“I don’t think you do.” I curl one leg under myself, repositioning. “For some of us, this isn’t just exposure. It isn’t networking or a way to climb whatever ladder we’re on. It’s rent. It’s a loan we can’t get approved for because we don’t have sufficient collateral. It’s finally being able to open something of our own without begging for investors.”
His gaze doesn’t leave mine.
“If you lose,” I continue, “you go back to a restaurant group with your last name on the building.”
“I don’t want that,” he says quickly, afraid I’m not going to believe him. I do believe him, but what he wants is irrelevant to reality.
“You still have it, regardless.”
Silence fills the space between us. His hand slides across the cushion, pinky brushing against my thigh in a featherlight touch.
“You’re right.”
“And then there’sus. I don’t know what parts of you were real and what parts were just an act. I don’t know if I was someone you liked or someone who conveniently fit your end goal.”
“You were inconvenient,” he says abruptly, blue eyes flashing a range of emotions I don’t have enough time to decipher.
“What?”
“You were inconvenient,” he repeats. “And I still couldn’t stay away from you. I came into this competition with a clear plan. Keep my head down. Win. Leave. I wasn’t supposed to get distracted by someone whose laugh has taken up residence in my mind and has the nerve to challenge me in ways I haven’t been challenged in years.”
His admission releases tiny butterflies in my belly.
“I wasn’t supposed to look for you after every bake or care if you made it or not. And I definitely wasn’t supposed to let what happened between us happen. That wasn’t part of the agreement.”
The word agreement makes me flinch. It’s so clinical.
“Chet Harrington can make me show up,” he says, leaning closer to me and closing some of the distance between us. “But he has no control over what I do while I’m here.”
I hold his gaze, emotion swelling behind my eyes.
“He can’t make me stand between you and production when they push too hard. He can’t make me stay in the practice kitchen with you, working on technique. Those things were all me.”
I think back to all of our little moments in the kitchen. No one asked him to do those things, and quite honestly, it probably would have been better for him if he hadn’t.
“You didn’t have to do any of it,” I whisper, knowingly.
“Exactly.”
“Were they watching?”
He shrugs in response. “Couldn’t tell you, I wasn’t paying attention to them at that point.”
Those dang butterflies break out into a synchronized flight pattern at the admission.
“I don’t know how you did it, but you burrowed right under my skin. There’s something about you that I can’t quite place. I don’t know how to explain it, you just… you make baking feel like it did when I was a kid.” His gaze pins me in place, vulnerable and wide open and it catches me off guard.
He’s letting me see into the spaces he doesn’t show anyone else. Those oceans of bright blue and steely gray swallow me with their vulnerability. His words are gentle, quiet even, but my heart is racing.
He’s letting me in.
“My grandparents had this tiny kitchen,” he says, breaking eye contact to study his hands a little too closely. “Nothing fancy. No stainless steel or high-end gadgets. Just flour everywhere and music too loud. It was fun, you know? It wasn’t about proving anything.”
I smile despite my lingering hesitation. I know exactly what he means.
“My Gran taught me everything I know. She let me do all the measuring back then, and I’d end up spilling half of it across the counter most of the time.”
He huffs out a laugh that almost sounds like relief. “Mine pretended not to notice when I did, too. Just quietly urged me on to the next ingredient while silently cleaning up after me.”
