Page 143 of Knot Baked Out For This
I retrieve the box from where I hid it behind the bookmobile's tire, carrying it back with what I hope is casual confidence and not desperate-to-impress energy.
Her eyes widen as I set it down. "Is that?—"
"Open it."
She pulls back the vintage-style wrapping paper I spent forty minutes picking out, and gasps.
It's a record player—pastel pink because I noticed she gravitates toward soft colors when she's not covered in flour. The case has custom decor—little hand-painted pies and tarts that I commissioned from the art student at the community college. And beneath it, a collection of vinyl records, all special editions of artists I've heard her humming while she bakes.
"Rowan." Her voice breaks on my name.
"Your apartment's above the bakery," I explain, suddenly needing to fill the silence. "That's stressful sometimes, being so close to work. Thought maybe music would help you unwind. With wine. And maybe one of those tarts you make that are basically butter held together by hope and prayer."
She's not saying anything, just staring at the record player like it might disappear.
"If you don't like it?—"
She launches herself at me.
One moment she's sitting there, the next she's in my lap, hands on my face, kissing me with the same passion I kissed her with earlier. No hesitation, no careful exploration, just purewantthat makes my brain short-circuit.
Fuck.
My hands find her waist, pull her closer, and she makes this sound—half sigh, half moan—that nearly undoes me completely. She tastes like wine and sunshine and every good decision I've ever made. Her tongue traces my lower lip and my control evaporates.
I flip us carefully, laying her back on the blanket, hovering over her without breaking the kiss. Her hands thread through my hair, tugging slightly, and I groan into her mouth.
"Hazel—"
"Thank you," she whispers against my lips. "For listening. For the books. For the music. For being you."
"I'd give you anything," I tell her, meaning it. "Everything."
"I don't need everything." She smiles up at me, autumn light making her eyes look more green than brown. "Just you. All of you. My pack."
My pack. We're her pack.
"GET A ROOM!"
We break apart to find the jogger has circled back, grinning at us with the kind of amusement reserved for public displays of affection.
"We have a room," I call back. "Several, actually."
"Use them!" the jogger laughs, continuing on.
Hazel's hiding her face in my chest, shoulders shaking with laughter. "We're never living this down."
"Good. Let this whole town and the next know you're officially ours."
"Possessive."
"Accurately possessive."
We resettle on the blanket, more space between us now but her hand in mine. She pulls out a book, I pour wine, and we spend the afternoon like that—her reading passages out loud, me playing with her hair, both of us existing in this bubble where time doesn't matter.
"This heroine is an idiot," she announces after a while. "The killer is obviously the butler."
"It's always the butler."
