Chapter 23
Tess
I don’t reply.
I set the phone face down on the counter, like it might burn me if I look at it too long.
Like it might start vibrating again, demanding something from me.
My hands are steady. That surprises me. Everything inside my chest feels bruised and raw, like someone pressed their thumb hard into a fresh bruise and didn’t let go, but my hands are steady.
That’s how I know I’m not ok yet.
When I’m ok, I shake.
The bakery is dark. Closed. The blinds are pulled down, uneven at the corners where the cords have always been temperamental.
The ovens are cold, their digital displays blacked out.
The big mixer sits silent in the corner like a sleeping animal.
It smells wrong in here, stale, like the air hasn’t moved since he walked out.
Like the room itself is holding its breath, waiting to see what I’ll do next.
Sunrise & Salt has always breathed with me. It wakes when I wake. It exhales when I finally sit down. Tonight, it feels suspended. Paused mid beat.
I hear Gwen breathing beside me. Slow. Measured.
She’s leaning back against the prep table with her arms crossed, eyes on nothing in particular.
She hasn’t touched her phone once since the stream ended.
She’s waiting and giving me space. Gwen is good at that.
Always has been. She knows when to step in and when to plant herself nearby like a guardrail, letting me crash if I need to.
“He really did it,” she says quietly. Not hopeful. Not triumphant. Just stunned. “He burned it.”
I nod once. I don’t trust my voice yet. If I open my mouth too soon, something sharp might come out. Or worse, something soft.
I watched him cry.
I watched him say my words back to the world, stumbling over them like they were heavier in his mouth than they ever were in mine.
I watched him light the paper on fire.
It doesn’t erase anything.
The betrayal doesn’t rewind. The signature doesn’t disappear. The way my stomach dropped when I saw Sunrise & Soul glowing on that tablet doesn’t magically undo itself because he finally understood what he did.
But it does something.
The rage I was holding onto, the clean, sharp kind that made everything simple, doesn’t feel as solid anymore. Anger is useful. Anger is clean. It gives you edges. It gives you a direction to walk in. It lets you say no without flinching.
This feels messier.
The anger is still there, but it’s cracked now. Fractured. Like ice starting to melt from underneath, turning slick and dangerous. Like something I could slip on if I’m not careful.
That’s worse.
Anger keeps you upright. This in between, this grief adjacent, hope adjacent, bone-deep exhaustion, is dangerous.
I pick up the phone again despite myself. My thumb slides across the glass. I reread the message.
LEO: Saturday market. Meet me at the Saturday market.
That part matters more than I want it to.
He didn’t come here. He didn’t show up at my door. He didn’t corner me in the alley or wait outside like a penitent ghost. He didn’t demand. He didn’t explain. He didn’t fix.
He asked.
And then he stopped.
I hate that I notice. I hate that my brain is cataloging the difference, lining it up against every other time a man with resources decided that waiting was optional.
“No strings,” I murmur, mostly to myself.
I’ve heard that before. From banks that wanted naming rights. From landlords who wished to control clauses buried in fine print. From men who smiled too easily and talked about partnership like it was a favor.
Gwen shifts beside me. The metal table creaks under her weight. “You don’t have to answer him,” she says.
“I know.”
I mean it. I really do. I don’t owe him forgiveness. I don’t owe him time. I don’t owe him closure so he can feel better about himself and move on to the next thing that lights him up, only to try to optimize it six weeks later.
But this isn’t about him feeling better.
That realization settles slowly, heavy and unwelcome.
This is about me. About whether I can live with not knowing.
Because right now, I don’t know if the man I kissed, the one who scrubbed pans like they mattered, who listened when I talked about crumb structure and hydration percentages like it was gospel, is the same man who sat in a bar and signed away my future with a pen that probably cost more than my oven repair fund.
Right now, I don’t know which version of him is real.
And I hate not knowing.
“I’m not forgiving him,” I say aloud, needing to hear it in the room. My voice is flat, but true. “What he did… that doesn’t disappear because he did one right thing afterward.”
Gwen nods. She doesn’t argue. She never does when I sound like this, when my words come out stripped down to their bones. “Good,” she says simply.
I stare at the closed sign hanging crooked in the window. At my reflection in the dark glass. I look tired. Older. Like someone who trusted the wrong person and paid for it. My face is puffy around the eyes. There’s a faint crease between my brows that wasn’t there a year ago.
But I also look standing.
Not folded. Not shattered. Standing.
“He didn’t spin it,” I say slowly, piecing the thought together as I speak. “He didn’t soften it. He didn’t make himself the hero.”
“No,” Gwen agrees. “He made himself the villain.”
I swallow. My throat feels tight, like I’ve been holding my breath without realizing it.
“That matters,” I admit. And I hate that too. Hate that part of me is taking notes instead of building walls.
I flip the phone over in my hand once more. My thumb hovers over the screen. I don’t type. I don’t respond. I don’t give him anything yet.
Not yes.
Not no.
Just… not yet.
“Tomorrow,” I say, because I need something solid to grab onto. “We rest. We bake for ourselves. For our regulars. No phones. No comments. No explanations. We’ll do a delivery round.”
“Ok,” Gwen says immediately, like she’s been waiting for instructions.
“And Saturday…” My chest tightens again. “We’ll see when we get there.”
Gwen turns her head fully, then really looks at me. There’s a question in her eyes, but also trust. “I’ll be nearby.”
I manage a small, broken smile. “I know.”
I turn off the last light. The bakery goes fully dark, the way it’s supposed to when it’s closed. When it’s resting. When it’s mine again.
We lock up in silence. The deadbolt slides home with a familiar, comforting weight. Outside, the street is quiet. A delivery truck rumbles past somewhere down the block. Life continues. Of course it does. It always does, no matter how personal the implosion feels.
At home, I don’t sleep well. I drift. I surface. I dream in fragments. Flour on my hands. Leo’s voice saying my name. My father’s laugh echoing off tiled walls that no longer exist.
In the morning, Gwen shows up with groceries and zero tolerance for self-pity. We bake. We don’t talk about the stream. We don’t talk about comments, headlines, or opinions from people who have never set foot in my kitchen.
We make bread.
My hands finally start to shake somewhere around the third batch, when the dough comes together exactly the way it should, and I realize I’m still here. That Sunrise & Salt didn’t collapse overnight. That the thing Rex Chen thought he could buy is still breathing.
We load the bread we baked into the milk crates just after noon.
Gwen snaps the bungee cord tight in the back of the van. “Ok,” she says, testing it with a shake. “Henderson first or Calder first?”
“Henderson,” I say, already climbing into the driver’s seat. “If we don’t go there first, he’ll be offended.”
“True,” Gwen laughs.
Mr. Henderson lives three blocks from the bakery in a narrow brick house with a porch that tilts slightly left, like it’s perpetually leaning in to hear gossip.
His mailbox has been repainted so many times that it looks textured, and the wind chime by the door plays exactly one note no matter how hard the breeze hits it.
I knock the way we always do. Three quick taps. Pause. Two more.
The door opens immediately.
“Well,” Mr. Henderson says, beaming through the screen door, cardigan buttoned wrong, eyebrows doing whatever they want. “If it isn’t my favorite criminals.”
“Bread smugglers,” Gwen corrects, stepping inside like she owns the place. Which, functionally, she does. “We brought the good stuff.”
His eyes light up as we bring the crate in. “Sourdough?”
“And rye,” I say. “Plus, a baguette that got… ambitious.”
He nods gravely. “Ambition should always be encouraged. Even when it backfires.”
The house smells like lemon polish and old paper. Jazz hums softly from the radio, cutting in and out with static like it’s embarrassed to be heard. Mr. Henderson insists we sit. He always insists. He always wins.
He pours tea we don’t have time to drink and sets the bread on the table like it’s something sacred.
“So,” he says, slicing the loaf carefully. “How’s the shop?”
Gwen answers before I can. “Busy.”
“Good busy or bad busy?” he asks, sharp beneath the softness.
I shrug. “Busy busy.”
He hums, unconvinced, and then, casually, like he’s commenting on the weather, says, “I’ve been getting extra deliveries.”
My hand stills on my mug.
“Extra?” Gwen says.
“Yes,” he says. “Boxes. Nicely packed. Very professional. Show up right on time.”
I frown. “From…?”
“Oh.” He waves a hand. “Some company. Ashford something. It started right after those social media people crowded the shop.”
The room tilts.
I don’t react. Not outwardly. I’ve gotten very good at that lately.
“Excuse me?” Gwen says, far less subtly.
Mr. Henderson looks between us, confused. “Didn’t you know? They started coming by after you closed that one day. Said they were making sure no one missed their bread orders. They said you knew.”
My chest tightens, sharp and immediate.
“They asked about allergies,” he continues. “Preferences. Very thorough. Polite young man. Didn’t stay long.”
I stare at the table. At the crumbs. At the knife marks worn into the wood over decades of meals.
“He didn’t want us to go without bread after all those people came to the bakery,” Mr. Henderson adds gently. “Said it wasn’t right.”
Gwen opens her mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. “That sneaky…”
“Gwen,” I say quietly.
She clamps her mouth shut.
Mr. Henderson watches me now. Really watches me. “I hope that was ok,” he says. “I didn’t think to question it.”
“It’s fine,” I say automatically.
It’s not. But it’s not wrong either. And that’s somehow worse.
He didn’t tell me.
He didn’t ask.
But he didn’t make it public. Didn’t brand it. Didn’t put his name on the box.
He just… made sure the bread showed up.
Mr. Henderson reaches across the table and pats my hand, his palm warm and steady. “Your family used to do that,” he says softly. “Quiet things. Making sure people had what they needed without asking for credit.”
My throat tightens.
“They’d be proud,” he adds. “Of the bread. Of you.”
Gwen clears her throat loudly. “Ok. Emotional ambush complete.”
Mr. Henderson laughs, delighted. “You girls always run off before the best part.”
As we stand to leave, he presses a five-dollar bill into Gwen’s hand like it’s a sacred ritual.
“For the jar,” he says.
She sighs. “You’re on a fixed income.”
“And you’re on your feet all day,” he replies. “Everyone gives where they can.”
Back in the van, Gwen doesn’t start it right away.
“Ok,” she says slowly. “I am not saying anything. I am thinking things.”
I grip the steering wheel. “He didn’t do it for credit.”
“No,” she agrees. “He did it because he knew you’d care.”
I pull away from the curb, glancing back once. Mr. Henderson is already at his table, slicing bread, humming along to the radio like nothing in the world is wrong.
I don’t forgive Leo.
But the picture I had of him, sharp-edged, selfish, careless, has a crack in it.
And cracks are dangerous things.
Because sometimes, if you’re not careful, they let light in.