Epilogue #2
I put my hand against Gladys’s housing and felt the heat she had always made after a hard run.
Ryder watched my face instead of defending the repair.
He had learned that loving an object I owned did not appoint him its keeper, and I had learned that accepting what his hands could do did not hand those hands control of everything else.
“She doesn’t run another batch until Colin checks the shaft.
If he’s right, you pay for the bearing out of your own account, not the household money and not the bakery. ”
Ryder caught the rag over his shoulder and scrubbed his fingers while his eyes followed Colin through the swinging door.
“He’s wrong, but I’ll pay him to prove it.
When he fails, I want my labor listed as a donation to the burn unit.
” He looked at me again, saw the answer before I spoke, and amended the demand without losing the argument. “If the owner accepts it.”
I let him wait while Bear’s broken microphone boomed once in the front room and half the crowd shouted advice nobody intended him to follow.
“The owner will consider the invoice after the fundraiser.” I caught the front of Ryder’s shirt, pulled him away from Gladys, and kissed him in a kitchen full of people who knew exactly what he had done to me and exactly what I had required before he came home.
Nobody mistook my mouth on my husband for a clean past. Nobody asked me to hide the ring or explain why I wore it.
Ryder kissed me until Tessa started a countdown from the doorway, then lifted his head and told her where she could put the sign June had confiscated.
By late afternoon the auction had emptied wallets, the children had eaten enough icing to make every parent regret bringing them, and Bear stood beside the register with a check that covered the club’s goal before the last raffle basket went.
The Copper Kettle crew had kept the bakery counter running through the event, which meant the money in my till belonged to my business and the fundraiser money belonged to the burn unit, with every ingredient and labor hour written where Mia could find it.
Ryder carried folding tables only when June pointed to one and never once reached behind my counter after I closed it.
Bear found me near the stairs while Gage and Jax argued over how many chairs fit in the clubhouse truck.
“You want this again next year, you tell me before I set a date. If you don’t, we use the clubhouse and nobody sends your husband in here to look persuasive.
” He rubbed one thumb over the edge of the check, uncomfortable with a conversation in which he could not issue an order and leave.
“You did good today, Eden. Place did good too.”
I looked past him at Ryder, who had heard enough from across the room to know Bear was speaking to me and kept stacking chairs.
“Ask me next summer. I may hate all of you again by then.” Bear accepted the answer with a grunt and went to stop Gage from putting a chair through the truck window, leaving me with the last trays, the rain against glass I owned, and the husband who had carried my yes into the club without enlarging it.
Ryder came upstairs after the doors were locked and the crew went home.
He had his cut over one shoulder, his hearing aid case in his pocket, and a damp patch across the back of his shirt from hauling tables through the rain.
“June says the last floor is yours, and if I touch the mop she’ll break my wrist.” He stopped when he saw that I had turned on only the lamps along the windows.
The unfinished room from a month ago held forty empty chairs in rows, but I had left two near the front with the original chessboard on a table between them. “What did you do?”
I closed the stair door and crossed the room without hurrying him toward the answer.
The chessboard had the position we abandoned at home that morning, my queen near the center and his king protected by a rook he had forgotten I could reach.
Beside it lay our wedding photograph, the one he brought home in his single bunkhouse bag, and one sheet of paper written in my own hand.
“I didn’t plan the fundraiser to fix the day you ruined.
I said yes because I wanted this building full and because the burn unit needs the money.
Then you walked in here with Bear’s question instead of his answer, and I knew what I wanted to do after everybody left. ”
Ryder put his cut over the back of the nearest chair and approached the table from my right.
His eyes went to the photograph, then the page, and he kept both hands at his sides.
“If that paper changes the house agreement, I want Mia here before I read it. If it changes the bakery, I want your accountant and nobody who shares my last name.” The caution would have insulted the woman I was before July.
Now it made me want to put my mouth against the scar beside his and feel him fail to hide how frightened he was.
I touched the wedding ring on my finger and let him see that it stayed there.
“The house remains mine. The bakery remains mine. The medical forms remain mine. Your key works under the same terms, your boots remain subject to becoming planters, and if you give away another weekend of my labor, I’ll sell the Harley while you sleep.
” I turned the page toward him. At the top I had written only two names and the date.
“This is not a new contract. I want to renew our vows.”