“Wait—are you serious?”
My eyes snap to Taylor.
She’s completely still. Watching. Processing.
“Because that requirement wasn’t met,” Magnolia’s voice comes out steady, “you didn’t fully complete the challenge.”
Brandon stares at the table, disbelief clouding his features before he speaks, “So what does that mean?”
There’s a tense moment where Garrett holds Magnolia’s gaze. Finally, he exhales and delivers the final blow.
“It means that despite the quality of your bake, we can’t advance you to the finale.”
For a second, no one moves. Then it hits—holy shit.
My hands fly to my face, holding back the reaction that wants to explode out of me.
Taylor just made the finale.
“Taylor,” Magnolia says, smiling. “Congratulations, you are advancing to the finale.”
Her mouth falls open, gaze bouncing around to all of our faces with a manic glint flaring behind her eyes.
“What?”
It breaks out of her in a sharp, disbelieving laugh before she dissolves into tears. And something in my chest cracks wide open watching her.
I cross the distance between us before I even think about it, pulling Taylor into my arms, whispering my congratulations, and twirling her around.
The cameras are watching, but I couldn’t care less.
Let them see.
Taylor making it to the finale is all that matters.
When I set her back on her feet, her glassy eyes find mine. Our chests are still heaving, but we’re laughing into the space between us, breathless and a little unsteady.
I cock an eyebrow, a silent question.
She nods once.
And then I kiss her.
Watermelon lip gloss and something unmistakably Taylor flood my senses. Somewhere behind us, there’s applause, laughter, and a few soft, knowingawws, but it all blurs into the background, reduced to the way her fingers clutch the front of my apron and the breathless laugh she lets out against my mouth.
For one perfect moment, nothing else exists.
Next week, one of us is going to win this whole damn thing. And for the first time since I walked into this tent, I’m not sure which outcome scares me more.
CHAPTER 24: TAYLOR
Walking behind Diane, hand in hand with Alex, is surreal. And not in a pretty, aesthetic kind of way. It’s more of awhat is my life right nowkind of vibe. Us three being in the finale still hasn’t fully settled in.
The front door swings open before I can brace myself against the deafening silence waiting to swallow us whole.
For half a second, I linger at the threshold, caught in place as the house unfolds exactly as it did that first week—loud and crowded, voices spilling through the entryway, bodies everywhere.
It doesn’t make any sense.
