“I am sorry,” he says.
“I know.”
“I will do better.”
“At bakery work or life choices?”
“Yes.”
A laugh slips out of me, soft and helpless. “That was almost normal.”
“I am learning.”
“Good.”
His thumb moves once across the edge of my bandage, barely there. “You are injured because of them.”
“I am healing because of people who care.”
His eyes darken. “Do I count?”
The question is so naked I almost cannot bear it.
“Yes,” I say. “You count.”
He looks away first, but he does not let go of my hand.
That is how Darlene finds us five minutes later when she comes back down claiming she forgot her cigarettes, which is a lie because she has three emergency packs hidden in the kitchen alone. She pauses on the bottom stair, takes in our joined hands, and sighs like a prophet vindicated against her will.
“Years,” she says.
I glare at her. “What?”
She points at Kauss. “Debt’s definitely taking years.”
For once, Kauss does not argue.
CHAPTER 12
KAUSS
The bakery teaches me that peace has sounds.
It is not silent. I used to think peace would be quiet if I ever found it, some empty field without artillery, orders, screams, engines, or alarms. Sweet Tooth proves me wrong before the first week of my debt-labor is finished. Peace clatters, hums, complains, and smells aggressively of butter. It is Darlene slamming a drawer because the receipt printer has offended her. It is Mr. Eddison arguing with his compad as if the machine has a personal vendetta. It is rain tapping the boarded front window while the ovens breathe dry heat into the kitchen and Evie hums an incomplete song over a tray of rising dough.
This morning, the air is thick with yeast, cinnamon, coffee, citrus peel, warm sugar, and the faint metal tang of fresh wiring. I stand behind the broken display case with both hands inside its gutted frame, replacing the burned conduit with a scavenged line from a refrigeration unit Renn found behind the machine shop. The work is small for my hands, delicate enough that I have to slow each motion and use only the tips of my claws to guide the wire into place. Outside, Halo groans awake through rain and engine coughs. Inside, the bakery glows.
Evie is talking.
Evie is always talking.
She talks while rolling dough, while counting change, while frosting rolls, while scolding the front door for sticking, while pretending not to worry over invoices, while feeding people who cannot pay and calling it “strategic goodwill.” Her voice moves through the bakery like heat through the walls. Sometimes she speaks to me. Sometimes to Darlene. Sometimes to the ovens, the weather, the city, the bakery ghosts, or a bag of flour that refuses to open cleanly.
“You know what bothers me about rich people bakeries?” she says from the prep table.
Darlene does not look up from chopping onions. “Their customers?”
“That too, but no. It’s the pastry names. They can’t just say berry tart. It has to be a seasonal jewelfruit experience with cloud cream and heritage dust.”
