Page 106 of Frosted Fakes

THE WALK TO the bakery felt endless. Every step was an opportunity to turn around, to convince herself this was a terrible idea, to retreat into the comfortable isolation she'd built around herself like armor.

She didn't turn around.

She did, however, stick her tongue out at Candice’s bakery when she went past it.

The bell above the door of Sweet Oakhaven chimed when she pushed it open, and Tom looked up from behind the counter. His face went through several expressions in quick succession, surprise, concern, something that might have been hope.

"Elliott. Hey."

"Is Julia here?"

Tom's face fell. "No. She went out a while ago. Seemed like she had something on her mind, but she didn't say where she was going. I don't actually know."

Of course. Of course Julia wasn't here. Elliott had finally worked up the courage to do something brave and emotionally honest, and the universe was laughing at her. Typical.

"Right." She stood awkwardly in the middle of the shop, unsure what to do with herself. The display cases were half-empty again. "I'll just… wait then. If that's okay?"

Tom nodded, looking relieved. "Yeah, of course. Make yourself at home. You know where everything is."

She did know. That was the problem. This place had felt like hers for so long, and then she'd walked away from it. From Julia. From everything that had started to feel like home.

She drifted toward the kitchen. She'd spent hundreds of hours here. Thousands, probably. First with Milly, then alone, then with Julia hovering nearby, asking questions and making messes and generally being impossible to ignore.

Her hands were shaking. She hated that they were shaking. But standing here, waiting, not knowing when Julia would return or what she'd say when she did… the nervous energy had nowhere to go.

So she did what she always did when the world felt like too much.

She baked.

She didn't plan it. Didn't think about what she was making. Her hands moved on autopilot, reaching for flour and sugar and butter, falling into rhythms she could do in her sleep. The kitchen came alive around her, mixer whirring, oven preheating, the soft thump of dough against the counter. Everything else faded away. The anxiety, the uncertainty, the terrifying vulnerability of what she was about to do. There was only this: the precise alchemy of ingredients becoming something more than the sum of their parts.

It was only when the first batch was in the oven that she realized what she'd made.

Lemon drizzle biscuits. Julia's favorite.

And the dough rising on the counter was for those ridiculous chocolate-orange twists Julia had been obsessed with since week two. And the mixture she was about to pipe into shells was for the raspberry macaroons Julia had once eaten an entire batch of while claiming she was "just taste-testing."

She was baking Julia's favorites without even thinking about it. Every single thing was something Julia had loved.

"Oh," Elliott said to the empty kitchen. "Well. That's not subtle at all."

"What's not subtle?"

Elliott spun around. Jamie was standing in the kitchen doorway, looking rumpled and slightly out of breath, like he'd walked here quickly. Or possibly run.

"Nothing." She wiped her floury hands on her apron. "What are you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same thing." He looked around the kitchen, taking in the organized chaos of baking in progress. Bowls and measuring cups everywhere, the sweet scent of biscuits filling the air. "Though I think I can guess."

"I'm waiting for Julia." Elliott straightened her shoulders. If she was going to be brave, she might as well start now. "I'm going to tell her the truth. About how I feel. About everything."

Jamie's face did something strange. The color drained from it, leaving him looking oddly pale beneath his usual healthy glow.

"What?" Elliott frowned. "What is it?"

"Um… there might," Jamie said slowly, "be a problem."

"What kind of problem?"