Page 19 of Ice & Sweet

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Luke

I was elbow deep in buttercream in the empty bakery kitchen, loudly singing along to Underground Dreaming and ignoring the fact it was nine o’clock on Friday night and I hadn’t eaten anything since lunchtime except a handful of cinnamon and chocolate pretzel sticks. I was so close to getting this fucking cake done and I didn’t want to leave until I’d gotten all the damn piping completed.

As much as I loved the trend for vintage-style, intricately piped buttercream cakes, I was absolutely sick of ruffles.

My week had been non-stop chaos since I’d gotten back, and I’d been working flat out from the moment I’d stepped into the bakery on Tuesday morning. I’d known I’d taken on a lot of orders, but on paper it had all seemed vaguely manageable.

The reality had turned out to be very different, and I’d sworn up and down on the spirits of Kylie, Lady Gaga, and Charlie XCX never to take on this many projects in the week before Christmas ever again.

I’d made Tomaz and Serenity stick to their working hours despite their protests and offers of help because it wasn’t in their job descriptions to help pull my ass out of holes I’d dug myself. But I had made them both promise me to remind me of this shitshow next year and to hit me with a spatula if I dared to even suggest we could squeeze another order in.

“And if you go, my heart will lea — ” The buzzing of my phone on the counter in front of me interrupted my horribly off-key singing, and I glanced over to see who was calling and whether I could ignore them.

I had a separate phone for all my business stuff because I’d been sick of clients and their staff calling me at all hours of the day and night for the most innocuous shit. Apparently, some people forgot that time zones were a thing and thought that ringing me at two in the morning from LA was perfectly acceptable because it was only evening there and they desperately needed to check that I was only using a specific brand of butter for their client who was flying into London the next morning.

But to my delight, it was André.

“Hey,” I said, hitting the green button with my little finger and putting the call on speaker, leaving a blob of buttercream on my phone screen. “You all done for the night?”

“Yeah,” he said. It was clear from the background noise that he was outside and I assumed he was walking from the rehearsal studio to the tube. “What are you doing? Are you still at work?”

“Maybe?”

“Luke.” Damn, when he said my name like that all I wanted was to get on my knees. “Don’t lie.”

“Fine, I’m still at work. I’ve got two more cakes to do fucking ruffles on and then I need to wash up.”

“Good, good.” There was a pause and I heard the beeping of a pedestrian crossing. “So, I have a question.”

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“Remind me where the bakery is again. I think I’m in the right place and I’m pretty sure it’s your van I can see but—”

My piping bag clattered onto the counter as I scrabbled for my phone, quickly switching speakerphone off as I hurried towards the door. I yanked it open, expecting to see a cold, empty road because there was no way that André had traipsed all the way across London at this time of night.

But there he was looking lost under a nearby streetlight, bundled up in his coat with a backpack over his shoulders and plastic takeaway bag clutched in a gloved hand. He turned when the door squeaked open and I watched as his face lit up when he saw me.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, disbelief and delight in my voice as I stared at him, the cold night air nipping at my skin. The sky was clear, so there was no chance of snow, but it was already below freezing and if I stood here for much longer, I was going to lose all feeling in my fingers.

André held up the bag and lowered his phone, his voice echoing strangely through my speaker and across the street as he said, “I thought you might like dinner.”

“How did you know?” I asked with a soft chuckle as he closed the gap between us, his footsteps echoing on the frozen pavement.

“Lucky guess.” He leant in and kissed me as he reached the door. “And you left me a six-minute voice note extolling the virtue of noodles.”

“Oh my God, did you get noodles?”

“I did.” He kissed me again, smiling against my lips. “Are you going to let me in then?”

“You bought me noodles—I’d let you do anything to me.”

“Maybe later. Dinner first, then you can finish your cakes while I wash up.”

“You don’t have to do that,” I said as I stepped back to let him in, shutting and locking the door behind us.

“As I told you on Monday, I’m an excellent dishwasher. And I’d be a proper dickhead if I stood and watched you wash up and did fuck all to help.”

“Fine, I guess you can wash pots. Since you’re so insistent.”

“Thank you.” His smile widened as he looked around the kitchen. “Where do you want me to put this?”

“We can eat it in my office,” I said, gesturing at him to follow me. André was still looking around, a curious frown appearing between his eyebrows and his mouth twitching. “What?”

“Are you listening to Underground Dreaming?”

Shit. I’d left my playlist on when I’d run to the door and now there was no escaping the fact André had caught me listening to his back catalogue. And my suffering was compounded by the song changing, making it extremely clear it wasn’t part of a random playlist but a dedicated Underground Dreaming one.

“You made good music! It’s fun to sing along to when I’m here by myself,” I said with a slightly defensive laugh. “I can’t help it if I like cheese.”

He chuckled. “I’m not complaining because hey, I like getting those royalty cheques. But I am judging you. Just a little bit.” He winked and I groaned, pushing him towards my office as I tapped my phone screen to turn the music off.

“Bastard,” I said. “I bet your playlist is all musicals.”

“Of course.”

“Ugh, I can’t judge you for it if you just admit it like that,” I said as we reached my office, which was a tiny room at the back of the small industrial kitchen I’d rented that I’d crammed a tiny desk and chair into. There was a squishy armchair wedged into the corner too, because if it was raining, we tended to take breaks in here, and sometimes I preferred to curl up in it with my laptop to do my ordering rather than sitting at the desk and banging my knees. “Also, you sang those songs for years. How can you be embarrassed by them?”

“I’m not,” he said. “Not really, anyway. Sometimes I look back and wonder what the hell seventeen-year-old me was thinking when he auditioned, but all I’d ever wanted was to be a star and I got that. And sure, it wasn’t always great but I can’t complain. Other people in the industry have it a hell of a lot worse, and the label protected us from a lot of shit—mostly so they could control us, but I guess it sort of worked out?” He shrugged and put the plastic bag on the desk, the smell of soy sauce and sesame oil and noodles filling my nose and making me drool. “One day I’ll finally get round to finding a decent therapist and working all this shit out. But today is not that day.”

“No,” I said, putting my arms around his waist and pulling him in for a tight hug. “Today is for noodles.” I tilted my head up and kissed him softly, savouring the feeling of his lips against mine. It had been far too long since I’d kissed him, four days in fact, and I’d been daydreaming about his mouth ever since the last kiss he’d given me at the service station on our drive home. “Do you have to go home tonight?”

“Not if you don’t want me to. I brought a change of clothes just in case.”

“Good, don’t go. Come home with me. I’ve missed sleeping next to you.” I kissed him again. “I’ve missed you fucking me too.”

André groaned, his hand gripping my face and holding me against him as he kissed me feverishly. “Fuck, darling, I’ve missed you too. Missed that perfect ass of yours so much.”

“Mmm, God, if I didn’t have work to do, I’d let you fuck me right here, right now,” I said, a grumpy moan rumbling off my tongue as I pouted.

“You also really need to eat something,” André said as he released me and pointed firmly at the bag. “It’s nearly half nine. Sit, eat.”

“What did you get?” I asked as I opened the bag and peered inside at the generic noodle boxes, grinning gleefully when I realised André had also gotten some giant spring rolls. I lifted one out of the paper bag they’d been wrapped in, taking a huge bite out of the end and groaning happily before reaching for the containers.

“I wasn’t sure what you’d like, so I got some crispy pork with Hong Kong style lo mein and chicken with ginger and spring onions. You can have whichever one you’d like, or we can share.”

“We can share. I’ve got a couple of bowls around somewhere.”

“Or we can just eat half of one and then swap the tubs.”

“Also a good plan,” I said, putting the containers on the table alongside the paper napkins and disposable chopsticks which had been put in alongside them. “Do you mind which you start with?”

“Nope, your choice.”

The only labels I could see were a couple of letters scrawled across the top. One looked vaguely like a P , so I assumed that was the crispy pork and handed the chicken to André. I leant against the desk, not quite convinced it would take my entire weight, and gestured for him to take the armchair.

“So, how was your day? Is that you all done for Christmas now?” I asked as I popped the top of the carton open, delighted when I realised I’d been right as the smell of crispy pork flooded my senses and made my stomach rumble. I snapped a pair of chopsticks open and dug into the food, suddenly realising how hungry I was. Tomorrow I really needed to make sure I went out to get lunch or brought something from home. It wouldn’t be that much effort to make myself a fucking sandwich.

André nodded as he opened his own carton. “Good, and yes, all done until January. Although I think Ellen—she’s playing Audrey—was coming down with something because she kept sneezing. I really hope she hasn’t given it to the rest of us.”

“Ugh, no thank you, we don’t want that.”

“Right? I know we don’t have many Christmas plans but that doesn’t mean I want to be ill.”

I stared at him for a second, a piece of pork halfway to my mouth. Despite fully knowing it was the twentieth of December and that Christmas was in less than five days, it still hadn’t really registered. Mostly because I was still up to my eyeballs in bloody buttercream ruffles and rosettes.

“You don’t have plans, right?” André asked, eyes widening. “Shit, sorry, I thought… because we talked about them in passing… Fuck, I should have confirmed.”

“No, we did,” I said. “It’s just, time is kinda like soup right now.” I shook my head then smiled at him over my carton of noodles, warmth and affection filling me to the brim and threatening to spill over because there was no way it should be possible to feel this much emotion for one person. But I did, and it was like living with a permanent flame in my chest that I never wanted to go out.

“Want to spend Christmas with me, André?”