Page 13 of Cracking with the Mountain Man

Her hands stop. The rolling pin goes still. Those dark eyes find mine across ten feet of market crowd, and everything on her face moves at once. Surprise. Anger. Hope. Fear. All of it cycling fast enough that I can see her deciding how to feel about me standing here in the last place she expected.

"Owen."

"Hey."

"What are you doing here?"

The crowd has gone quiet. Small towns run on moments like this, and every person at this market can sense one happening. I can feel eyes on me from every direction. Betty. The post office woman. Sage with her hand over her mouth. A guy selling elk jerky has stopped mid transaction to watch.

My voice works. Barely. "You asked me to show up."

Her jaw tightens. "That was four days ago."

"I'm slow. You've met me."

A ripple of laughter from the crowd. Priya's mouth twitches but she holds it.

"You said showing up is how people get hurt."

"I was wrong." Stepping closer. The demo table between us. Flour dust and sugar crystals and a half rolled chimney cake. "Showing up is how people heal. I just forgot because I've been hiding for three years and the person who reminded me makes the best pie I've ever tasted."

Her eyes are shining. She blinks fast.

"I don't want to be your secret, Owen." Quiet. Just for me, even though twenty people can hear us.

"Good. Because I'm standing in the middle of a town market with a hundred people watching, and I'm about to tell you something I haven't told anyone in three years."

"What?"

"I love you." The words come out hoarse. Rusted from disuse. "I love your grandmother's pie plate and your chimney cake and the way you hum in your kitchen at six in the morning. I love that you brought a pie to a stranger who didn't deserve it. And I love that you told me I was allergic to sweetness because you were right, and you are the cure, and I'm sorry it took me this long to get down this mountain."

A tear rolls down her cheek into the flour on her jaw. She wipes it with the back of her hand, which makes it worse, and now she's laughing and crying with sugar on her face.

"I love you too, you impossible man."

The crowd erupts. Actual cheering. Sage drops her coffee cup. Betty is dabbing her eyes with a dish towel. The elk jerky guy pumps his fist. Boone, who apparently followed me from the parking lot, barrels through the crowd and puts his front paws on Priya's legs, tail destroying a display of sample cups.

She comes around the table. My arms close around her. She's warm and solid and she smells like sugar and butter and the cabin that became home the day she walked into it. Her face tips up. I kiss her in front of every person in Crimson Hollow.

Deep. Slow. Her hands fist in my jacket. My palm spreads across her lower back, pressing her against me. The kiss says everything my three word vocabulary couldn't cover. I'm here. I'm staying. I choose you out loud.

When we pull apart, Sage is openly sobbing into a coffee filter.

"Your chimney cake," I say. Priya's demo crowd is still watching. The dough is still on the table.

She looks at it. Looks at me. "It can wait."

"Finish the demo. I'll be right here."

Something crosses her face. The test. Can he stay? Can he stand here in a crowd with people looking at him and survive it?

I pull a stool from behind Sage's booth, sit down three feet from the demo table, and stretch my legs out. Boone settles at my feet. "Go. Show them what you can do."

She shakes her head. Wipes her eyes. Picks up the rolling pin. And for the next forty minutes, I sit in the middle of a town market surrounded by strangers and watch the woman I love teach a crowd how to make chimney cake. Her voice is steady again. Confident. She tells the story of her Nani's recipe card, the Gujarati note about patience, the altitude problem she solved because a grumpy neighbor fixed her oven.

"He said it was an eleven dollar part." She glances at me. "Charged me nothing for the labor. I've been paying for it ever since."

The crowd laughs. Someone offers me a sample. I eat it. It's perfect.