“It was a good kiss, Ashford. But we can’t do this here.”
My head snaps up.
My eyes go wide because I am, despite being a man who can reverse-engineer a satellite uplink, fundamentally unequipped for this level of blunt honesty at 4:45 in the morning.
Tess notices my reaction and gives me a playful look. “Ok, fine. A very…” She turns toward the mixer, so I can’t see her face fully. “…not-terrible kiss.”
Her cheeks are pink. I can see it even from behind.
“But right now,” she adds, her voice sharpening into that familiar wartime tone that makes me stand straighter on instinct, “you’re on the clock. And you’re on lamination. Those croissants aren’t going to fold themselves. Don’t. Mess. It. Up.”
She risks a glance over her shoulder.
I’m still standing there, frozen, like my brain has blue-screened.
And then something inside me breaks open, bright, stupid, and uncontrollable.
A grin spreads across my face. Not a smug grin. Not my boardroom smile. Not the one that says I’m about to win. This is pure, unfiltered sunshine. A grin that should come with a warning label.
“Yes, boss,” I say, my voice almost cheerful, which is terrifying because I don’t think I’ve sounded cheerful since 2018.
I practically skip to the walk-in to get the butter blocks.
Because if Tess Bennett just called our kiss “not-terrible” and then assigned me croissants, I am ninety percent sure I have died and gone to the one version of heaven that makes sense: hard work, good bread, and her.
Gwen arrives ten minutes later.
She hangs up her bag, takes one look at me happily whistlingMr. Brightsidewhile pounding a cold butter block into a perfect rectangle, and then takes one look at Tess, who is not yelling at me for whistling, and her jaw drops.
“Oh,” Gwen says slowly. “Oh, ok. We’re whistling now. We’re bringing coffee.”
“Shut up, G,” Tess mutters, burying her face in a bin of flour like she’s trying to hide from her own life. “And get the brioche starter.”
Gwen just grins as she ties on her apron. “This is gonna be a great day.”
It is.
It is, to my profound confusion, the best day I have had in the kitchen in recent memory.
The dynamic shifts. Fundamentally. Like someone flips a switch I didn’t know existed.
For weeks, the tension between Tess and me has been a snapped wire: boss and intern, skeptic and himbo, competent and clumsy, fury and shame. Even when things got better, even when I became useful, there was always the wall. Always the awareness of what I brought to her door.
But today, today, the air hums warm instead of sharp.
We are a team.
It’s like the kiss and the sidewalk confessions unlocked something.
I am no longer just trying.
I am anticipating.
“Need the bench scraper,” Tess murmurs, and I’m already handing it to her before she finishes the sentence.
“Timer on the baguettes is in thirty seconds,” she calls, and I’m there, sleeves rolled up, ready with the steam tray like my life depends on it.
There’s still clumsiness, because I am still, at my core, a man who once defeated himself with a bottle of soap. But it’s different now. Less catastrophic. More human.
