Updated Apr 19, 2026 • ~12 min read
Chapter 9: Baking Lessons Continue
Asher
Asher has been dropping Ruby off at Sugar & Spice for baking lessons every Saturday morning for three weeks now, and he’s developed a routine: arrive at nine, hand Ruby over to Quinn with minimal conversation, leave for an hour to avoid watching them through the window like a creep, and return at ten to collect his flour-covered, sugar-high daughter who talks nonstop about everything Quinn taught her.
It’s been working perfectly—maintaining appropriate neighbor boundaries while still allowing Ruby to have something she clearly loves—until the fourth Saturday when Ruby looks up at Asher while they’re walking across the yard and says with devastating six-year-old logic, “Daddy, why don’t you stay for lessons? Then you can learn too and help me at home without burning everything.”
Asher stops walking, looking down at his daughter who’s watching him with innocent expectation and absolutely no awareness that she’s just suggested something that Asher has been specifically avoiding for exactly the reasons she’s now proposing.
“You and Quinn do great without me there,” Asher says carefully. “I don’t want to interrupt your special time together.”
“But it would be even more special if you were there!” Ruby insists, grabbing his hand and tugging him toward the bakery. “Please, Daddy? Quinn won’t mind! And then you can make cookies with me at home and they won’t be burnt and Mr. Elephant can actually eat them!”
“Mr. Elephant is a stuffed animal,” Asher points out. “He doesn’t eat anything.”
“Exactly!” Ruby says triumphantly, like this proves her point. “Your cookies are so bad that even a stuffed animal won’t eat them! You need lessons, Daddy!”
Asher knows he’s been out-argued by a six-year-old, and he’s trying to formulate a response when Quinn opens the bakery door—apparently having heard their conversation through the window—and she’s smiling in a way that suggests she finds this entire situation amusing.
“Ruby has a point,” Quinn says, leaning against the doorframe with her arms crossed and her eyes sparkling with humor. “Your cookies are pretty terrible, neighbor.”
“You’ve never tried my cookies,” Asher protests, even though he knows the defense is weak.
“Ruby brings me samples of everything you bake together at home,” Quinn counters. “Last week’s batch was… let’s call them ‘aggressively caramelized.'”
“They were burnt,” Ruby translates helpfully. “Very burnt. I had to throw them away so Daddy’s feelings wouldn’t be hurt.”
Asher should be embarrassed, but Quinn’s expression is so warm and teasing rather than judgmental that he finds himself almost smiling instead.
“So what do you say?” Quinn asks. “Want to join us for lessons? I promise I’m a patient teacher, even with hopeless cases.”
“I’m not hopeless,” Asher argues, but he’s already following Ruby through the bakery door because apparently he’s incapable of saying no to either the six-year-old or the pretty neighbor when they team up against him.
“We’ll see,” Quinn says cheerfully, and she hands him an apron that says “Kiss the Cook” which Asher suspects is deliberate because her expression is definitely mischievous.
“I’m not wearing this,” Asher says, holding the apron at arm’s length.
“Then prepare to get flour all over your nice clean shirt,” Quinn counters. “Your choice, neighbor.”
Asher puts on the damn apron—because he’s learned that arguing with Quinn is pointless when she’s decided something—and Ruby giggles at seeing her serious firefighter father wearing a floral apron that’s clearly designed for someone approximately six inches shorter than he is.
“You look funny, Daddy,” Ruby announces with delighted honesty.
“Thank you, Ruby-roo,” Asher says dryly. “Very helpful.”
Quinn is already setting out ingredients for what she announces will be sugar cookies with royal icing—”Simple enough for beginners but with enough technique to actually teach you something useful”—and she positions Asher and Ruby on opposite sides of the work station with the kind of efficiency that suggests she’s taught classes before.
“Rule number one,” Quinn says, looking directly at Asher. “Follow the recipe exactly. Baking is chemistry. You can’t just eyeball measurements like you’re making pasta sauce.”
“I can follow directions,” Asher defends, though he’s pretty sure his track record with baking suggests otherwise.
“We’ll see,” Quinn says again, and she guides them through measuring flour and sugar with precision that Asher finds both impressive and slightly intimidating.
Ruby is a natural—her small hands careful with the measuring cups, her focus absolute when Quinn explains why they need to sift the flour—but Asher struggles with the exactness of it all, used to cooking where a little more or less doesn’t matter and instinct counts for more than precision.
“You’re overthinking it,” Quinn says gently, adjusting Asher’s grip on the wooden spoon he’s using to cream butter and sugar together. “It’s just cookies, not a life-or-death situation. Relax.”
Her hand is warm on his, and Asher is suddenly very aware of how close she’s standing, how she smells like vanilla and sugar, how her hair is falling out of its bun in a way that’s distractingly attractive.
“Right,” Asher says, his voice rougher than intended. “Relaxing.”
Quinn steps back quickly—clearly also aware of the sudden proximity—and turns her attention to Ruby who’s watching them with the kind of knowing expression that suggests his daughter is far too perceptive for her own good.
They work through the cookie dough recipe with Quinn providing patient instruction and gentle correction when Asher inevitably screws up measurements, and despite his initial awkwardness, Asher finds himself actually enjoying the process—the simple domesticity of baking with his daughter and their neighbor, the way Quinn explains techniques in terms that even he can understand, the comfortable rhythm they fall into as they work.
“Now comes the fun part,” Quinn announces when the dough is finished. “Rolling and cutting shapes. Ruby, you’re on flower duty. Asher, you get the stars because they’re harder to screw up.”
“Your confidence in my abilities is overwhelming,” Asher says, but he’s almost smiling and Quinn catches it immediately.
“Was that a smile?” she asks with exaggerated shock. “An actual genuine Asher Brooks smile? Should I document this for the town archives?”
“The town doesn’t have archives,” Asher points out, the same argument Sheriff Hank made at what Asher suspects was a town council meeting about his love life, because Cole mentioned something about Judy having a clipboard and a battle plan.
“They do now, apparently,” Quinn says. “Judy told me she’s keeping detailed records of… local events.”
The way she says “local events” suggests she knows exactly what Judy’s documenting, and Asher groans.
“The town is insane,” he mutters, rolling out dough with more force than strictly necessary.
“The town cares,” Quinn corrects gently. “In an overwhelming, boundary-violating, slightly crazy way. But they care.”
Asher glances at her and finds Quinn watching him with understanding in her eyes, and he realizes she gets it—understands what it’s like to have an entire community invested in your personal life, to feel simultaneously supported and suffocated by small-town nosiness.
“You’re handling it better than I am,” Asher admits. “The meddling. I keep getting angry about it, but you just seem… amused.”
“I come from New York where everyone actively avoids knowing anything about their neighbors,” Quinn explains, cutting flower shapes from her dough with practiced efficiency. “Having people care enough to meddle is actually kind of sweet, even when it’s annoying. Though I will admit that having Cole deliberately sabotage my pipes was a bit much.”
“He what?” Asher stares at her, and Quinn laughs.
“Oh, you didn’t know? Cole cut my bakery pipes on purpose so I’d have to ask you for help. Judy’s idea, apparently. Very effective for forced interaction.”
“I’m going to kill him,” Asher says with feeling. “Actually murder my best friend.”
“Don’t,” Quinn says, still laughing. “He’s just trying to help in his own misguided way. They all are. And honestly, if he hadn’t cut those pipes, I probably wouldn’t have had an excuse to talk to you, and Ruby wouldn’t have asked for lessons, and we wouldn’t be making cookies together right now. So maybe the meddling worked out okay.”
There’s something vulnerable in how she says this—an admission that she’s glad for the forced interactions, that maybe she wanted excuses to spend time with Asher and Ruby—and Asher feels his carefully maintained walls start to crack.
“Daddy! You’re not cutting shapes!” Ruby interrupts, apparently tired of the adults talking instead of focusing on cookies. “We need stars!”
“Right,” Asher says, turning back to his dough. “Stars. On it.”
They work in comfortable silence for a while, cutting shapes and transferring them to baking sheets, and Asher finds himself relaxing into the moment—the warm bakery kitchen, the smell of vanilla, Ruby’s happy chatter, Quinn’s patient instruction.
This is what family feels like, Asher realizes with sudden, uncomfortable clarity.
Not just him and Ruby managing alone, but the three of them together—cooking and laughing and creating memories that Ruby will carry forward, the kind of domestic normalcy that Asher thought died with Emma.
The realization makes his chest tight and his breathing shallow, because he hasn’t felt this since his wife died, hasn’t allowed himself to even imagine that kind of family dynamic again, and now here it is happening organically while making sugar cookies in his neighbor’s bakery.
“Okay,” Quinn announces, apparently oblivious to Asher’s internal crisis. “Cookies are in the oven. While they bake, we need to make royal icing for decorating. This is where it gets messy, so prepare yourselves.”
She’s not wrong about the messy part.
Making royal icing involves powdered sugar and food coloring and a lot of mixing, and somehow—Asher’s not entirely sure how it starts—Ruby ends up with flour on her nose, which she retaliates for by flicking a small amount at Quinn, who responds by dotting flour on Ruby’s cheek, and before Asher can intervene or protest or do anything resembling responsible parenting, all three of them are covered in flour and laughing so hard that Asher’s ribs hurt.
“Daddy has flour in his hair!” Ruby shrieks with delight, and she’s right—Asher can feel it dusting his scalp where Quinn apparently got him while he was distracted.
“You started it,” Quinn points out to Ruby, but she’s grinning and covered in white powder and looking so genuinely happy that Asher’s heart does something painful in his chest.
“I did not!” Ruby protests. “You started it when you put flour on my nose!”
“After you sneezed flour at me!” Quinn counters, and they’re both laughing while Asher stands there covered in baking supplies and watching them with his heart breaking and healing simultaneously.
This is what Ruby needs, he thinks.
This warmth, this laughter, this female presence that Asher can’t provide no matter how hard he tries.
This is what he needs too, even though he’s terrified to admit it.
Quinn catches his eye across the flour-covered kitchen, and her smile softens into something tender and questioning, and Asher feels panic rising in his chest like water filling a sinking ship.
This is too much.
Too real, too fast, too close to something he can’t handle losing again.
“I should go,” Asher says abruptly, already pulling off his apron and backing toward the door. “Let you two finish up. I’ll come back for Ruby in an hour.”
“Asher—” Quinn starts, confusion and concern in her voice, but Asher is already leaving.
“Daddy?” Ruby calls after him, clearly not understanding why he’s suddenly running away. “Don’t you want to decorate cookies?”
“Later, Ruby-roo,” Asher calls back, and he hates how his voice sounds—rough and panicked and completely unlike the calm firefighter who runs into burning buildings without hesitation.
He makes it back to his house in record time, closing the door behind him and leaning against it while his heart races and his breathing comes too fast.
That was a mistake.
Staying for the lesson was a mistake, letting himself relax into the domesticity was a mistake, allowing himself to feel family connection with anyone besides Ruby was a massive, terrible mistake.
Because Emma died.
People leave, either by choice or by accident, and Asher can’t survive losing someone else, can’t put Ruby through that kind of loss again.
It’s safer to stay alone.
Safer to keep Quinn at neighbor distance instead of letting her become something more.
Safer to protect his heart even if it means missing out on flour fights and genuine laughter and the kind of family warmth he hasn’t felt in two years.
Asher collapses on his couch and puts his head in his hands, and he doesn’t know if he’s protecting himself or destroying something good before it has a chance to become real.
Probably both.
Definitely both.
And the worst part is knowing that across the yard, Ruby is probably asking Quinn why Daddy left so suddenly, and Quinn is probably making excuses while wondering what she did wrong, and neither of them did anything wrong—this is all Asher’s damage, Asher’s fear, Asher’s inability to risk his heart again no matter how much it might be worth the risk.
His phone buzzes with a text from Cole: “Ruby just called me crying saying Daddy ran away from cookie lessons. What did you do?”
“Nothing,” Asher types back. “Everything. I don’t know.”
“Fix it,” Cole responds. “Whatever panic attack you just had, fix it before you hurt that little girl or Quinn, both of whom deserve better than you running scared.”
Asher knows Cole is right.
Knows he needs to apologize to Ruby, needs to explain to Quinn without explaining too much, needs to figure out how to be friendly neighbors without falling into feelings that terrify him.
But right now, covered in flour from a fight he ran away from, Asher just sits in his quiet house and tries to convince himself that staying alone is protecting everyone.
Even if it feels more like slowly destroying everything good that’s trying to grow.
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