of a cliff.
“I can’t lose everything I’ve worked for.” Tears gather in her eyes, unshed but burning.
“Tess,” I start, because my body wants to reach backward. To yesterday. To the laugh. To the almost-smile. To the tiny shift in the air between us that felt like a possibility.
“Do you understand?” she asks, louder now. The words crack like a whip.
“Yes, boss,” I whisper.
My voice is small.
“Clear.”
