Chapter Seventeen
Paige
Jason is… the only family I have.
The words hang in the warm, sweet-smelling kitchen, cold and ugly. He says them quietly, like he’s afraid of scaring me off if he speaks too loudly.
There’s something raw about it—no swagger, no deflection—just truth laid bare on my mom’s butcher-block counter between the lemon halves and the bowl of dough.
I set my spoon carefully at the edge of the bowl because my hands want to shake. “What about your parents?” I ask.
I know some of it. I don’t know anything about his mom, and I have never met his dad. And I know he spent a lot of time at my house before he and Jason went off to school. But that’s it. I could never bring myself to ask my brother any more.
His gaze flicks past me to the window over the sink, where the afternoon light cuts in a slanted bar across the faucet.
“My mom left when I was ten,” he says, and I can hear how careful he’s being with the words.
“One day she was there, and then she wasn’t.
I don’t remember that much about her, to be honest.”
I swallow. “What about your dad?”
He drags a hand over the back of his neck, eyes still on the window.
“He stuck around until I went to college. The day I left, he packed up. Like having responsibility for me was the last thread keeping him grounded, and once I was gone, there wasn’t any point pretending.
I came back for a long weekend that fall and the place was empty—no note, no forwarding address, nothing. Haven’t seen him since.”
I think of Jason’s stories—the time he and Ben built a ramp out of plywood behind the garage and tried to jump the creek, how Mom bandaged Ben’s knee in the kitchen like he belonged to us; how Dad bought him boots and told him to quit arguing about the receipt.
I remember a lanky boy half a step behind my brother, always looking like he’d rather do the heavy lifting than stand still and be looked at.
I remember how quiet he used to get when Mom hugged him. Like he didn’t know what to do with it.
There’s pressure in my chest. I rub it lightly with my palm.
“You never heard from him?” I ask, even though he’s just told me no. It’s something to say while I fight the part of me that wants to cross the room and hug him. The part that keeps getting me in trouble.
“No.” His mouth lifts at one corner, humorless. “I used to check the mail like a stray dog hoping for a bone, jump every time the phone rang. Then I stopped.”
“And your mom?” My voice is barely there.
He shakes his head.
I press my palms against the counter until the cool wood bites. “I’m sorry,” I say, and I mean it, and I hate that I mean it this much. Because I’m still angry. Because sorry feels too small for what he’s just admitted.
He nods, like he doesn’t trust his voice, and when he looks back at me, it’s all there—the stubbornness, the pride, and underneath it, the simple, awful truth of being left.
I can see how that truth gets into everything else: the pub he built with his bare hands, the way he shows up for Jason like it’s his job, the panic that grabbed him by the throat when he realized he’d crossed some invisible line.
I want to say more, ask him questions, but I can see he doesn’t want that. I can see he’d rather be anywhere else doing anything else. So, I make the decision to do what he so clearly wants and move on. But I hold onto the information for another time.
“It doesn’t excuse what you said,” I tell him, speaking quietly. “I need you to know I’m not going to… excuse it because of this.”
“I don’t want you to.” His voice is low, steady. “I’m not telling you so you’ll feel bad for me. I’m telling you so you know why I handled it like a goddamn idiot.”
I let out a breath that shakes anyway. “You handled it like a coward.”
He doesn’t flinch. “Yeah.”
“And you made me feel disposable.”
“I know.” He looks like the words are nails he’s holding in his mouth. “I hate that I did.”
The oven ticks softly as it cools. A lemon seed glints on the cutting board. It’s ridiculous, the way the smallest details go sharp when the big things are too much. I pick up the seed and flick it into the trash, just to move, just to keep my hands from doing something I’ll regret.
“You said Jason is family. That you can’t afford to lose him.” I hear my own voice, tight but even. “Where does that leave me?”
He swallows. The sound is quiet but it feels loud.
“It leaves me knowing I can’t ask you to risk anything for me.
Not now. Maybe not ever. I can ask you to let me show up when it’s about the building.
To say hi when we pass each other on the sidewalk.
To fix the things that flicker or leak. I can ask for the chance to make it so you don’t have to brace when you see me. ”
The word brace hits, because that’s exactly what I’ve been doing since he walked in. Since he said the word “mistake” when my skin was still humming from his touch.
“And if I don’t want you to fix anything?” I ask, because I can’t help myself. “If I tell you to leave the light broken and the sink dripping because I can’t stand you in my doorway?”
He shakes his head. “I can’t just… I’ll make sure you’re not around,” he says.
It’s the right answer. It still makes my throat hurt.
I turn to the bowl because I need the anchor of doing something, anything.
Flour, sugar, salt. I work the spoon under the dough and fold it over itself, then again, then again, until the streaks disappear.
The rhythm helps. So does the noise—the scrape, the soft wet sound, the familiar tap of the spoon against the side.
I hear him shift his weight on the rug, but he doesn’t come closer.
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” I ask after a while, eyes on the dough. “Not this”—I gesture vaguely toward the window, the past—“but the truth. That you were scared of losing him. That you didn’t know how to want me and not blow up your life.”
He’s quiet long enough that I have to look up to make sure he’s still there.
He is. He looks wrecked and somehow steadier than he did ten minutes ago.
“Because it felt like making excuses,” he says.
“Because I didn’t want you to look at me and see a sob story.
Because I’m not good at needing people and worse at saying the part out loud. ”
The spoon sinks again. “You could have said anything besides what you said.”
“I know.” He says it simply, like it’s a fact he’s already paid for.
I grab the lemon zester and a clean bowl and set them on the counter. “Make yourself useful,” I say, because forgiveness is far away and trust is complicated, but lemon zest is lemon zest. “Careful. I need the zest, not the pith.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he says, and the corner of my mouth betrays me. Just a little.
We work in a parallel that feels like breathing after a sprint. He drags the lemon across the small teeth in clean strokes, turning it carefully, the bright curls falling into the bowl like tiny confetti. I cube cold butter, measure sugar, and lay parchment on a sheet.
“What happens if Jason finds out?” I ask, my knife thumping through the last stick of butter. “Because secrets have a way of getting out. You know that.”
He stops mid-stroke. “You’re his sister,” he says simply.
That’s really all there is to it, and we both know it. If it came down to it, I’m his sister.
A pit forms in my stomach. There’s something so awful about it. Something that makes me feel small and protected and furious all at once.
I nod because anything else will make my voice break. I toss sugar with the butter in the mixer and click it on low. The whir is soothing, the beaters catching and then smoothing as the mixture turns from sand to cream. I don’t look at him when I speak next. “Then it can’t happen again.”
“It won’t,” he says, and I don’t ask him how he can be so sure. I just let the words hang there, final and bitter.
When the butter and sugar are ready, I turn off the mixer and add egg and vanilla, then the lemon he zested, then the flour in two slow parts.
He finishes the last lemon and washes his hands without me asking, the bar towel slung over his shoulder like he’s back behind his bar.
He steps aside so I can slide the sheet closer to the oven.
We move like people who’ve shared small kitchens before.
It’s a stupid thing to feel tender about. It happens anyway.
“Do you remember Marlene’s?” I ask, scooping dough and plopping neat mounds onto the parchment. “When I was little.”
He huffs a breath that might be a laugh. “I remember you standing on tiptoe at the case like you were praying to the gods of frosting.”
“I was.” I steal a bit of dough and point the spoon at him. “And Harold always slipped me a cookie. Always. My mom pretended not to see and then pretended harder when I got icing on my shirt.”
He smiles. Small and sad. “Marlene used to make these huge cupcakes, and she always made sure there was one for me when we hung out there in the summer.”
“I remember those,” I whisper. I can’t speak any louder because my eyes are prickling again.
“Back then,” he says, voice thoughtful, “you’d walk into her shop and everything was bright and… right. Like someone plugged you in. And I’d think, this is how it’s supposed to feel, you know?”
I freeze with the scoop midair. He doesn’t look at me when he says it.
“And when I saw you in your shop,” he adds, quieter, “it was the same.”
The scoop touches parchment with a soft thud.
I clear my throat and keep going like we’re still talking about dough.
“I want that for my customers,” I say. “That feeling. The one where your shoulders drop and you forget the thing that was chewing you up on the sidewalk.” I glance at him before I can stop myself.
“It will be,” he says.
I slide the tray into the oven and set the timer. We stand there, side by side, watching heat turn dough into something new.
It’s practically like I can feel him not reaching for me. It’s almost worse than the night he did.
“I’m not ready to forgive you,” I say finally, staring at the little puffs as they rise.
“I know.”
“And I’m not ready to pretend we’re friends and make jokes about it.”
“I know that too.”
“But I don’t want to pretend I don’t see you.” The confession is out before I can lock it down. “It’s exhausting.”
“I don’t want that either.”
We clean the kitchen in silence while the time passes, and I’ve set out the ingredients for my next test batch when the timer dings. I pull the tray, and the kitchen fills with the scent of caramel and lemon.
I tap a top; it springs back. Good. I move them to the rack, steam curling up in tender ribbons.
“They need a few minutes to cool,” I say, but I grab one anyway and break it open, letting the steam out. I hold one half out and say, “Careful.”
He takes it like it’s something precious. We eat leaning against the counter, chewing quietly. The cookie is exactly what I wanted: crisp at the edge, soft in the center, lemon singing through the butter.
“It’s good,” he says around the last bite. “It’s… you.”
I roll my eyes because crying in front of him again is not on my list of acceptable activities. “Me?”
“Bright, sweet. A small bite to it,” he says, and I hate him a little for it. Because why does he understand me so well after such a short period of time? Why does he understand me in a way that no one ever has?
The one person who’s lost to me.
I look down at the half cookie still in my hand. It’s already losing its heat. Everything does, I guess. “A couple of things,” I say, before I lose my nerve. “Ground rules.”
“Okay.”
“If you need to come into my shop to fix something, then do it. I don’t want to tiptoe around each other. You’re not barred from coming in. I don’t want to live like that.”
He nods. “Done.”
“Anything else?” he asks, and there’s no edge to it. Just a question.
I shake my head.
“I should go,” he says, like he’s checking with me first. “Give you back your kitchen.”
“Yeah,” I say, because the part of me that wants to keep him here is not allowed to drive the car right now. “I’ve got… a couple more batches to test.”
He nods and heads for the doorway. He pauses just before the hall, fingers brushing the frame. “Paige?”
I look up.
“I can’t change what I did,” he says. “But I can change what I do. I’m going to.”
I don’t say thank you. I don’t say we’ll see. I just nod once, because that’s all I have to give today.
When the door clicks softly behind him, the kitchen exhales. I stand there with my hand on the edge of the counter and listen to the house settle. The mixer. The oven. My own stupid heart.
I’m still angry. I’m still hurt. But there’s a little more room in here than there was an hour ago. Enough to breathe without bracing.
I reach for the mixing bowl again.