When he doesn’t answer me, I stand and toss the oven mitts onto the countertop behind me. “What did you say, Knox?”
“Ugh, so good,” he says as he devours the last of the pastry and licks his fingers.
I watch his tongue for a moment before my attention pulls to his face. “Did you say, ‘fish out of a dumpster’?”
He pauses before waving his hand dismissively through the air. “Bah, just when I was a kid. Dumpster diving on Fridays was the best. I could always find food for me and the other kids on Friday nights.”
Each word that comes from him is more horrifying than the next. “I’m not following. Why were you sifting through dumpsters?”
He chuckles as he leans against the countertop, folding his arms across his broad chest. “I forget you’re not technically from around here. Most everyone in town knows my story. I grew up in the foster care system out in Stone Creek City.”
I was just in Stone Creek City last night. “But I don’t understand why you’d be?—”
His smile is effortless, like we aren’t talking about him living on the streets as a kid. “When you’re a problematic child like me in the foster care system, they don’t really care what happens to you. I was breaking curfew in my foster house and running the streets with others in the system long before I aged out at eighteen.”
It’s hard for me to catch my breath while he speaks. Knox grew up homeless?
“Anyway,” he says as he peers around me, looking at the M&M cookies that are still cooling on the tray, “it’s not that big of a deal. Happens more often than you think, especially to boys. Honeysuckle Grove opened its arms to me, and I’ve called this place home ever since.”
The question is out of my mouth before I can catch it. “How did you end up in the foster care system?”
“Parents gave me up.”
He says it so plainly. “I’m so sorry, Knox.”
He tosses me a wink. “Nothing to be sorry for, Sunshine. I found my way in life and I’m happy with where I’ve ended up.”
He holds my gaze for a while, and there’s something that simmers beneath his words. It catches my breath in my throat, and for a split second, his lips against mine flashes through my mind. I swallow thickly as the music bumping in the kitchen pulls me out of the recesses of my thoughts.
I’m thankful when he speaks. “Oven treating you okay?”
I look toward the oven he fixed before I pivot to the cookies on the countertop. “Oh, absolutely. Here, try one of these. I pulled those out of the oven you fixed about half an hour ago.”
He takes one of the cookies and practically inhales it.
“Good God, Sunshine,” he says with a mouthful as he chews. “You ever thought about opening your own bakery?”
I smile brightly as I turn and slide the spatula beneath the rest of the cookies to lift them from the pan. “That’s the dream, one of these days. Just have to build up enough money first. That’s the hard part.”
I leave out the part where the city where I want to establish myself is an hour and a half away.
I’m not sure why I leave that out, but I do.
“How much you still need to raise for it?”
“All of it.”
I feel him studying the profile of my face as he leans against the countertop. “You haven’t set any of your money aside yet?”
I shrug as another timer goes off. I head to the stove and lift the lid, the smell of warmed cherries wafting toward my face. I grab the slotted spoon and start stirring, lifting it to see how the juice drips off the steel.
“Not quite thick enough,” I murmur as I blow on the juice before tasting it. “Needs more sugar.”
“Where is it? I’ll get it for you,” Knox says.
I point in the general direction of the sugar, and soon enough, I’ve got it at my side. One more cup of sugar goes into the cherry compote I’m making on the stove, and I stir itconstantly while the sugar’s dissolving. The smell is divine, and I lean over the steam to inhale it again. I hold the spoon up, watch it drip from the end, and then blow on it before trying it again.
“Nope, one more cup,” I say.
