23. The Olive Branch
The Olive Branch
Cole woke up to the kind of headache that suggested he’d made several terrible decisions in a very short period of time.
The ceiling above him blurred, then slowly slid into focus. His mouth tasted like old pennies. His stomach wobbled. His head throbbed like someone had wedged a pressure washer behind his eyes.
He groaned, rolling onto his side.
On his nightstand sat a bottle of Pedialyte, two aspirin, and a neatly folded note perched on top.
He blinked at it.
Then blinked again.
Per Hart’s instructions, it read in Travis’s handwriting. Take these before you try to stand. Also, I don’t think she’s made anything clear, and I don’t think it’s done, boss.
Cole stared at the note so long that the words blurred.
“Per Hart’s instructions? How the hell would she know . . .” he muttered. And then it hit him.
Hard.
He jerked upright, head pounding, grabbing his phone with the reflexes of a man who suspected he’d texted someone something he should never have texted.
He opened the thread with Jenna. There it was.
A chunk of autocorrect carnage and misspelled nonsense, broken letters, half-words, a string of gibberish he didn’t remember typing, and somewhere in the middle of it all, the very real, very sloppy, very horrifying phrase:
im in lv w you
He dropped the phone onto his chest, covered his face with both hands, and considered burying himself alive.
* * *
Jenna had kept herself busy. Painfully, deliberately busy by training three new hires.
Finishing the binder, Emmie insisted, was “non-negotiable.” Finalizing the soft-opening menu. Ordering signage.
Putting together the grand-opening flyer Emmie had designed with enough glitter fonts to blind a lesser person.
She’d built her days like scaffolding, task after task after task, and it had worked well enough. The bakery was almost ready. Her staff was almost ready. She was almost ready.
Only one thing on her list stared back at her from the corner of the page, circled twice. Call Dad.
She sat in her car outside the house, staring at the words. Then she hit dial before she could talk herself out of it.
He picked up on the second ring. “Hey, sweetheart.”
The sound of his voice cracked something brittle and old inside her.
They talked about the bakery, Emmie’s classes starting, even the weather. He asked if Biscuit was still stealing socks, to which she told him yes, probably at that very moment.
Then he paused, voice gentling, “Jen . . . I’m glad you’re staying.”
He did what he always did, eased her, rounding off the sharpness she’d been holding all week.
“We’re proud of you,” he continued. “Your mother and I . . . we’re sorry we haven’t called or come by more.
We didn’t want to push. You’ve been through so much, and we were afraid hovering might make you feel crowded or make you pull away again.
We thought giving you space was kinder. But please don’t think that means we’re not here for you. ”
Jenna closed her eyes.
Cole wasn’t the only one tiptoeing. She’d trained everyone around her to.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, fingers pressing to her brow. “I didn’t mean to make you feel that way.”
“I know you didn’t, sweetheart,” he said softly. “Just . . . let us stay close, okay? You don’t have to carry all of this alone.”
Relief loosened something small and stubborn inside her. “Thanks, Dad,” she said quietly. “Really.”
They said their goodbyes, and she ended the call.
Her dad always had a way of clearing the fog around her.
She stayed there with the phone still warm in her hand, staring at the dashboard like it held the rest of the answers she’d been avoiding.
Her dad’s voice lingered in the car, in her chest, in the part of her that still felt tender and bruised.
He had always been able to reach her that way, not with pressure, not with insistence, but with quiet truth.
Her parents had made everything special.
Not out of perfection, but out of consistency, the kind that came from two people who genuinely loved being parents.
Holidays were events in their house, no matter how tight money was or how chaotic schedules got.
Her mom had decorated the table every Thanksgiving as if Martha Stewart were personally stopping by.
Her dad strung Christmas lights with the dangerous confidence of a man who’d fallen off a ladder twice and learned absolutely nothing.
She remembered her dad running beside her bike on the street out front, one hand gripping the back of the seat, shouting, “Pedal, Jen! Don’t overthink it—pedal!”
She remembered the triumphant scream she’d let out when she realized he wasn’t holding on anymore.
He’d taught her how to tie her shoes, how to bait a hook, how to blend a drywall seam so clean you couldn’t see where the joint ended.
He’d pretended not to see her crying in the garage the day Emmie was born, terrified of losing her place in Grace’s life.
He’d just handed her a stack of sandpaper and said, “Here. This fixes most things.”
Her mom had been the soft counterweight.
Girl Scout troop leader, bakery taste-tester, chief planner of every sleepover she and Grace conned her into hosting.
She cooked dinner every night, real meals, even when Jenna and Grace came storming through the house, grabbing snacks before running back out for practices, clubs, boys, drama .
. . all the frantic little storms of teenage life.
Her mother never complained. She just smiled and said, “At least you’re here. ”
Vacations were the same: imperfect and perfect all at once. They always began with her parents bickering in the front seat—
“You missed the turn, Bob.”
“If I missed the turn, it’s because you gave me the wrong directions. You have the map, Lillian.”
“If you would listen—”
“I am listening!”
But the second they arrived, the second the car doors opened and the humidity hit them, and the suitcases were dumped onto rental-house floors, it was nothing but laughter.
Always laughter, card games, beach towels that never seemed to dry, and Grace burning the tops of her feet every single year. Brooks cannonballing into any body of water he could find, and her mom rolling her eyes at all of them while secretly loving every second.
Her parents had built a childhood for them, a full, loud, ordinary one. Love woven through the center of every day.
She thought of him and her mother, two people whose entire lives had been shaped around raising children.
They had built their identity on it, brick by brick, habit by habit, sacrifice by sacrifice.
It wasn’t just something they were good at; it was their greatest joy, their greatest accomplishment.
They had raised three good human beings.
Better than good. Jenna knew she was damaged and avoiding therapy like a professional, but she also knew she wasn’t cruel or selfish or careless.
And her brother and sister… God, they had been extraordinary.
She pressed her fingers to her eyes.
What must it have been like for her parents?
To spend decades building something so precious, a family, a whole world, only to have two-thirds of it torn out from under them?
She imagined it like spending decades constructing a cathedral, stone by stone, protecting it from every storm, only to watch it be bulldozed to the ground before it was even finished.
Except people weren’t buildings. They were infinitely more fragile, more valuable, and impossible to rebuild from blueprints.
So how did anyone survive that kind of loss?
How did her parents get up every morning and carry on? How did they smile for Emmie? For her?
She remembered Emmie’s voice, sharp and grieving, refusing to pretend anymore. But now the questions echoed in her own mind: What’s the alternative? Dying young? Staying sad? Throwing away the years she still had when they never got them?
Was that what she was doing? Wasting the life she still had? Pushing everyone away?
Cole. Her parents. Even herself.
Her parents were quietly apologizing for not calling her more, and she was the one who had trained them to keep their distance. She’d made it easy for everyone to assume she was a flight risk.
And Cole . . . God.
He’d stepped so carefully and said nothing when she ghosted him. He held back every time she needed space. Let her dictate every inch of the distance between them, even when it hurt, because he’d sensed the same thing everyone else had, that she could vanish if pushed even an inch too hard.
But the truth was uglier than that.
She hadn’t just been protecting herself.
She’d been protecting the people she loved from the burden of her grief, her panic, her fear. Or at least, that’s what she told herself.
It wasn’t working.
Her dad’s voice echoed in her mind: You don’t have to carry all of this alone.
She inhaled, slow and shaky.
Maybe staying didn’t mean reinventing herself. Maybe it just meant letting people be close. Her parents. Emmie. And maybe, cautiously, stupidly, terrifyingly, Cole.
It didn’t fix anything.
It didn’t erase the fight, or the hurt, or the mess of what they’d become. But the thought no longer made her want to run.
It made her want to try.
She wiped her cheeks with the heel of her palm, cleared her throat, and opened her messages. Her fingers hovered for a long moment over his name, long enough that her phone dimmed once and she had to tap it back awake.
Then she typed slowly, carefully:
JENNA: Hey. I know it’s been weird, but the grand reopening is Friday. Please come. It wouldn’t be right if you weren’t there after everything you did.
She stared at the words, feeling the tremor of vulnerability under them. Then she hit send before she could talk herself out of it.
* * *
Cole was halfway through his second bottle of water and still felt like his head was full of wet sand when his phone buzzed.
He glanced at it, expecting a message from Travis checking in or gloating about his state. Instead, Jenna’s name lit up the screen.
He froze.
Then opened it.
JENNA: Hey. I know it’s been weird, but the grand reopening is Friday. Please come. It wouldn’t be right if you weren’t there after everything you did.
He read it once.
Twice.
Three times.
Relief hit him first, sharp and bright. Then confusion.
Then a fresh wave of embarrassment at the disaster of messages he’d sent her last night.
But threaded through all of that humiliation, through every tangled emotion, was something he hadn’t felt in days: hope.
Real, stupid, dangerous hope.
He looked at the Pedialyte. At the aspirin.
At Travis’s note:
Per Hart’s instructions. I don’t think she’s made anything clear, and I don’t think it’s done, boss.
For the first time since he’d walked away from her porch, Cole let himself believe his friend might be right.