Page 63 of Sweet Ruin

I look out of the window. The snow flurries are coming down thicker now, tumbling through the streetlight glow and piling up on the ledge.

Memories start piling up in my head just like the flakes outside.

A woman standing in a doorway with a serving dish held in both hands, waiting for a gap in the laughing that she would never dare to interrupt.

Forty plates on the table, but not one of them set for her.

My hands, before the scars and tattoos and the rings and the blood, piling up dishes so she’d have one less thing to carry. “Here, Mama. I’ll help. Let me⁠—”

“Go sit down, Kane. This is my job.”

I shake my head until the memories go away. I try not to think of them. It doesn’t do me any good. It sure as fuck didn’t help her.

“There’s dough in the proofer,” she calls from inside the walk-in. “Do you like brioche? It was for tomorrow’s order and there’s no way in hell I’m opening after the night I’ve had, so it’s a goner if we don’t eat it now.”

“It’s just bread,” I say with a laugh. “Throw it out if you don’t want it.”

Her head comes around the door fast. “Excuse me?”

“You said it’s dead.”

“It’s not dead yet.” She comes out with a bucket of dough hugged against her hip and thumps it on the steel. “Do you know how long this stuff takes? That’s a whole day of my life in there. I’m not tossing a whole day of my life in a dumpster.”

“So what do you want to do with it?”

“I’m going to fry it,” she declares, “and then we’ll eat it, and then it can die knowing it fulfilled its purpose on earth.”

Mind made up, she gets to work. Oil gets poured into a deep pot, thermometer clipped on the side. Sheet pan is lined. Sugar dumped in a wide bowl. She turns the dough out and flattens it with the heels of both hands, then cuts rounds with the mouth of a water glass because she can’t find the cutter.

She’s a miracle to watch in action. Her hands flow, her hips swing, she sings little snippets of songs under her breath. I remain as still as I can so I don’t disturb her.

What’s most fascinating to me is the ease in her posture. The more she loses herself in her process, the more the tension drains from her shoulders. The furrow between her brows disappears.

It’s like she can forget about the rest of the world while she bakes.

Or at least, that’s what I thought.

But her next question shows that the little baker might not be as lost in the magic as I thought she was.

“What do you actually want from me?” she asks without turning around, hands still occupied.

I’m not ready to answer. So I just say, “You’ll know when I want it.”

“Hm. Yeah. Uh-huh. Totally.” She flips a round of dough. “You know, most people, when they say something completely batshit out loud, they get embarrassed about it afterward and start explaining.”

“I’m not most people.”

“That’s the truest thing you’ve said all night.”

The oil starts to sizzle, so she drops in the first few rounds of sliced brioche. The aroma fills the back of the shop quickly. Sweet, sweet like her.

“Smells good,” I comment.

“It’s about three bucks’ worth of ingredients,” she says with a snort.

“I paid nine hundred dollars for dinner the night before last, and I’d still come running here before I ever ate at that place again.”

She pretends to scoff again, but I can see the tiny blush of pride in her cheeks. “In my experience, that kind of money usually just gets you some pathetically small chunk of fish in a bizarre foam, and a man with a shitty mustache explaining to you why it’s God’s gift to taste buds.”