Chapter 25
twenty-five
. . .
Come for the Pastries, Stay for the Chaos
HALSTON
By the time Warren turns onto our street, my hair has dried into, well, an interesting shape. I’ve eaten my entire bag of gummy worms in an order that can only be described as optimized for maximum emotional enjoyment.
Red and green first. Blue and green second. Orange and yellow third. And then finally, when I’m ready to feel disappointed, yellow and green.
The rain has softened by the time Bitter Bloom comes into view, but the street still shines with it, the black pavement reflecting Oliver’s red neon sign.
Everything looks normal from a distance.
Warren parks the car in the back, and it really sinks in that Penelope is gone. No more lying gas gauge or the familiar dent in the back bumper from when Marley backed into a pole and blamed the patriarchy. No cluttered little car waiting for me whenever I needed to get out.
She’s gone. Somewhere behind us, two hours away in Virginia, my terrible car was hauled toward a salvage yard with my old wedding invitations.
I expected the loss to feel bigger. Instead, it feels quiet.
Warren puts the truck in park but doesn’t turn off the engine right away. Heat hums softly through the vents, and rain ticks against the windshield. My saved things sit in the back seat.
The pieces of me that came home.
Warren looks toward the bakery and then at me.
“You’re home,” he says softly.
“I am.”
His hands stay on the wheel.
The back door to Bitter Bloom opens, and Marley steps outside. Her sweatshirt is wrinkled, her hair twisted into a messy knot, and her expression a mix of fury and relief. Oliver appears behind her with his arms crossed.
I reach for the door handle and then pause. “I need to go inside,” I whisper.
He bites his lip. “Okay.”
“I need to do this part without you.”
The words hurt as they leave me, and I watch him wince. “I understand.”
I look down. “I still don’t forgive you completely, okay?”
“Completely?”
“Don’t get greedy.”
I look toward Marley, who’s gesturing like she’s demanding an update from a hostage negotiator. Oliver says something to her without moving, and she snaps back at him. Whatever he says next makes her throw up both her hands.
My people.
My ridiculous, furious people.
I open the truck door, and somehow Warren is there within seconds, offering his hand.
I decide to give it to him.
His fingers close around mine, warm and steady. For one breath, neither of us moves. The truck cab light catches the wet strands of hair along his jaw and the tired shadows beneath his eyes.
He helps me down, my boots hitting the pavement.
He lets go.
“Your things are back here,” he says.
“Can you bring them to my door?”
“Of course.” He looks thrilled.
I turn before I can make the mistake of standing there longer, in the light rain, beside his truck, looking at a man I love but still need to learn to trust.
Marley reaches me first.
She doesn’t say anything. Not right away. She just wraps her arms around me so tightly my ribs complain and my throat closes. I hold on, my face pressed into her sweatshirt and my hands fisted against her back.
“You smell like vanilla,” she says into my hair.
“You smell like panic and expensive leave-in conditioner.”
She chuckles, her arms tightening around me. “Don’t do that again.”
“I won’t.”
She pulls back to look at my face.
“Mostly because Penelope is dead.” I smile.
Oliver steps closer. “Car?”
“Gone,” I say.
His eyebrows lift. “Gone gone?”
“Towed to the salvage yard. I left wedding stuff inside.”
Marley’s face twists. “Halston…”
“I kept some things.”
“For the record, I never trusted that car.” Oliver crosses his arms over his chest.
“You’ve said that about every man I’ve ever dated.”
“I’m nothing if not consistent.”
Warren appears behind me with my things, stopping several feet away.
Marley looks at him.
He holds out my bag, and she takes it.
“Thank you,” I say quietly.
“Anytime.”
He looks tired. Soaked. Beautiful in a way I find offensive. Like some storm-drenched bakery ghost with giant muscles sent to me to test whether I learned anything in the last few months.
I take one step back. “I’m going to go inside,” I tell him.
His throat moves. “Okay.”
Without a word, he turns, heading back to his truck.
The bakery opens around me with warmth, sugar, coffee, butter, and the soft glow of a place that’s been waiting for me to come home. Everything is clean, and everything is quiet.
Oliver holds out a bag of fast food. “Eat something.”
“I’ve consumed enough gummy worms to be considered one,” I tell him.
He pushes it to me anyway.
Marley leans against the counter. “What now?”
The question should terrify me.
Yesterday, it would have anyway. This morning, absolutely.
But something about leaving my car behind has rearranged something in me.
I look out the window.
“I think I’m done.”
Her brows shoot up. “With what?”
“Letting the Whitakers win.”
Oliver smirks.
I walk to the chalkboard and look at it before turning my attention to my empty case.
“What are you thinking?” Marley asks.
My smile comes slowly, and for the first time all day, it feels like my own. “I’m thinking we relaunch.”
Oliver groans while Marley pushes away from the counter and retrieves her laptop from the kitchen. She places it on the counter and opens it. “I like it. What are the categories?”
“I don’t like this,” Oliver groans.
“We need food, drinks, visuals, a social campaign, press, and a bar partnership,” Marley lists.
“Remove the bar partnership,” Oliver requests.
“No.” I roll my eyes.
“Adding bar partnership twice, then,” Marley says.
“I don’t need the bar to become some kind of pastry annex.”
“It already is.”
He shakes his head. “It’s not.”
Marley places her hand on her hip. “Oliver, what happened to that folder in your office?”
His eyes widen.
I turn to him. “What folder?”
“I don’t know.”
“The one that says BOAT SHOE JUDAS EVIDENCE.”
He looks pained. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Marley takes off, returning a few minutes later with a manila folder in her hands. “This is part of the relaunch.”
I take it, opening it to find everything Elise had given me. With everything else going on, I nearly forgot about it.
“We need to build a timeline,” I say firmly.
“I can do that.” Marley nods.
“And I’m going to talk to that lawyer. See if she handles this kind of thing too. I want to know what I can say publicly and what I should hold onto. I don’t want to make a legal mess, but I’m also not going to hide evidence.”
Marley’s fingers fly over her keyboard.
“Press strategy, then. Not defensive. No direct attack unless it’s safe.”
“Right.”
The next hour unfolds messily. Necessary.
We spread everything across two tables. Elise’s printed folder, my sales reports, screenshots of positive posts, old invoices, vendor payments, customer comments, the bad review, the old positive review, my notebook, and one plate of fries that Oliver brought back.
At first, I avoid the old Barrett review.
Marley looks up. “You okay?”
“No,” I say honestly.
“Want me to handle it?”
I shake my head. “No.”
My fingers close around the frame. His words are still there, preserved.
I open the back of the frame, pulling out the paper before placing it in Oliver’s folder.
“Okay, menu,” I say.
Marley straightens.
“We need something more interesting. Our menu was boring.” I think for a second, my toe tapping on the ground. “How about a brown butter salted caramel latte with banana cold foam?”
Marley thinks, the bottom of her pen between her teeth. “It kind of sounds like a heart attack, but I mean… a delicious one.”
I snap my fingers. “The banana cold foam will have vanilla bean paste in it. Then maybe a coconut mocha cold brew?”
Oliver makes a grumbly sound, but then goes, “That actually sounds kind of good.”
Marley gasps. “A latte flight.”
I gasp back. “You’re a genius.”
“Coconut Bloom latte, toasted coconut mocha, coconut caramel cold brew. Maybe a hot version for grumpy men who hate fun.”
“I want to finally make my D&D cookies,” I tell her, and she types it with a nod. “Shortbread tiles with different kingdom sections.”
“How about the Baltimore Vipers game-night specials?” Marley asks.
Oliver’s head snaps up. “Absolutely not.”
“Yes,” I say with a snap of my fingers.
“No sports.”
“The Vipers already come to your bar.”
“Against my wishes.”
“They buy drinks. That makes you money.”
“I resent that money.”
“My twists sold.”
“I haven’t known peace since. They keep asking for them.”
“We can do game-night boxes. All the things they like and maybe cold brew cans. We can call it something like the Seventh-Inning Stretch.” I sit back, pleased with myself.
“That’s baseball,” Oliver hisses.
“Correct.”
“This is a bakery.”
“And you’ve turned into a sports bar.”
Marley types so fast I worry about her fingers.
Oliver ignores me.
“We can partner with a couple of players who like posting,” Marley says. “Nothing formal yet. Just organic. Maybe one more tasting night.”
“At Saints & Sinners?” I ask.
She nods.
“I regret ever having the idea to open a place next to you,” Oliver complains.
“You love me.”
“I tolerate you.”
I open my notebook and scribble the tasting menu.
SAINTS & SINNERS LATE-NIGHT MENU
SWEET HEAT VICTORY TWISTS
DARK CHOCOLATE PRETZEL COOKIES
COCONUT BLOOM NIGHTCAP
OLIVER’S EMOTIONAL SUPPORT FRIES—NOT FOR SALE.
“Erase that last one,” Oliver says, pointing to it.
“No.”
“Halston.”
I throw up my hands. “It’s a joke, Oliver.”
Marley looks at me from the corner of her eye, worrying her lip. “You know, Dev had a really good idea earlier.”
“Yeah?”
“We were talking about”—she pauses—“all of this, and he said he had jokes about doing a cookie called The Receipt.”
I freeze.
“His plan was—” She looks back at her computer. “A layered bar. Dark chocolate, salted caramel, brown butter shortbread. A line of raspberry jam for blood.”
“I hate raspberry,” I say, wrinkling my nose.
“Okay, strawberry.”
“Better.”
A pastry built from layers.
Evidence.
I smile slowly.
“We’re doing it.”
The next morning, I call the lawyer.
“Denise Calder,” she says as she answers.
“Hi, Denise, this is Halston Smith from Bitter Bloom.”
A beat goes by. Then, “Halston, I’m so glad you called,” she says warmly.
I sit in Oliver’s office with Marley beside me. Oliver stands at the doorway pretending to read a liquor invoice upside down.
“I wanted to talk to you about my lease. I don’t really understand some of the language, and I want to protect my business without making a public mess I can’t take back.”
“Good,” she says. “Let’s start there.”
So we do. She lists her fees, and I okay them. After that, she explains the clauses: the renewal window and the property assessment language.
I take notes.
Afterward, she helps me draft a formal letter preserving my renewal rights and requesting written clarification of any business assessment before helping me outline communications for vendors.
Elise comes at noon.
Not through the front door during the rush, but through the side door, as Oliver requested, so we don’t make a fuss. “I don’t need this place to turn into a soap opera if they’re watching her,” he mutters.
She looks nervous.
We bring her into Oliver’s office, and she places another folder on the desk. “More call notes. A screenshot from Grant’s new number. He asked if I had talked to you.”
I chew my bottom lip. “What did you say?”
The corner of her mouth tilts. “I blocked him.”
“Good.”
She nods, her eyes moving to Marley and back to me before she leaves.
By three, Marley has a relaunch post ready.
I read it on her laptop while Oliver cleans glasses behind us.
Bitter Bloom has always been sweet, strange, playful, precise, and a little too much. We’re done pretending that’s a flaw.
My chest aches.
This month, we’re going Full Bloom: salted caramel banana lattes, Halston’s map cookie boxes, new coffee flights, late-night bites at Saints & Sinners, and game night specials. A menu built around the belief that joy can have structure and sweetness can have teeth.
We are not returning to the old Bitter Bloom. We are not shrinking into someone else’s idea of serious. We are becoming more ourselves.
Come hungry. Bring friends. Trust the weird specials.
I sit back, my eyes burning.
Marley’s fingers hover over the keyboard. “Too much?”
I laugh. “No, not at all.”
Her eyes soften.
“It’s exactly enough.”
Oliver sighs. “I hate that it’s that good.”
“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.” She beams.
We schedule the post for six.
By five forty-five, the bakery is in full-on preparation chaos.
Good chaos. Mine.
Lisa tests the first batch of map cookie dough. The flavor is right, but it doesn’t hold its shape enough. When the cookies finally come out right, Dev adds royal icing. His tiny blue rivers are a little too dramatic.
“Rivers flood,” he insists.
“Not all of them.”
Marley films behind-the-scenes clips.
For the first time in days, laughter comes easily.
When the post goes live, the likes start rolling in. Mrs. Alvarez is the first to comment.
Sweetness with teeth. Finally, a menu for women who survived men with opinions.
The Vipers player who named Sweet Heat reposts it with:
Need the game-night box ASAP. Oliver, don’t be weird about it.
“I’m going to be harassed,” Oliver mutters.
More comments. Regulars tagging friends. People asking about my map cookies and others asking what the hell a map cookie is.
Someone writes, “This is the Bitter Bloom I love.”
Someone else writes, “Barrett who?”
I look around at everything. The drinks lining the counter. The baked goods. The people I love.
I don’t need Bitter Bloom to be more restrained. I need it to look like mine.
I pick up my chalk.
FULL BLOOM—FRIDAY
COME FOR THE PASTRIES, STAY FOR THE CHAOS.
SWEETNESS IS NOT A WEAKNESS,
IT’S HOW WE SURVIVE.
My phone buzzes in my pocket and I take it out.
Warren.
One text.
WARREN
The relaunch post is excellent. No notes.
Something blooms within me.
Marley reads it over my shoulder and snorts. “Of course his sexting is project feedback.”
I choke a laugh.