Chapter 14 Kira/Landon #2
“But I hate it!” The confession tumbled out of my mouth before I could stop it, before I could shove it back down where it had been simmering for years. “I’ve tried to like it, but it’s not me. Not like art is.”
Mom held a hand up. “Don’t raise your voice at me.”
I bit my tongue and nodded. I was raised in a respect first household, where arguments were meant to be swallowed, not spoken.
She sighed, pressing her fingers to her temple. “A job does not need to be you. It needs to be something you do to make a living. Something you can’t do with art.”
“Years later, and we’re back to the same problem,” I scoffed. Any hope of coming to a mutual understanding over this shattered. “You don’t think I’m good enough.”
Her hands tightened into fists. “That’s not what I said, Kira.”
“But it’s what you meant.”
“You are good at art, but that doesn’t mean you can turn it into a livelihood.”
“I don’t think it’s something I can do overnight,” I admitted. “I don’t know if it’s something I can do at all. But isn’t it worth trying?”
Mom inhaled sharply. “Not everything is worth taking a risk on.”
“But some things are.” Some people are, I wanted to add.
“You’ll clearly do whatever you like.” She waved a dismissive hand. “This is something I cannot support.”
I let out a breath and forced myself to keep my voice even.
“Landon mentioned something the other day…” I started slowly, the words prickling in my throat like thorns.
“He told me that after we broke up, he left me a long letter. But I only ever saw the second page. The one that said I’m sorry.
You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you? ”
She paused at the dining table with a set of chopsticks in her hand, her back to me. Just for a second. Enough for me to know. Her shoulders stiffened, and her fingers adjusted the place setting that was already perfectly aligned.
“I don’t know what he’s talking about,” she said, her tone clipped. “Now have a seat and let’s enjoy lunch with your father.”
The avoidance was deliberate. She hadn’t even turned around.
I nodded, but it wasn’t an agreement. It was surrender for now.
Inside, something broke loose. Not anger.
Not sadness. Not even shock. Just this painful ache.
A deep, hollow knowing that I’d always suspected but never wanted it confirmed.
That maybe the fracture between Landon and me hadn’t been entirely our doing.
That my mother’s idea of protecting me had meant choosing for me. Again.
I sat down at the table, numb fingers brushing the edge of a plate. So this was the shape of betrayal—not violent or dramatic, but quiet, calculated, and carried out in my name.
I stared at the steam rising from the rice bowl and wondered if anything would ever taste right again.
Landon
For the first time, I was alone in the diner. We were supposed to be taking a night off from preparations, but I craved a distraction. Which apparently was what I did now—filled up my time so intensely that I didn’t have a second to spend thinking.
I couldn’t have said what I did yesterday. Ever since Kira asked for space, I’d just been mind-numbingly trudging around town.
Until I decided to do something productive.
There remained a few unopened boxes in the back room, things that hadn’t been touched since before Dad died. I plucked a medium-sized box off the top, pushed aside the lid, and rifled through old cookbooks, faded newspaper clippings, and a stack of loose Polaroids. Then I saw it.
Folded in half, the edges soft with time, was a piece of lined paper. My chest constricted before I even opened it. I knew that handwriting. Knew it by heart.
Dad’s Bourbon-Pecan Pie.
I exhaled slowly, my thumb brushing over the messy scrawl. The measurements were barely legible in places, smudged with something that might’ve been flour or tears. There were little notes in the margins, like “Don’t overmix” and “Kira says this one needs more bourbon ;).”
I closed my eyes. The pie. Our pie. Dad used to make it every Thanksgiving, and sometimes just because he caught Kira staring at the dessert section of the menu too long.
It had become our thing. We’d devour it in one sitting, usually with her perched on the kitchen counter and me pretending not to notice the way powdered sugar stuck to her cheek.
I’d tried to recreate it multiple times since Dad passed.
Now I knew why I always failed.
The secret wasn’t in the bourbon or the pecans. It was on this page, with its notes and smudges and crooked little star next to the word cinnamon. It was in the way my dad had made something ordinary feel sacred.
This felt like more than a recipe. It felt like a thread tying me back to the parts of my life that still mattered. To my father. To Kira. To who I used to be before I let everything fall apart.
Maybe I couldn’t fix things with Kira overnight. Maybe she never forgave me. But this was something I could get right. One small thing.
My hands trembled as I refolded the page and slid it into my coat pocket.
I had been so focused on the recipe that I didn’t notice that my little brother Liam stood in the doorway, hair tousled, hoodie half-zipped, and that same uncertain energy he’d carried since he was eleven and our lives cracked down the middle.
I hadn’t seen him in a few days. We’d talked a little since I moved back, but it still felt like tiptoeing across thin ice.
He walked over slowly, shoving his hands into his hoodie like he wasn’t sure if he belonged.
“You gonna sit or hover like a weirdo?” I asked softly, trying to make it sound like a joke.
Liam cracked a grin and sat next to me. “Takes one to know one.”
We sat in silence for a beat, the kind that used to be filled with laughter or inside jokes—ones we hadn’t rebuilt yet. His gaze drifted to the box.
“What’s all that?” he asked, nodding.
“Old stuff from the diner. I found Dad’s pie recipe.”
His eyes lit up. “The bourbon-pecan one?”
“Yeah,” I replied, throat tight. “The one he used to make for Kira.”
Liam leaned back, a quiet understanding settling between us. “I remember that pie. You two would fight over who got the last slice.”
I smiled, but it didn’t quite reach my eyes. “I always let her win.”
“Yeah.” Liam smirked. “You were fucking whipped. Still are.”
I gave a soft laugh. Then the silence came back, this time heavier, filled with words neither of us had said for years.
“I forgive you, you know,” he said after a minute. “It was incomprehensible to me at first, when you moved away, after we went through so much. But now that I’m eighteen, the same age you were, I feel more clueless than ever. If something happened to Mom now…I don’t know what I would do.”
The weight in my chest cracked. “That’s why we have each other.”
“Yeah. Sorry for giving you shit. We were kids. You were trying to hold everything together. I was just pissed ’cause you were my big brother and I felt abandoned.”
I blinked fast, then nodded. “Thanks, man.”
“Don’t think too much about it.” He grinned. “It’s mostly ’cause I know now how lame you are.”
My jaw dropped. “I am not lame. The fuck?”
Liam drew his eyebrows down in an impersonation of me. “Is Kira mad at me? Doesn’t Kira look so pretty in that dress today? Kira’s the most talented—”
I pushed his shoulder hard enough to knock him over. “Really funny. Shouldn’t you be at school, anyways?”
“I’m driving back tomorrow.” Liam stood, stretching his arms above his head. “Want to make me a pie to go?”
I might be an avoidant, but at least I could make a damn good pie.