Ashes of Us

Chapter 1

The cupcakes were perfect.

I'd woken at five that morning, way before both the alarm and the sun, and pulled butter from the fridge to soften.

I creamed it with sugar until my arm ached, folded in Madagascar vanilla bean paste I'd ordered specially, piped each cupcake with the kind of precision I usually reserved for parent-teacher conference notes.

Eighteen identical swirls of buttercream, each one a tiny work of art.

The kind of perfection that requires you to ignore certain things.

Like how when I'd asked Liam last night if we had enough powdered sugar, he'd said "mmm-hmm" without looking up from his phone.

Like how he'd been working late more nights than not this month.

But that's what you do when you love someone: you bake at five in the morning and tell yourself the distraction means he's tired, not distant.

By the time I'd finished, the sun was up and I was due at school. I packed them carefully in a carrier container, settled them in the passenger seat like precious cargo, and brought them to work with me, storing them safely in the teacher's lounge refrigerator.

Now, three hours after the last bell had rung and the final student had bolted out the door for summer vacation, I was finally driving across town with the kind of giddy anticipation that made me feel ridiculous.

I was twenty-seven years old, a second-grade teacher with a master's degree, and I was excited about frosting.

But Liam would understand. He always understood.

That's what I told myself, anyway. It's easier than admitting you've spent years understanding someone who might not be trying to understand you back.

I tried to focus on the good day I’d had: submarine-themed bulletin boards rolled into tubes, construction paper fish recycled, twenty-five end-of-year cards from parents tucked into my bag.

Most of them mentioned the wedding. So happy for you, Miss Hayes!

and Congratulations on your special day!

and one from Dakota's mom that included a gift card to Williams-Sonoma with a note: For your new kitchen!

I'd cried in my empty classroom reading that one.

Summer stretched ahead like a gift. Two months before I had to be back, before I had to remember twenty-five new names and hang new decorations and pretend I had my life together for seven-year-olds who still believed in magic.

And, a few weeks before that, I’d be married.

Station 47 was quiet when I pulled up. Friday afternoon, the trucks gleaming in their bays, everything tidied and hosed down.

I grabbed the cupcakes and used the key Liam had given me two years ago, the one that let me slip past the public doors and head upstairs.

He’d said I should feel at home here, that the guys loved when I stopped by.

I almost never used it. Usually I just texted when I was coming, but today I wanted to surprise him.

The common room was empty, but I could hear voices upstairs.

I climbed the steps carefully, container balanced in both hands.

The buttercream had set perfectly during the drive.

Liam was going to love these. We'd narrowed the wedding cake down to two flavors, and this vanilla bean was the frontrunner, but I wanted him to taste it one more time before I called the baker we'd hired for the actual cake and—

Voices drifted down from upstairs. Liam's voice, warm and low. Good. He was here.

Then another voice. Female, laughing.

I kept climbing.

Jenna, probably. The new transfer who'd joined the station in December. She was nice. I’d met her at the Christmas party, watched her nurse a single beer all night and ask thoughtful questions about my classroom. She'd seemed nervous, eager to fit in.

Their voices got clearer as I reached the top of the stairs. Liam said something I couldn't make out, and Jenna laughed again, brighter this time.

Then… silence.

I stopped on the landing.

The silence stretched for a heartbeat. It wasn’t the comfortable quiet of people working side-by-side, but… something else. Something that made my chest tighten.

There was a rustle of fabric. A sharp intake of breath.

My feet moved before my brain caught up. I moved up the steps, then into the hallway. The door to his cramped office was half-open, and I could see…

I could see…

Liam's hand was in Jenna's hair. His other hand, the one that had held mine just this morning, the one that would slip a ring on my finger in five weeks, was cupped against her jaw, tilting her face up to his.

Her hands were fisted in his shirt, the navy station t-shirt I'd folded fresh from the dryer last Sunday.

They were pressed together against his desk, and he was kissing her the way he used to kiss me. The way he hadn't kissed me in…

God, how long?

How long had it been since he'd kissed me like that? Like he was desperate for it? Like he couldn't breathe without it?

Jenna made a soft, breathy sound, and Liam's fingers tightened in her hair. Something inside my chest cracked open.

His mouth moved to her neck. Her head tilted back, exposing her throat, and his free hand dropped to her waist, sliding under the hem of her shirt.

She arched into him, and he lifted her—actually lifted her—onto the edge of his desk.

The same desk where we'd eaten Thai food two weeks ago, where I'd sat and told him about the end-of-year field trip while he'd smiled and nodded and said all the right things.

Her legs wrapped around his waist.

His hips pressed forward.

It was too much. My fingers went dead, and the container slipped from my hands.

It hit the floor with a plastic crack that sounded like a gunshot in the quiet hallway. Eighteen perfect cupcakes exploded across the linoleum, buttercream and vanilla bean and hours of work scattered in a mess of plastic and frosting.

They broke apart.

Liam's head whipped toward the doorway. His face went white. Then red. Then something worse: guilty.

“Piper—”

His voice felt like barbed wire someone had tightened around my heart.

I turned and ran.

My feet hit the stairs too fast, and I grabbed the railing to keep from falling. Behind me, Liam was still calling my name.

“Piper, wait! Please, Piper!”

But I couldn't stop. Wouldn't stop.

The common room blurred past. The bay doors were open and the sunlight was too bright, too normal, too much like the world hadn't just split open. My hands shook so hard I dropped my keys twice trying to unlock my car. The metal bit into my palm when I finally got the door open.

“Piper!”

Liam was in the doorway now, shirt untucked, hair disheveled. Looking exactly like what he was.

I threw myself into the driver's seat, slammed the door and locked it. My hands were shaking so badly I could barely get the key in the ignition.

He reached my car and pressed his palms against the window. "Please. Please just let me explain!”

The engine turned over.

I looked at him then. Really looked at him. At the man I'd been planning to marry in five weeks. The man I'd woken up at five in the morning to bake for.

His mouth was still red from kissing her.

I put the car in reverse and drove away.