Swallow Me Whole novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Two A.M. Bread

The shop light was still on at two in the morning, a yellow square in the dark yard.

I walked across the grass with a paper bag in both arms, still warm against my stomach.

The smell of it followed me.

The bakery owner had asked me to come in at midnight to help with a wedding order.

I had shaped two hundred rolls in a flour cloud, and she had paid me in a loaf the size of a toddler.

I'd also eaten the heel of it on the walk home, standing in the street.

I pushed open the side door of the garage.

Ashton stood at the long oak workbench in a pair of jeans and nothing else, running a plane down the edge of a board.

Curls of pale wood fell around his bare feet.

His back was a landscape of muscle and sawdust, shining with sweat in the light.

He didn't turn around.

"You smell like a bakery," he said.

"I work at a bakery."

"You smell like I'd like to put you in the oven."

"Is that a euphemism?"

"I'm not that clever at two a.m."

He set the plane down and turned.

His eyes went to the bag, and the flour on my forearms, and my braid.

My braid had come half undone, and his face softened the way it did.

"You should be asleep."

"You should be asleep."

"I couldn't sleep without you."

I had the sense I would feel that sentence for the rest of my life.

"I brought you something," I said.

I tore the loaf open.

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