"That's not the point!"
I'm definitely grinning now, leaning fully against the prep table like it's the only thing keeping me upright. "What is the point, Quinn?"
"The point is—" She stops. Takes an audible breath. "The point is you can't just... do things like this. We're neighbors. We have to coexist professionally. There are boundaries."
"I overstepped," I say finally, because even I can recognize when I've pushed too far, when enthusiasm has trampled over common sense and basic neighborly decorum.
"Massively," she confirms, and there's a grim satisfaction in her voice, like she's been waiting for this admission since the conversation started.
I drag a hand over my jaw, feeling the rasp of stubble against my palm. "I apologize."
There's a beat of silence, and then her voice comes back sharper than before, disbelief coloring every syllable. "By leaving meat at my doorstep."
"Yes," I say simply, because what else is there to say? In my mind, the logic remains sound even if the execution was flawed. The steak was a peace offering, a gesture of goodwill. That she sees it as anything else is a fundamental disconnect I'm not sure how to bridge.
She makes that strangled laugh-gasp sound again, and despite the phone line between us, despite the absurdity of this entire conversation, it shifts and settles. Something that recognizes this—the back and forth, the challenge, the complete refusal to back down—as what I've been missing.
"I have to go," Quinn says finally. "I have a bakery to run and a wedding cake to finish."
"Keep the steak."
"Lanek—"
"Please."
The word hangs between us, more genuine than anything I've said so far. I don't beg. I don't plead. But something about the thought of her refusing this, of throwing away forty-five days of careful aging because I pushed too hard, sits wrong in my gut.
"Fine," she says, and I can hear the surrender in her voice even as she tries to sound annoyed. "But this doesn't mean we're friends."
"Understood."
"And you're still a menace with terrible timing."
"Noted."
"And if you wake me up with that bone saw again, I'm filling your shop with glitter and frosting."
The threat should probably concern me more than it does. Instead, I'm picturing Quinn Hayes armed with industrial quantities of craft supplies, and the image is possibly more terrifying than it should be.
"I'll be more careful."
"You better be."
She hangs up without saying goodbye, and I'm left standing in my butcher shop, holding a phone and grinning like a fool at nothing in particular.
Worth it.
Completely, entirely worth it.
CHAPTER 3
QUINN
Ihang up the phone and stand in my bakery for a full thirty seconds, trying to process what just happened.
He apologized.
By leaving meat on my door.
