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“I can’t go back in there,” she said. “After what I said. In front of everyone. On camera.”

“Yes, you can.”

“Cole—”

“Emily.” He held her gaze steadily.

She stared at him.

He waited.

He’d gotten good at waiting for Emily Whitaker to decide things.

“Why are you helping me?”

“Because,” he said slowly, “despite trying very hard not to, I care about you.”

Her eyes searched his.

He let the truth sit there.

“I’ll let you make of that what you will,” he added, his voice rougher now.

For once, Emily didn’t fire back. She simply looked up at him and searched his eyes. Whatever she saw must’ve been enough.

Cole swallowed, then held out his hand.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go back in there and finish what you started.”

TWENTY-FIVE

EMILY

Saturday, December 19th

Emily walked back into the bakery with Cole’s coat still on her shoulders, flour in her hair, eyes puffy from crying, and every head in the room turned toward her.

She had thirty-eight minutes.

Cole was beside her before she’d finished retying her apron. He rolled up his sleeves, surveyed her wrecked station, and started clearing the broken glass without being asked. Jackson had already swept the worst of the flour and eggs off the floor while they’d been gone. Kit had set out a fresh mixing bowl. Cassidy had pulled a new carton of eggs from the fridge and set them on Emily’s counter next to the rum extract, which had been returned to its rightful place.

Emily looked at all of it and felt her throat tighten.

“Thirty-seven minutes,” Cole said, not looking up from the glass he was collecting. “We can do this.”

The recipe card sat on the counter between them, no longer hidden, no longer a weapon. Just a piece of paper with her grandmother’s handwriting on it, worn soft at the folds.

She started measuring. Cole checked each measurement behind her—twice—and kept the ingredients organized at her elbow so she never had to turn around. When her attention drifted, which was often, he brought her back with a quiet word or a tap on the counter. They moved around each other in the small kitchen space like they’d been doing it for years, and the wrongness of that—the ease of it, after everything—made her chest ache.

She was creaming the butter and sugar. She was also thinking about the kiss in the bakery the night before, and how she had gone from that—from his forehead against hers, from something quiet and deliberate and real—to accusing him of sabotage in front of the whole town in under twelve hours. Accusing him and his family.

The whole town knows what your family is.

She had said that. In her own bakery, on a livestream, to a man whose grandfather had spent decades being whispered about in this town. She had said the exact thing that every Alders had heard their whole lives, and she had said it like she believed it down to her bones.

And after all of that, he had come after her. Put his coat on her shoulders. Told her the town would forgive her. Told her he forgave her. And now he was standing beside her, checking cinnamon measurements so she could win a competition he’d almost dropped out of.

Despite trying very hard not to, I care about you.