She didn’t look up.“You like it, you chop it.”
The corner of his mouth shifted, brief and gone before it could settle into anything softer.For a second, something tightened in her chest that had nothing to do with the work in front of her.She ignored it.
“What’s your count,” she asked instead, keeping her tone even.“Because last time you called something done, it fed half the county.”
He reached past her for the cumin, his arm brushing her side as if the space between them didn’t require negotiation.The contact was brief, unavoidable, and not acknowledged.
“Enough,” he said.
“Not an answer.”
“It will be.”
She huffed once, low, and shifted to the garlic.The knife moved faster now, the scrape against the board sharper than she would have allowed anywhere else.He didn’t comment.He took what she slid toward him and added it to the pot without breaking rhythm.
The clock above the fridge advanced one minute at a time, each tick stretching longer than it should.Outside, voices rose and fell.Inside, the work settled into something that looked like cooperation if no one looked too closely.
Kyla kept her head down and her hands moving.She could get through the shift.She could get through him.It was just another kitchen, another long stretch of hours where nothing mattered except the next step.That thought held until she felt his attention shift.
It wasn’t obvious.No movement.No sound.Just the sense of it, the awareness that he had turned his focus in her direction without stepping closer.She straightened slightly, not enough to call attention, and adjusted the angle of her board.
“What,” she said, without looking up.
“Nothing,” he answered.
She didn’t believe him.
She also didn’t push it.
By hour six, the heat had settled into Kyla’s bones.
Chili and garlic clung to her hair, her clothes, the inside of her throat.Sweat tracked down the back of her neck, caught at her collar, and kept going.Her hand ached from repetition.The dull throb of too many cuts and too much force behind each one.The apron stuck to her in places she ignored.
The kitchen never quieted.Metal struck metal.Lids shifted.Someone swore when a pot boiled over and burned their hand.The noise didn’t overwhelm; it narrowed.
The space between her and Titus narrowed with it.
The galley forced them into the same lanes.Every pass meant contact: a shoulder, an elbow, the side of a hip that had no room to avoid another body moving the opposite direction.Neither of them apologized.Neither stepped aside unless they had to.
She reached for a stack of cans at the same time he did.Their arms collided, locked for a beat that stretched longer than it should have.He didn’t move first.Neither did she.
“You’re in my space,” Kyla said, pulling her arm free and reaching again.
“You call this space,” he replied, shifting just enough to let her grab what she needed while still standing too close.“You should see a branding line.”
She kept her eyes on the board.“I’m not interested.”
“Didn’t say you were.”
He moved behind her, close enough that she felt the change in the air before she felt him.His chest brushed her back for a second that could have passed as accidental if it hadn’t lingered a fraction too long.
“Need me to move, Chef,” he said, voice low, close to her ear.
Her knife didn’t slow.“Only if you plan to stop sweating into the food.”
His breath touched the edge of her jaw as he shifted away.“That’s where the flavor comes from.”
She stifled a laugh as the radio pushed through another verse.Somewhere outside the kitchen, a child cried and was hushed.Kyla focused on the rhythm of the knife, on the clean break of each cut, on the way the board felt steady beneath her hands.
