Chapter 27 #2
But I look at all the support surrounding me, wipe my hands on my apron, and say, “Sure.”
Priya turns on her recorder after asking if it’s okay.
“What do you want people to understand about your statement?” she asks.
My hands tremble. “I want people to understand that I’m not asking for any hate or negativity to be directed at Barrett Whitaker,” I say.
“I’m not asking anyone to take my side because my engagement ended badly.
I’m asking for transparency. If a critic reviews a business owned by his son’s ex-fiancée after the breakup, and if there were private conversations about the business owner that informed the framing, the readers deserve to know that context. ”
She nods. “What about claims that Bitter Bloom became too gimmicky or unfocused?”
I laugh.
“Bitter Bloom is playful. It always has been, from the day I started it. It was playful in the early days when Barrett praised it, and it was playful when he criticized it. The difference is not that I suddenly became too much; it’s that someone decided too much was no longer charming.”
I keep going.
“I don’t need everyone to like my bakery. Taste is personal. Criticism is part of business. But I won’t let a personal narrative dress itself up as objectivity and define what I built.”
She glances at the pastry case. “And what did you build?”
I look around at everyone. Everything we’ve spent days making.
Then back to Priya.
“I built a bakery where sweetness is taken seriously. Where joy can be technical. Where weird ideas get structure and become something to be celebrated. Where latte names can be long, but they make someone smile, and people can come and feel like they belong to something a little brighter than the day they were having.”
She smiles. “I love that.”
I close my eyes and take a deep breath. “I have flour in my bra and I’m terrified out of my mind, so thank you for saying that.”
She laughs. A few questions later, she thanks me and steps aside.
Marley appears in front of me. “Do not cry,” she says, but I’m already crying.
“I’m not.”
“You literally are.” She hugs me hard. “I’m proud of you.”
It just makes me cry harder.
Oliver pokes his head around the doorway. “Crying is a health code violation.”
I lift my head. “Go sell your sports cocktails.”
He retreats. “Elder abuse!”
“We’re the same age!”
“I have an old soul and terrible knees.”
The night keeps moving.
Online conversation grows. Not perfectly. There are definitely trolls. Men named Brad with flag avatars and opinions about women’s accountability. Women who think a broken engagement requires equal blame. Someone comments that I’m weaponizing pastries, which Dev immediately wants on a shirt.
At seven, the late-night menu launches at Saints people came, and the world did not end.
Warren moves beside me. His sleeves are still up.
He looks around the bakery. At his sister half-dead at the counter. At Oliver pretending not to listen to her. At Dev asleep against the wall with a roll of labels in his hand. At Lisa packing leftover supplies. And at me.
“I’m staying,” he says. “I need to tell you that now.”
My chest squeezes. “Warren.”
“Tonight isn’t about me.”
“I know.”
“I just—” He stops. Searches for the words. “I just wanted to be beside you as myself and tell you the truth.”
I look at his tattoos again. The choices he made when so much of his life hadn’t felt like his.
Then I look at him. “You were.”
Marley makes a strangled sound from the floor. “I’m too tired to pretend I’m not going to cry.”
I start crying too.
Warren holds his hand out to me, stopping halfway.
I place my fingers in his.