7. Emrys
Emrys
After spending two days wallowing in my apartment, I showed up at Ardor, Priya worried that I still wasn’t ready.
I blew it off but by the end of my shift, I’ve convinced myself I’m almost normal, which is bold considering Clarence knocks his elbow into the display case at three in the afternoon and I nearly lose an entire tray of honey rolls.
The sound cracks through me before I can stop it. My hands jerk, the tray tips, and six un-iced cinnamon buns slide toward the edge. I catch them against my apron with both forearms, my breath stuck high in my chest as Priya’s head snaps up from the register.
“Okay,” I say, too quickly, staring down at the rolls. “No casualties. Everybody stayed on the tray. Mostly.”
Clarence freezes with one hand on his elbow and the other still clutching his paper bag. Priya’s face goes tight before she smooths it out for me. The bakery gets quiet for half a second, long enough for me to notice, and then Clarence clears his throat.
“I didn’t hit it that hard,” he says.
Priya closes her eyes. “Clarence, I love you dearly, but if that’s the first sentence you’re going with, I’m banning you from lemon loaves until Friday.”
His hand drops from his elbow. “Friday is two days away.”
“I’m glad the calendar still works.”
I slide the rolls back onto the tray and make myself breathe like I didn’t almost throw them at a customer. “He can have supervised loaf access if he stops fighting the furniture.”
Clarence looks at me, then at Priya, and decides his loaf is worth retreat. He takes his paper bag to the corner table without another word. Priya moves the trays herself while pretending it’s about counter space, and I let her because my hands still aren’t steady enough to turn this into pride.
The afternoon gets better because work keeps moving whether I’m fragile or not.
The bell still catches me once or twice, and a laugh near the register makes me drop a stack of napkins, but nobody makes it a thing.
Priya gives orders. The ovens breathe heat.
Customers come in damp from the rain and leave with bags held close to their coats.
By eight, I’ve only checked the front windows three times, which I decide counts because Priya hasn’t threatened to make me sit in the office for at least an hour.
My mind wanders through it all to the two men I can’t possibly have even if my body wants more of their scent, their presence, their touch.
I bury that last bit because no world seems to offer me that kind of luck.
It’s bad enough that I’m secretly pining for an Alpha who was framed and the officer investigating the case.
When the last customer leaves, Priya locks the front door and flips the sign with a snap. “I’m walking you out.”
I’m wiping the same section of counter for the third time, so I don’t have the moral ground I’d like. “You’re not.”
“I didn’t ask, Em. I made a statement.” She comes around the counter but stops a few feet away, far enough not to crowd me. “I’m not trying to take anything from you. I know you need to do normal things again. I also know it’s been two days, and I can put on a coat.”
“If you walk me home tonight, you’ll walk me home tomorrow.
Then the next night. Then you’ll start bringing soup in a thermos and pretending you were already in the neighborhood.
” I drop the cloth into the laundry bin and look at her properly.
“It’s six minutes. I need to know I can do six minutes. ”
Priya’s jaw works like she’s chewing through every argument she wants to make.
Then she grabs my coat from the hook and holds it out.
“You text me when you’re inside. You keep your phone in your hand.
You don’t take the side entrance, and if anything feels wrong, you turn around and come straight back here.
You call me or that detective that came in here to see you two days ago. Not Kade, okay?”
My cheeks warm at the memory of telling Priya what happened the moment I came in this morning. She gave a very firm warning not to make things worse and I won’t but it’s like everything changed that night. Like I somehow need Kade more. “I know.”
“I know you know. I’m saying it because I love you and because he’d come if you called.”
“He would.”
“And that’s why you can’t.”
I take the coat from her and slide my arms into it. She tucks one of the extra honey rolls into my pocket before I can argue. “Emotional support bread,” she says.
I look at the pocket, then at her. “That’s legally questionable.”
“Text me when you’re home.”
“I will.”
“Say it like you mean it.”
“I’ll text you when I’m home.”
She nods once, still worried, still trying not to show too much of it. “Good. Go before I change my mind and become unbearable.”
The night outside is damp but not raining.
I keep my phone in my right hand and my keys already hooked around my left index finger.
I pass the laundromat, the closed pharmacy, the cracked curb, and the dented mailbox that I’ve always thought looks a little funny.
Six minutes isn’t long, but every block has too many windows and too many parked cars.
My eyes keep moving even when I tell them to stop.
My thumb wakes the phone screen before I reach the corner, Kade’s name still in the recent calls. “It’s just walking home,” I mutter to myself.
I straighten my shoulders as my building comes into view at the end of the block.
I keep my eyes on the front entrance, rather than the darker strip of pavement where my brain keeps trying to put me.
My hand tightens around my keys, jangling them slightly to remind me that they’re there.
Three steps from the front door, my eyes slide to the right, finding the man from a few nights ago.
He’s leaning just beyond the main entrance light, hidden enough that no one would notice unless he wanted them to. My breathing quickens as the light above him flickers. Then he’s just gone. I swivel around, freaked out by his disappearance, a car door shutting somewhere behind me.
“No, no, no!” I sprint up the stairs, taking them by two before jamming my key into the lock. It sticks the first time and then twists, my whole body lurching forward and sprawling onto the floor as the door swings open.
I push to my feet and close the door behind me, trembling hands locking the door and fumbling the chain until everything is in its place.
Something knocks in the hallway before I can move away from the door. It could be pipes. It could be a neighbor. It could be nothing. My body doesn’t care. I back away until my shoulder hits the wall, then turn and move straight for the bedroom.
The nest corner is still dismantled, blankets folded in uneven piles where I left them, still too rattled to sleep in the open.
I crawl into the closet and drag the blanket over my head, pulling the door most of the way closed as the dark folds around me, but my breathing gets worse now that I’ve stopped moving.
The man is still at the edge of the light every time I blink.
I drag my phone up to my face before digging in my pocket for Skylar’s card. For one awful second, I think I left it at the bakery. Then my fingers catch the edge of it.
“Come on,” I whisper, because my hands won’t work right. “Come on.”
I dial before I can change my mind.
It rings twice before Skylar answers. “Grayson.”
The sound of his voice makes tears spill down my cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” I rush out, pressed into the corner with the phone against my ear.
“I know this probably isn’t what I’m supposed to do, and I don’t know if I saw him or if I imagined it, but he was here again.
I think he was here again. At the front this time, near the light.
I didn’t call Kade, but I didn’t know who else to call, and there was a sound outside my door after I got in. ”
Skylar’s voice changes immediately. “Emrys, stay on the phone with me. Are you inside your apartment?”
“Yes. The door’s locked. I locked it more than once. I’m in the closet.”
“Good. Stay there if that’s where you feel safest. You did the right thing calling me.”
Another sound comes from somewhere beyond the bedroom, and my whole body folds tighter around the phone. “There. There’s something outside.”
“I hear you, not the sound, but I believe you heard it.” There’s movement on his end now, a chair scraping, the sound of keys jangling, and then a door shutting.
“I’m leaving now. Keep talking to me.” There’s another shuffle of sounds but I have no idea what to say. “Tell me what you baked today, Rys.”
The question hits wrong enough to slow the panic. “What?”
“At Ardor. What did you bake today? I want your brain somewhere it knows the steps. Tell me what you made.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. “Cinnamon rolls.”
“Good. Tell me about them. I’m sure your bakery has a few secrets that make them better than the diner down the street.”
That brings a smile to my face because the diner down the street is awful.
Some of the panic ebbs away as I grip the phone a little tighter.
“They’re not hard if you don’t rush them.
” My voice shakes, but the words come a little easier because dough makes sense in a way nothing else does.
“The milk has to be warm, but it can’t be too hot.
There’s honey in the dough and the glaze, but not too much or they get sticky in the wrong way.
Priya hates when I say sticky in the right way because she thinks it sounds gross. ”
Skylar makes a low sound, and I hear a car door open on his end. “Keep going.”
“You have to watch the texture. Honey changes it. If you add too much flour, the rolls get heavy, and Clarence complains even more than usual. He already thinks every loaf was bigger in 1998, so we don’t need to give him help.
” My breathing catches, then eases a little.
“There’s the cinnamon mixture but that’s a secret recipe. I’m not allowed to tell anyone.”
“That’s too bad. It just means I’ll have to come and try one,” he says. “You’re doing good. If you hear another sound, tell me, but don’t open the door.”
“I won’t.” My fingers dig into the blanket. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t apologize for calling me. The man who attacked you is the problem. You calling because you feel unsafe is exactly what you’re supposed to do.”
My throat closes again, but it is different this time. I press my forehead to the closet wall and breathe. “Skylar,” I whisper.
“I’m here.” His engine hums through the line. “Stay on the phone,” he says, his voice almost coming out as a purr. “Give me ten minutes, and I’ll be there.”