Cupcakes and Christmas - R.J. Scott Page 0,50

that shitty fake whipped cream stuff and a bottle of Totallin Vodka.

Hey, Mallys—my bad for sharing behind the scene shots yesterday without getting permission. Big trouble with the guys upstairs. So for now I’ll stick to the news that baking rocks. Later!

It crossed my mind for the first time that him sharing photos of the competition would mean that people knew how far he’d gotten, who had left, and who’d been lucky enough to stay. It never occurred to me before as it being anything else than harmless fun with added endorsement and the ability for me to stare at Justin’s face and assume I knew him. He’d looked so disappointed with himself when Rita was talking to him though as if he was a kid and she was reprimanding him, and I felt suddenly protective. Because why not add that into the mix. I’d clearly missed a post. I know he’d been taking selfies all day and using the ‘WhereIsClare’ hashtag, so maybe Clare was pissed at him?

I scrolled down his feed, nothing too bad there, but he could have taken whatever he’d posted down by now. After all, I hadn’t checked all day. At least, we’d have something to talk about at dinner when I asked him what was wrong. Certainly better than sitting in silence with an awkwardness between us that I didn’t fully understand nor want. We could add that to the list of topics as well as talking about our showpieces. Despite knowing what I was doing in my showpiece tomorrow, I still took my notepad with me in case I got random inspiration. But I also took my coat in case anyone wanted to go for a walk after dinner.

Or rather, in case Justin wanted to go for a walk.

My coat was still damp on the outside from the roll in the snow, despite it having been hung up to dry, and the sense memory of the cold wetness and the warmth of Justin’s kiss was enough to make me groan and then palm my erection to get the damn thing to behave. The last thing I needed was to go down to dinner with a hard-on and then see Justin and for everything to get worse.

Not that I got a chance to find out what would happen because Justin was conspicuously absent, and the way he’d backed off last night just made me feel as if there was something wrong, and that it went deeper than kissing a fellow competitor.

Another text from Marc, only this one was a heartfelt please can we talk.

I didn’t even bother replying, but between that and Justin, of course, I was starting to spiral. I went right back to the fact that he’d been encouraged to flirt with me, and that the kiss was a means to an end, the same goes for the photos Erin the PA had accidentally taken. I went from thinking I should go up and make sure he was okay, right back to imagining us fighting. I hated confrontation, so to avoid that final scenario I went out for a quick walk, checked on Jeremy and sat for a little while on the infamous bench then headed back to my room.

I thought about knocking on his door and asking if he was okay. I even took a long pause on the stairs on my floor wondering if I should continue on up, but there was a reason he wasn’t at dinner, and I had to respect that.

So with resignation I headed to my room.

Setting up for the sugar work challenge, Justin smiled at me as if nothing had happened between us, but that was about it, as we all had to concentrate on the delicate work we were doing.

The sugar work challenge couldn’t have gone more perfectly for me. There was cursing and crashing, and more cursing, particularly from Ivan, who couldn’t quite get his blown bumble bee to stay the shape he wanted. At least, he’d actually created something with blown sugar-glass. The rest of us had relied on making stretched sugar effects, and I’d melted candy to make the windows and curled wisps of the stuff to make leaves. There was just a general brief that we had to create a layered entremet with decorative sugar work. The entremet itself was a multi-layered mousse-based cake, and I had that done with ease. But as a baker I didn’t use much blown, spun, or stretched sugar to decorate my bakes, so yeah,