Chapter 15 Liam
The bar bit into my palms as I lowered it for the thirty-seventh rep.
Thirty-eight.
Thirty-nine.
My arms were shaking. Good. I needed them to shake. Needed the burn, the distraction, the physical pain that made sense.
Forty.
"Sullivan." O'Brien's voice cut through my count. "You trying to die on that bench or what?"
I racked the bar with a clang that echoed through Station 34's gym. Sat up, chest heaving, sweat dripping onto the rubber mat beneath me.
"Just working out."
"That's not working out. That's punishment." O'Brien leaned against the squat rack, arms crossed. He was older than me by maybe ten years, built like he'd been lifting since birth. "You've been in here every night this week. Sometimes twice a day."
"So?"
"So you're gonna blow out your rotator cuff and be useless on calls." He grabbed a towel from the bench and tossed it at me. "What's going on?"
"Nothing."
"Bullshit. You've been weird since Miller's birthday. The cupcakes, right? Someone said you looked like you'd seen a ghost when you saw the box."
I wiped my face with the towel, buying time. O'Brien wasn't wrong. I had been weird. Had been working out until my muscles screamed, taking every overtime shift available, doing anything to avoid sitting still long enough to think.
About vanilla buttercream and a bakery called Rise & Shine. About the fact that Piper was ten minutes away from our old apartment, living the dream I'd told her was too risky, and I hadn't known.
"The cupcakes were from my ex's bakery," I said finally.
O'Brien's eyebrows shot up. "Your ex owns a bakery?"
“She does now, I suppose."
"And you didn't know?"
"I moved two hours away to get away from Riverside. So no, I didn't know." I stood up, grabbed my water bottle. "Can we drop it?"
"Sure." He didn't move. "But for what it's worth, man, you look like shit. Whatever you're running from, it's catching up."
He left before I could respond.
I stood there in the empty gym, staring at my reflection in the mirror-paneled wall. He was right. I looked like shit. Dark circles under my eyes, face drawn, the kind of exhausted that came from not sleeping right in months.
It had been a year since Piper walked out of our apartment with a duffel bag and her dignity, and I still couldn't get her out of my head.
The cupcakes had made it worse. Before, she'd been abstract… a memory I could keep at a distance if I worked hard enough. But tasting that buttercream, seeing that logo, knowing she was right there in Riverside building something without me...
It made her real again.
I grabbed my phone from where I'd left it on the weight bench. Pulled up Google Maps before I could stop myself. Typed in "Rise & Shine Bakery Riverside."
The listing popped up immediately. 4.9 stars from 247 reviews.
There were photos of the storefront too—exposed brick, yellow awning, the kind of clean, minimalist aesthetic Piper had always loved.
More photos of pastries arranged artfully in a display case.
Croissants, cinnamon rolls, elaborate cakes with perfect fondant work.
All hers.
I scrolled through the reviews.
Best bakery in Riverside! The owner is so sweet and the lemon bars are life-changing.
Finally, a place that takes baking seriously. You can tell everything is made with care.
My daughter's birthday cake was PERFECT. Piper worked with us on every detail and it exceeded our expectations.
Piper. Her name right there in the reviews, customers talking about her like she was a fixture in their lives now. Like she belonged to Riverside in a way she'd never belonged to me.
My thumb hovered over the photos. There…
in the background of one shot, behind the counter.
Blonde hair pulled back in a way I'd never seen her wear it, longer than she used to keep it, almost to her shoulders now.
There was flour on her black apron. She looked leaner, like all those hours on her feet had carved away the softness I remembered.
Stronger somehow. And she was caught mid-laugh at something someone had said, her whole face lit up in a way that made my chest ache.
She looked happy.
Actually, genuinely happy in a way I wasn't sure I'd ever seen her when we were together. Not the smile she'd give me when she was tired but trying. Not the careful happiness of someone managing everyone else's expectations. This was unguarded. Real.
She looked beautiful.
Different, but beautiful. Like she'd grown into herself in the year since I'd seen her, shed something heavy she'd been carrying. And I was suddenly, painfully aware that I'd been part of that weight.
I closed the app and shoved my phone in my pocket.
I should be happy for her. Should be grateful she'd moved on, built something incredible, found her footing after I'd blown up her life. A better man would be happy for her, wouldn’t he?
But I wasn't a better man. I was the asshole who'd cheated on her and lost her and spent every day since wondering if I'd ever stop regretting it.
I left the gym and headed for the showers, but even under scalding water she wouldn’t leave my head. Her name, her face, that bakery… all of it was looping like a fire I couldn’t put out.
And I could go see her.
I shouldn't. I knew I shouldn't. She'd made it clear she wanted nothing to do with me. But remembering she was that close, that I could walk into her bakery and see her face, hear her voice...
I got dressed, threw my gym bag in my locker, and walked out to my truck before I could talk myself out of it.
The drive to Riverside took over two hours. I hit traffic outside the city, sat in gridlock with my hands clenched on the steering wheel, half hoping the universe would take the choice away from me. Turn me around and make this impossible.
But traffic cleared and the exit for Riverside came up. And I took it.
Main Street looked different than I remembered. New shops, a renovated crosswalk, the bookshop Piper loved had been replaced by some organic juice bar. Everything familiar had shifted just enough to feel like a different town entirely.
Then I saw it.
Rise & Shine Bakery. Corner of Main and Fifth, exactly where that old antique shop used to be. The storefront had floor-to-ceiling windows, exposed brick, that cheerful yellow awning from the photos. Through the glass I could see customers in line, someone behind the counter ringing up orders.
Not Piper. Someone younger, college-aged maybe, wearing a black apron.
I parked across the street and sat there like an idiot, engine idling.
The line stretched to the door. A steady stream of people coming and going with white bakery boxes, coffee cups, the kind of foot traffic that said business was really good.
She'd done it. Everything she'd talked about doing someday, everything I'd told her to wait on, to be practical about… she'd just done it.
Pride and grief hit me so hard I had to close my eyes.
I should leave. Put the truck in gear, drive back to Station 34, pretend I'd never come here. She didn't want to see me. Hadn’t she made that abundantly clear by blocking me everywhere?
But I was here now… and I’d spent three days unable to think about anything else.
I turned off the engine.
Sat there.
A woman walked out with a white bakery box, smiling down at whatever was inside. Then a guy with two coffees. Then a mom with a kid who was already tearing into a croissant.
All of them had been inside. Had seen her. Talked to her. Been part of her world in a way I no longer was.
My hand was on the door handle.
Scott's voice echoed in my head: Leave her alone.
Maya's: She doesn't want to see you.
Morrison's: I'm disappointed in you, Sullivan.
I hesitated. What would I even say to her? Sorry I cheated on you, but your cupcakes are great?
She gained nothing from me walking in there. Just disruption. Just pain dragged back into her life when she'd worked so hard to move past it.
I'd come here for me. To ease my own guilt, my own regret, my own desperate need to see her face one more time.
That wasn't love. That was selfishness.
The same selfishness that had destroyed us in the first place.
I started the engine, put the truck in gear, and drove away. But I didn't go back to Station 34. Instead, I drove three blocks, parked in front of a coffee shop, and sat there staring at my steering wheel.
I'd come all this way. Sat outside her bakery like a creep. And I couldn't even walk through the door because I knew—I finally, actually knew—that she deserved better than me showing up and making her life harder.
Was this growth? Or just cowardice dressed up as respect.
It felt like shit either way.
I pulled out my phone and stared at her blocked number for a long moment. Then I opened my notes app and started typing.
Not to send. Just to say.
I saw your bakery today. I didn't come in. I wanted to… but I know you don't want to see me. I know I don't have the right.
It looks amazing. Everything you said it would be. I'm so proud of you.
And I'm sorry. For all of it. For not believing in you when it mattered. For making you feel like you had to wait for my permission to chase your dreams. For destroying the best thing that ever happened to me because I was too stupid and selfish to know what I had.
You deserved better than me. You always did.
I hope you're happy. Not the way you pretended to be happy with me, but actually happy.
I hope someday I can be happy for you without it feeling like my chest is caving in.
I read it over twice. Then I saved it in a folder with the other fifty notes I'd written to her over the past year.
Texts I'd never send.
Apologies she'd never read.
Finally, I put the truck in drive and headed back to Station 34. I'd come to Riverside, seen proof that Piper had moved on without me, and… I'd done the right thing for once.
I'd left her alone.
And it hurt worse than any fire I’d ever walked through.