Page 175 of Neap & Spring

“Table twelve, ready to walk,” I announce, stepping back from the plate to let the light hit it properly.

Beautiful.

Morgan appears at the pass like she’s been summoned. She lifts both plates in one smooth motion. “Walking twelve.”

“Heard.”

The kitchen hums around me. Pans hitting burners with a clang that tells me someone’s searing protein. The constant thud of a knife on the cutting board from the prep station. The whoosh of the oven door opening and closing. Water running. Orders being called. Every person is a moving part in a machine that runs so smoothly it looks effortless from the outside.

It’s the sound I thought I’d lost forever. The sound that used to trigger panic attacks so severe I’d have to lock myself in a bathroom just to remember how to breathe and convince myself I was safe.

But that was five years ago.

Five years since the storm. Five years since I told Callum I was staying. Five years since I stopped running and let myself stay still long enough to take root.

“Chef!” Frannie’s voice cuts through from the dining room, bright and excited as always. “Table three wants to send their compliments to the kitchen. They’re asking if the chef can come out.”

I glance at the board mounted above the pass, scanning the table numbers and their corresponding orders. Table three. The Michelin inspector who’s been here twice this month, trying to be subtle and failing spectacularly.

“Tell them I’ll be out after service,” I call back, already reaching for the next ticket.

My hands are moving automatically — scallops, sauce, greens — when I feel a presence behind me. Then a hand, warm and familiar, settles on my lower back drawing small soft circles.

Callum.

I’d know his touch anywhere. The calluses on his palm from years of knife work. The particular way his thumb finds the small of my back and presses gently.

“I need to steal you for a second,” his voice is pitched low enough that only I can hear it over the noise of the kitchen.

“Cal, we’re in the middle of service.” I don’t even look up from the plate I’m working on.

“Roman can handle it.” His hands are already reaching for my apron strings, untying them. “Five minutes. That’s all I need.”

I turn to look at him properly now, my hands pausing mid-garnish, one eyebrow raising. “Five minutes? Famous last words.”

His grin turns wicked. “For what I have planned, yes.”

“Callum.”

“It’s not that,” he laughs, though his eyes are dancing. “I appreciate where your mind went though.” A smile tugs at his mouth. “I promise it’s not that. Actually, you know what, I can’t promise that. Just trust me.”

He’s in his chef’s whites, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows showing the full extent of his tattoos. His hair is slightly mussed from the heat of the kitchen, damp at the temples. That familiar intensity in his dark eyes that usually means he’s about to do something either brilliant or completely insane.

But he also looks nervous.

“What’s going on?”

“You’ll see.” He pulls my apron over my head, his movements gentle, and hangs it on the hook by the back door. Then he turns to the kitchen at large. “Roman, you’ve got the pass.”

“Heard, Chef.” Roman doesn’t even look surprised, just slides seamlessly into position at the window, which is deeply suspicious.

Callum takes my hand and pulls me toward the back door.

“Callum Reid, if this is about the walk-in organization again —”

“It’s not about the walk-in.” He’s grinning now, that wide, genuine smile that transforms his whole face and makes him look like the boy I fell in love with in Paris instead of the serious chef who runs a Michelin-recognized kitchen. “That, I can promise.”

“Then what is going on?”