Page 5 of Unwrapped

I hear myself say it and wait for the reflex—the flinch, the tightening, the part where I stop talking because this is more than I give people. It doesn’t come. Something about the shop at night, the hum of the cooling rack, the way she’s standing at the marble slab with caramel on her fingers and no mask on her face—it loosens things I usually keep bolted down.

“My brother handled it by getting loud,” I continue. “Enlisting, deploying, filling the space with motion. I handled it by going quiet. Staying still. If I didn’t make noise, I didn’t cause problems. If I didn’t cause problems, I didn’t give anyone a reason to go.”

She’s stopped cutting the caramel. The bench scraper rests on the marble, her hand still on the handle, and she’s watching me with an expression I can’t read.

“I got good at it,” I say. “Quiet. Staying in the background, doing the work, not needing much. The crew respects it. They think it’s my personality. And it is, mostly. But it started as a strategy, and somewhere along the way, I forgot there was a difference.”

She’s quiet for a long time. Then she sets the bench scraper down and wipes her hands on her apron.

“I’m from Iowa,” she says. “Middle of three kids. My older sister was the responsible one—straight A’s, first to college, my parents’ retirement plan. My younger brother was the baby—loud, demanding, got away with everything because by the time he came along, my parents were too tired to fight.”

She leans against the counter, arms crossed. Caramel is drying on her knuckles.

“I figured out early that being sweet was how you got noticed. Not smart, not loud, not difficult. Sweet. Easy. The one who helped without being asked, cleaned up without complaining, smiled when things got hard because smiling made everyone else comfortable.” She looks at the tray of finished caramels on the counter. “I built an entire business around it. Making things sweet. Handing them out. Watching people’s faces light up when I give them something.”

“And nobody asks what you need in return.”

Her eyes come back to mine. Something flickers in them—recognition, sharp and immediate. “No. Nobody does.”

The shop is quiet except for the cooling rack humming. I’m standing by the half-assembled display shelf with a level in my hand, and she’s leaning against the counter with caramel drying on her fingers, and the distance between us is ten feet and shrinking.

I know what she just told me. She told me she built herself into the easiest possible version of a person so nobody would leave, and it worked. But the problem is that nobody has ever wanted the version underneath. She told me the same thing I just told her, from the opposite direction. She stayed bright. I stayed quiet. Both of us stayed.

The offer is in my back pocket. I should tell her. I should say, I’m transferring to the wildland team, I’m leaving the structural crew, I’m walking away from the only brotherhood I’ve ever had because I want something I can’t reach from where I’m standing. She deserves to know, because whatever is happening between us in this warm, dim shop, she should know that I’m a man with one foot already out the door.

I don’t tell her.

I walk to the counter. She watches me close the distance without moving, without retreating into brightness, without putting on the smile. Her arms are still crossed. Caramel on her fingers and her apron, a dusting of powdered sugar on her jaw from earlier that she missed.

I stop at the marble slab. My hands are on the cool surface, and hers are too—arms still crossed, but her fingertips resting on the edge of the marble, close enough that I can feel the warmth coming off her skin.

“You’re not easy,” I tell her. “You think you are because you’ve been doing it so long you can’t tell the difference anymore. But I watched you swear at a pot for thirty seconds before you knew I existed, and that woman isn’t easy. She’s specific and demanding and knows exactly how she wants her brackets spaced.”

She almost laughs. It’s there in her mouth and her eyes, and she holds it back because something bigger is happening, and the laugh would break the surface tension holding us both in place.

I reach across the marble and uncross her arms. Gently, one at a time, her wrists in my hands. Her pulse is fast under my thumb. I set her hands on the slab between us, palms down on the cool marble, my fingers resting over hers.

She doesn’t pull away. Her breathing changes—shorter, quicker. She’s looking at our hands on the marble, hers small and sticky with caramel, mine covering them.

“I should tell you something,” I say.

“Then tell me.”

I should. I should tell her about the offer, about Cole, about the father who left a note on the counter and never came back. I should tell her that I’m standing in her shop because last night I saw a woman without her armor on, and I haven’t been able to think about anything else, and that scares me because wanting something this badly has a cost I’ve spent my whole life trying to avoid.

I don’t tell her any of that.

I lean across the marble slab and kiss her.

Her mouth is warm, and she tastes like caramel—of course she does, she’s been tasting the batch all night, testing the consistency with the tip of her finger the way she told me you’re supposed to. Her hands turn under mine, palms up, her fingers closing around my wrists and holding on. The marble is cool between us, and the shop is warm around us, and the autumn display is half-built by the window, and I’m kissing a woman who smells like burnt sugar and vanilla in a candy shop on a Tuesday night in September.

She pulls back an inch. Her forehead against mine, her breath uneven, her fingers still around my wrists.

“What were you going to tell me?” she whispers.

“Later.”

“Promise?”