Engaged. Six was engaged. The man who’d told me he’d never marry me, after ten years together, was engaged.

Even the four hours of sleep I’d gotten before going in to work hadn’t eliminated that spiral of thought.

My hands pushed hard into the dough, manipulating it before I balled it up again and dropped it on the counter, sending flour flying everywhere. My hands pounded into it, kneading it over and over, until it had the right elasticity. I dropped it into a greased bowl and covered it before I grabbed the next ball of dough and worked it until it too was elastic. Over and over I did that, feeling the fatigue in my muscles as I repeated the process eighteen times.

I may or may not have imagined Victoria’s face as the dough each time I slapped, punched, and dug my entire upper body into it. I placed the bowls by the warmer and washed my hands, using a brush to scrub the flour from under my nails. The flour clumped with the water as it drained out of the sink, much like the paint I had washed from my hands the night before.

I jumped at the feel of a hand on my shoulder, and I whirled around, brush in hand, fists dripping water.

His lips were moving, but I couldn’t hear what Marco was saying over the heavy music blasting from the speakers.

I grabbed the towel from the counter and hastily dried my hands. Pointing the remote at the speakers, I turned the volume down a few decibels. I yelled, “What?”

He huffed a little and yanked the remote from my hand. I waited while he turned the volume down even more, drying my other hand as I watched his jaw tick.

“You’re here earlier than usual,” he said, his voice thick like he’d just woken up.

I rolled my shoulders. “Couldn’t sleep.” Which was precisely the reason I could do this job.

He squinted. When I stared back stoically, he huffed a little and moved to the loaves I’d done.

Poking a finger into one of the loaves, he tsked. “No.”

“It’s fine. I’ve worked it over for the last hour.”

“No.”

He was displeased. I knew that much. I was still learning dough and how temperamental it could be, at least in order for it to live up to Marco’s standards. He’d started me on cookies and shit that had been a cakewalk compared to this.

“What?”

He picked up the bowl and brought it over to me. “Not ready,” he said. He poked a finger into the dough. “Look,” he said, as if I wasn’t paying attention. “This should fill back up. It is not,” he enunciated in short words. “Again.” He dumped the loaf back on the counter.

I sighed, annoyed, and stalked over to the island, tossing down some flour and plopping the loaf onto the slight pile of flour. “Marco,” I whined, drawing his name out.

“Figliuole e frittelle, quante piu se ne fa, piu vegon belle.”

Marco didn’t speak Italian, but that was his favorite saying and he used it often, much to the pain of my ears.

“That saying makes zero sense,” I mumbled, flicking flour at his face.

“It makes perfect sense,” he disagreed, dodging the flour.

“’Kids and fried food: the more you make, the better they come out,’” I translated, giving him a raised eyebrow. “What if you don’t want to make kids?” The thought made my throat tighten, images of Six flashing.

He frowned at me. “Well,” he raised up a hand, “then you don’t get to enjoy the fun of practicing.” He winked, and I rolled my eyes.

“This isn’t fried food.” I flicked more flour at him.

“Practice makes perfect—that’s what it means.” He wiggled his fingers, eyebrows raised. He was like a cartoon character with his thick, unruly eyebrows, giant nose, and hair that stuck up in a hundred directions.

“Hey,” I said, remembering that even though I’d just run into the one man who could bring me to my knees, for the first time in three years, that I had a life outside of the bakery. “I’ve got my showing.” I winced. It’d only been a week since I’d signed the agreement, but the idea of a showing still made me feel stupid. Jacob had set it up, and it wasn’t a real showing. The gallery was a co-op that I paid a membership to showcase my work and supplemented that with a couple shifts in between everything else I did. “In two weeks. Is it okay if I take off early the next few mornings so I can prepare?”

“What time does the gallery open?” Marco knew very little about my painting side hobby but hadn’t actually seen anything I’d done before.

“It’s not for that…” I tried to figure out how to say what I wanted to say: that I was totally fucking afraid that the fourteen paintings I had ready to display weren’t good enough and I needed another dozen to choose from. “I just have to get things in order.”

“That’s fine. We’ve got the baby shower next week—lots of cookies and muffins—but otherwise, we don’t have much on the schedule.”

“Okay,” I blew out a breath, “thanks, Marco.”

Nodding, he said, “Do it again,” then turned the stereo back up and walked out of the bakery.

I finished kneading the loaf, exhaustion finally settling into my bones. I rolled my neck and washed my hands once more, using the brush to scrub my skin until it was red and raw, angry from my assault.

The best thing Six had taught me was that I needed to keep my hands as occupied as my mind. To not sit idly by. So, I kneaded dough until my shoulders ached, and then I ran the half-mile home, fast and furious through the dark.

By the time I let myself into Brooke’s house, my legs and arms hurt enough that it was all I could do to drag myself to bed. I forced myself to shower first, to remove the scent of dry yeast and the powdered flour that clung stubbornly to my skin. With the rest of the house still sleeping, I hummed the song I’d been listening to as I rubbed my shoulders and soaped my limbs.

And when I crawled in between cool sheets, my skin was still on fire, and my brain was running on a loop.

Six seeing me in the lobby.

Six following me outside.

Six’s eyes when he’d brought me inside, into the light.

Six’s expression when I’d realized he was engaged.

Six. Six. Six. Six. Six. Six.

Squeezing my eyes tighter, I remembered all the times Six had helped me when I’d fallen. Had patched me when I’d broken. He’d told me I was in love with tragedy. He’d held me in the dark, carried me through to the other side.

But he’d looked at Victoria as if she held his light. And I didn’t have that.