I fully expected to feel terrible. But I didn't.

I stood at my tiny kitchen sink and tried to keep the smile off my face. Then gave up and grinned ear to ear as I sipped my coffee and stared out at the creek. It was my first day off in eight days, and it was a bright, sunny morning filled with the rasping cries of the red-winged blackbirds over in the marshy parts. After a night of drinking, I would normally be cursing the sun and the birds and the noise of the creek. But thanks to Beau - sweet, careful Beau - I felt just fine. Good even. 

Like I'd gotten away with something. 

I frowned down into my coffee mug. Coffee was still a new drug for me. As was alcohol of any kind. Having fun without consequences, without guilt hanging over my head, that was new for me too. I was seized with the need for - not penitence, no, something else. 

When I was little, the men would gather in each other’s homes and break the bread. Women and children were barred from this sacrament, but they pretended not to notice me and my sister as we hung quietly in the doorway and watched the ceremony. Always the men began by breaking off a little piece of the loaf - the loaf I'd helped my mother bake - and leaving it on the plate as an offering to our Savior. 

An offering, then. I needed a way to say thank you. For a night filled with happiness and a morning free of pain. 

All at once I knew what to offer. When it was our turn to provide the bread to the community Elders, I always whined and pushed my mother to bake something other than the usual hard brown loaves. I loved the fluffy white crumb of the potato bread that was her specialty. She'd taught me the recipe. My mother was a gifted baker whose loaves were always lighter than air. Chosen were not allowed selfishness or vanity, that was the explanation she gave me for never sharing her loaves with those outside of our family. But I liked to think it was some tiny spark of rebellion against being barred from the bread-breaking that made her keep it to herself. 

She never shared it. But I wasn't Chosen anymore. 

I could.

I picked up my coffee, took another fortifying sip and then started walking around the kitchen and gathering the ingredients, humming a little as I put on a pot of water to boil the potato. The song from last night with Beau was stuck in my head, the one I only knew because Juanita at work had it playing on repeat on her phone all the time. Beau had seemed surprised I knew the words. He'd been staring at me like I'd sprouted a second head right up until that guy dumped his beer all over him. 

I smiled down at the potato I was peeling, remembering how funny he'd looked, standing there soaked in cheap beer. He had just... laughed. No temper, no yelling at the other man to watch where he was going. He'd even been kind enough to buy the man another round to replace the spilled one. 

I dropped the potato into the water and wrinkled my nose. Chosen held themselves apart from the world, saying that secular, worldly people were selfish and lacking grace. But last night, all I'd seen was grace. Grace from a hedonistic pop star. 

It didn't make sense. 

Turning the flour out onto the counter, I started kneading it, pushing as hard as I could against the cool dough. This was the part where my mother always took over. With the quiet murmur of the creek in the background and the smell of the yeast filling my nostrils, I could almost be in her kitchen, helping her as my siblings ran riot through the house. She'd wipe her floured hands across her perfectly clean apron and smile at me as she rolled and beat the dough into submission. "Don't be afraid of it," she'd encouraged me. 

Swallowing back an unexpected lump in my throat, I slammed the dough into the bowl, rolling it into a tight ball to start rising, then wiped the tear away from my eye before it could fall. Baking had brought my mother's presence so strongly, I could almost hear her voice. 

Guilt washed over me. I could hear her voice. The community had a telephone, one line to call out if there was an emergency. If I called it, my mother might pick up. 

Or one of the other seventy-five people counted among the Crown Creek Chosen. They were the ones I had left. They were the ones who had driven me out for not being whole. The rest of the community. But not my parents, and most certainly not my mother. 

I clenched my fists, digging my nails into my palm. My silent house, my solitary life, they were nothing like what I once had. 

Hastily, I wiped my eyes again and headed over to shower while the dough rose, hurrying past Everly's shut door without looking. Once I was dressed and the bread was in the oven, I turned on Everly's TV and put the volume up as high as it went, pretending that the cacophony of voices belonged to people here in the room with me. 

Since leaving the Chosen, I'd been floating like a leaf caught in a current. It took Everly to pull me out of my solitary drift and feel connected again. We were connected as friends.

My connection with Beau.

That felt... different. 

The awful screeching noise of the oven timer broke through the noise of the TV and my thoughts. I rushed over and opened the oven, letting out the warm smells of home that made my heart swell too big for my chest. I wrapped it loosely in a towel, and then stood there, suddenly nervous.

Last night he'd asked me why I left the Chosen. I hadn't answered him because that reason was still too painful to speak aloud. A lot of people had asked me that question, most with their own ulterior motives, most gawking at me like I was some kind of zoo animal when they asked it. 

Beau had done something no one else ever had. "Sounds like you have some nice memories," he'd said. 

That was why I had baked this. To share it. To share my good memories. But what if he laughed again? Or worse, what if he looked at the bread and saw it only as something to eat and not... not...

A connection?

I'd been brave before, I reminded myself as I tucked it into a tote bag and grabbed my keys. I'd done much braver things in my life than wait for the lumbering bus with bread in my hand and my heart on my sleeve. I'd struck out on my own, leaving behind everything I ever knew and facing down a world I'd been taught to fear, so it should have been no big deal at all to pull the cord to stop the bus and get off. I'd listened to a somber-faced doctor as he told me that surgery was the only way to keep me from bleeding to death, so it should have been the easiest thing in the world to walk past Everly's parents' house and then turn at the big yellow farmhouse on the hill. 

A shadow flickered past the window as I stood there in the drive, nervously twisting the straps of the bag in my hands. I jumped a little when the front door opened and the screen door swung wide. "Rachel?" Beau called. 

I let out a long breath to see him smile. "You're up," I said.

"I've been up." He looked happy to see me. My heart was soaring up like a bird. "You look well rested too." 

I smiled and stepped onto the porch, then stopped and sniffed, then laughed. "Are you sure you're not hungover?" I teased. "You still smell like beer."

"Aw man, really?" He rubbed his shaggy head and then sniffed his hand. "I swear. I've already showered twice." His eyes grazed over me, leaving those trails of heat wherever they lingered. "But what have you got there?"

"Bread," I said, holding out my tote. "Potato bread." 

He looked down at the bag and then up at me, clearly confused. "That's really nice but..."

"You said carbs help with hangovers, so I thought—" I stopped explaining mid-sentence, caught up in the way his grin was broadening, getting prouder. "Bread," I finished lamely and almost threw it into his hands. 

He caught it easily. "Come help me eat it," he insisted, stepping out onto the porch and pushing the screen door wider. 

I hesitated. From inside I could hear the sounds of people, of a family going about their morning business. Sounds of clinking dishes and shouted plans. I blinked away the stubborn tears that had been threatening to fall since I'd started baking. "Sure," I said. 

And stepped into the Kings' house. 

It was the first time I'd been in a secular home. I don't know what I expected. Certainly not a perfectly normal, rambling farmhouse stuffed with the clutter of family life. A wide staircase to my left, a high-ceilinged living room straight ahead. I could see through the doorway into a light-filled sunroom full of plants and over in that same corner a huge grand piano hulked, taking up half the room. "Whose piano is that?" I wondered. 

"Mine." Beau wandered over to the bench and sat down, then swiveled to look at me. "Hey, I'm glad you're here by the way. I wanted to ask you something."

I licked my lips, suddenly wary. He'd given me no reason to fear him, but it was hard to go against a lifetime of warnings. "What is that?" I asked, clutching my purse to my body. 

He leaned in, tilting his head as if to study me. My breath was coming in short, shallow gasps as I felt the heat of his gaze everywhere my skin was exposed. I tugged on the sleeve of my T-shirt, nonsensically trying to shield my arm. 

He leaned back then, like he sensed my discomfort, and dragged his gaze back up to my eyes. "I just wanted to know. Where did you learn to sing like that?"

I gasped out a shocked laugh. "Like what?"

"Rachel," he said, leaning in again. "Don't you know? You sing like a goddamn angel."