Still, Kauss came.
The thought rises again, huge and sharp and impossible to set aside.
Kauss came, and the alley changed around him.
By midmorning, the story has grown legs, wings, and probably three illegal modifications. According to one customer, Kauss threw a man through a wall. According to another, he bit someone’s ear off. According to a third, he caught a plasma shot in his teeth, which makes Darlene laugh so hard she has to sit down.
“He did not catch plasma in his teeth,” I say.
“You sure?” Renn asks.
“I was there.”
“You were concussed.”
“I feel like I’d remember teeth plasma.”
Darlene wipes her eyes with the corner of her apron. “Teeth plasma sounds like a band I’d hate.”
Despite the laughter, every mention of Kauss pulls me back to the alley. The rain. The pavement under my cheek. The sound of bones breaking. His face when he knelt beside me, fury draining into fear. I keep telling myself I want to thank him properly because he saved me, and that is true. It is also not all of it.
I want to see him.
That truth sits in me, bright and inconvenient.
By eleven, Nara has gone home to sleep before her shift, and I have violated at least three of her instructions by working the register from a stool behind the counter. Darlene complains but does not stop me because the bakery is packed. Some peoplecome for food. Some come because outrage is easier to express in groups. Some come to reassure themselves that I am alive without admitting they were scared.
I am reaching for a coffee cup when the front door opens and the room falls silent.
Not quieter.
Silent.
The bell above the door gives one bright little jingle, absurdly cheerful, and Kauss fills the entrance like night deciding to become a person. His hood is up, rainwater dripping from the frayed edge onto the floor. The battered coat pulls across his shoulders and hangs too short over his wrists. Even hunched slightly to clear the doorway, he is enormous enough that the bakery seems to shrink around him. The scars along his face vanish and reappear beneath the hood’s shadow as he lifts his head.
Every customer stares.
A child in a booth near the window ducks behind her mother’s sleeve. A dockworker lowers his cup without drinking. Renn’s mouth opens, then wisely closes. The entire bakery holds its breath, and I feel a sudden, fierce anger at all of them for making him stand alone in that silence after what he did for me.
So I smile.
Not a polite smile. Not a cautious one. I give him the full Sweet Tooth welcome, bruised cheek and all.
“Kauss,” I call, as if he comes in every day. “You made it.”
His gaze finds me instantly.
Something shifts in his face when he sees me behind the counter. Relief, quickly buried. Irritation, probably because I’m upright. Guilt, because apparently the man collects it like some people collect souvenir spoons.
“You should be resting,” he says.
His voice rolls through the bakery, deep and rough, and several people flinch. I do not.
“I am resting. Professionally.”
“You are working.”
“I’m sitting down while money happens near me. That’s basically rest.”
