Chapter 10

CHAPTER TEN

Lincoln

I t's chilly in the bakery, and I'm expecting the power to go out at any point. The wind isn't dying down at all, and it keeps snowing.

"Are you getting hungry?" Lyla asks a few hours later. We've been watching the storm, laying across the window seating in the lobby. It's cold, but she found blankets that had been stashed away by the previous owners, and we've kept decently warm.

"Fucking starving. I'm not sure what we can eat, though. There's obviously an abundance of sweets, but that's gonna spike our blood sugar and then we're gonna be pissy with each other."

She throws her head back, laughing. "I forgot how irritated you get when you're hungry. Let me take care of it. We make sandwiches here for lunch. I'll make sure we're nourished. The part that's going to be awful is when we might have to go to sleep here tonight. I'm not sure how we're going to work it out."

"You take care of the food. I'll take care of the sleeping arrangements."

T hirty minutes later we're sitting down in the break room with hot sandwiches, pasta salad, and soft drinks from the drink fridge in the lobby. "This looks really good." I eye the turkey and cheese sandwich, toasted to perfection, and the pasta salad she made yesterday. "Why is the pasta salad so much better the second day?" I groan as the flavor hits my tongue and I'm reminded of what an excellent cook Lyla is. It's not even about what she can bake. She's good at anything in the kitchen.

"Because all the spices and flavors meld together overnight," she moans as she takes a bite. "This is better than I imagined, though. Do you think it's because we're stuck here, and we can't go anywhere else?"

"That's a definite possibility."

It's quiet between the two of us as we continue to eat. Grabbing my phone, I flip it over and look. "It's only fucking ten am, Lyla. What the hell are we going to do if we're stuck here for a few days? I thought for sure it was late afternoon."

She laughs, groaning. "Oh my God, I thought it was too. I don't know what we're going to do. It's the slowest day ever. Isn't there a TV here? I remember there used to be one in here."

"Yeah, there was one, but I moved it to my office when I started spending the nights here. It was too quiet when I was trying to go to sleep. Even though I was exhausted, my brain wouldn't shut up long enough for me to actually fall asleep."

She wipes at her mouth, holding a napkin in front of her lips as she speaks. "Do you wanna go in there and turn it on the news? That way, we know what's going on with the weather, or at least what we can expect?"

I don't know why I hadn't thought of that earlier. At least this way we won't be cut off from the outside world. "Sure, you wanna wait until we finish eating, or back now?"

"I don't have that much more to go, so we can wait until we're done if you want?" She answers, lifting her shoulder up as if she doesn't care either way.

We're being so careful with one another. It's beyond odd. Back in the day, it didn't matter what the fuck we said to each other. We'd say anything that would get the other fired up, just so we could argue. I miss that with her. There's never been anyone who could go toe-to-toe with me like Lyla. I finish up the last of my food, and then wait for her to do the same. After she finishes, I clean the table off and throw our trash away. "I'm gonna warn you before we get in there. You might've thought the office was small, but with the cot in there, it's tiny."

"It's cool," she answers. "We'll make it work, however we need to."

I'm nervous. We've never been in there together like this, and I've never been thinking about her the way I'm thinking about her right now. "I promise I'm not going to come onto you or anything."

She turns, looking at me over her shoulder. "Is this one of those situations where you're going to promise that you won't fall in love with me?"

We haven't talked like this before. Why haven't we? The arguing we did was what everyone said was foreplay, but I never thought about her like that. Maybe I should've, but I think she's joking, and I don't want to be seen as the one who's taking this seriously, while she isn't. "Trust me, you don't have to worry about me falling in love with you, Lyla."