Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 81375 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 407(@200wpm)___ 326(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81375 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 407(@200wpm)___ 326(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
“I have no magic.”
It sounds more like a question than ever. My heart throbs in my chest, the steady beat filtering something brand new through me. It’s become quite clear to me that I learn something new about Luca every single day, and it causes me to fall harder. And harder.
One day, I’m going to fall completely in love with him.
“Maybe not real magic, but you do have creativity and a fuckton of experience. You’re a master freaking chef, and you’re master marvelous. You’re a great kisser too.” When saying the last part, I wriggle on his lap a little. His eyes practically cross.
We finish off his pie, and I squirm again, this time to take his plate from him and put it on the table beside mine.
“That has nothing to do with pie.” His voice sounds at least eight octaves higher. Or I mean notes. Maybe I mean octaves.
I should probably get off his lap. It’s not conducive to thinking. My brain is shorting out, and my body is a twenty-foot-high bonfire. My friend’s dad used to make those kinds of fires. He’d do a yard clean-up of branches, the old tree fort, the deck that needed replacing, paperwork for the year that just couldn’t be trusted to the trash… it all got piled on. It’s not a great idea, but I didn’t think about it much as a kid. We both loved how cool it was that the flames almost touched the sky. The neighbors called the cops and the fire department. Several times. Did that deter Jenny’s dad? No, it did not. The bonfire is still an annual tradition.
“You want me to come up with an award-winning pie,” Luca states blandly, drawing my attention back to competitions and the bakery.
And him.
“Not just one. I want to enter all the different categories.” I hold up my fingers and start ticking them off. “Savory. Fruit. Cream. We should come up with something so new and different that even if we don’t win, so what? It will get everyone talking about the bakery anyway. We can be creative. It’s like an artist with a blank canvas. Exciting as heck.”
This is the first time Luca has appeared truly doubtful all morning. But it’s not for himself. It was a delight this morning to see more quiet confidence and fewer shadows chasing over his eyes.
“You think your dad and I can work together to do something like that?” Luca voices out.
I tip my face to him like I’m a struggling seedling and he’s the sun. He notices but doesn’t wince or protest. Instead, he leans forward until our noses are touching.
Ever tried to have a serious conversation nose-to-nose with someone? The next time things take a turn, give it a try. It adds a whole different dimension.
I can’t stop smiling, and I’m sure it looks ridiculous to him, all blown out of proportion like this. “We’ll all be fine. It’ll just take a while for it to sink in. The fact that you’re back. All the years we’ve lived. You and me. The pie competition is in mid-July, so we have time. Not a lot of time, but time enough. You can’t tell me you don’t hear the call of the pie. It’s in you, lying dormant. I’m here to call out to it, to whisper it back into being.”
“Like a waterfinder,” he deadpans.
“That’s right.”
I wriggle again, working my legs over the armrest, right next to Ozzie. The lanky orange cat opens one orange eye, blinks at me, then stretches out both paws to capture my leg. He digs his claws in and leaves them there while he goes back to sleep. It’s nice to be needed like that. Now that my legs invaded his space, he’s not letting me go.
I wasn’t sure I was brave enough to go there yet, but I don’t want to keep my thoughts from Luca. Even if they’re not secrets, I want to be open with him.
“I didn’t sleep at all last night,” I confess. “I was too busy thinking about this and trying to put it all together. Pies. My parents. Us.”
“So when you said coffee this morning with your mom…”
“I actually meant three espresso shots,” I say.
His brows shoot up comically. “Good lord, how are you not buzzing all over the place?”
“General lack of sleep for days now. Although that sometimes has the opposite effect. When I don’t sleep much, I tend to get a little giddy. It almost feels like I’m living in a video game.”
“Tonight…” He gulps loudly. “If you’re spending the night with me, you’re getting sleep. That’s an order.”
I cup his cheek, smoothing my fingers over his freshly shaved skin. “If you’re still up for it, I’m spending the night.”
He doesn’t make an up-for-it joke, which he clearly is. Already. Painfully. He just nods reverently, studying me like I’m this rare treasure he found, and he’s still trying to decide if I’m real or not.