Chapter 16 #2
“Bad enough that I turned off my phone before I say something I can’t take back.
And I got another rejection note today. This time from that accounting firm I got the second interview at.
It’s just…” She scrubbed at her cheekbone with her knuckle, then shook herself and pasted on brightness like lipstick.
She laughed, short and not quite right. “Remember what I asked at Mike’s? Before… everything.” She picked at the edge of the counter.
“About Finn signing a ball for Micah?” I asked.
“Guess I won’t need that after all.” Her voice cracked.
I didn’t say anything.
“Today’s your day. I’m not doing this,” she continued.
“You are absolutely doing this,” I said, because I’d spent a decade letting people spin until they broke and I was done with that.
“Listen, I wanted to talk to you after today and do this all formally. But I think we’re past that.
I signed the sale paperwork on my apartment, so I have the cash to bring you on.
Do you want the job? I mean it. I’m thinking something like operations director.
Full time, if you want it. I can’t pay what you’re worth yet, but I can match your salary from Rydell, Marks foreheads touching, breath shared in the soft rattle of pans settling.
“Back to the front lines to clean up?” he murmured, even though we didn’t move.
“In a second,” I said, which in Emily-speak meant: never; I live here now.
We pulled apart enough for me to see him clearly. God, the way he was staring at me—like I was the thing he wanted to carry out of a burning building first.
I glanced past him and caught my reflection in the stainless steel—flushed cheeks, bright eyes, lipstick smudged. A woman who’d done a terrifying thing and found out it was less terrifying when you didn’t do it alone.
This was it. This was the payoff. The risk, the leap, the life I wanted. The man I hadn’t meant to love.
Nope. Not that word. Not yet. Not here.
I pushed the thought down and smoothed my hair.
We went back out to the front and cleaned up. Angela sent me three Reels and a TikTok and a list of usernames who wanted to know if we shipped.
Maya left a signed stack of napkins for me to use at the grand opening.
By the time we were ready to leave and lock the door, the sky had gone that bruised, lovely color that meant Denver was thinking about pink and deciding on purple instead.
Finn came to stand behind me at the window, his chest a warm line down my back, his chin hovering near my temple like he wanted to rest it there and was waiting for permission.
“Today was good,” he said.
“It was,” I said.
I tilted my head toward him. “Want to go back home and I’ll cook you dinner?”
“You want to cook after all that today?” he asked, lifting an eyebrow.
“I meant order in,” I corrected.
I turned from the glass to the shop I’d built with fear and sugar and a small army of people who refused to let me be alone.
For the first time, I could almost believe in happily ever afters made of spun sugar and coffee steam.
Almost.