My Roommate Hates Me, So He Only Kisses Me in the Dark novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Dawn Shift

By February, Mattias Pehrson could shape forty loaves of rye before the sun came up.

Linus found this out on a black Tuesday morning at half past four.

He came down the back stairs with two cups of coffee and found the bakery kitchen blazing with light.

Mattias stood at the long steel table in a flour-white apron, with his sleeves pushed up and his sling long gone.

He was kneading dough with the whole weight of his shoulders.

"You're not supposed to be awake," Mattias said, not looking up.

"I brought coffee," Linus said.

"You brought coffee at four-thirty to the man who gets up at three."

"I brought it to the man with flour in his eyebrows," Linus said.

Mattias turned.

He did have flour in his eyebrows and a streak of it across his jaw.

His eyes were crinkled with amusement and love.

"Come here," he said.

"No," Linus said.

"Come here."

"You'll get flour on my cardigan."

"That's the point," Mattias said.

Linus walked around the table and set the coffee down.

Mattias wiped his hands on his apron, took Linus's face in both palms, and kissed him.

When he stepped back there were two perfect white handprints on Linus's cheeks.

"Beautiful," Mattias said.

The baker, a broad shape in the doorway, said, "Not in the dough."

"We're not in the dough," Mattias said.

"I can see your hands. Not near the dough."

Linus laughed until the coffee shook.

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