A beat from The Baker

Cole walked in like he knew he was that guy.

His smile was confident as fuck—like winning wasn’t something he did, it was something he was.

Torn jeans. Soft T-shirt clinging just right.
Five o’clock shadow sitting perfectly in that golden zone between rugged and intentional.
His jaw looked like it could cut glass or cradle a whole heart; both felt equally true.

And his hair?
Tousled like he’d rolled straight out of bed looking perfect—
not the usual wild mess that screamed I haven’t slept in days.

No.
This wasn’t homeless-Cole.

This was statement-Cole.

The Cole that mended whole hearts and fractured them in the same breath.

He walked in holding a fistful of wildflowers like he’d casually ripped them from the earth and the earth whispered thank you.

He didn’t come in peace.
He came with warfare as petals.

The room didn’t hush—it cracked open with oohs and ahhs, every head snapping toward him.
The girls at the counter swooned. Their men pulled them closer like Cole was about to steal something they couldn’t live without.
Mack did a full-body double take.
And even Alex blinked longer than usual.

My pulse stopped.
My breath stuttered.
Static crawled up my chest.

Cole didn’t just walk in.
He owned the fucking doorway.

He looked like the kind of man you second-guessed leaving—
even when you knew exactly why you had to.

This was his power move.

And when he grinned, sharp as canines, I grinned back—breathless, unwilling.
I drifted toward the counter, shocked by two things:
how stupidly good he still looked…
and that he was standing in Silas’s bakery uninvited.

“Hey, babe,” he said, kissing my cheek like the room wasn’t vibrating with collective jealousy.
I heard every disappointed sigh behind me when his lips grazed my skin.

The kitchen stilled.
Just long enough to clock the flowers, the “babe,” the way my spine stiffened like my skin didn’t fit.

And then Silas appeared, wiping his hands on a towel, mid-sentence with the delivery guy.
He saw Cole before he saw me.

It landed.

No expression.
Just a subtle steadying—like bracing for a wave he couldn’t stop.

Cole moved first.

“Hi. I’m Cole.”
He extended a hand. Calm. Confident. Calculated.

Silas didn’t flinch.
He took it.
A single nod.
A silence thick enough to chew.

“Silas,” he said.

The crew wasn’t even pretending not to listen.

“We met a long time ago,” Cole continued, voice smooth, eyes just a little too bright.
“Just never properly introduced myself. I’m the husband.”

Silas didn’t look at me when he answered.
Something in his jaw ticked—small, controlled, lethal.

“This is mine.”
I couldn’t tell whether he meant me…
or the entire kitchen behind him.

“I’m the baker.”

And there it was—
the line, drawn clean in flour and sugar.