Epilogue
Wesley’s bakery was bright because he’d made it that way—liked it that way.
He polished every pane of glass himself until the morning light spilled through like honey. Pastel boxes stood in neat rows, ribbons tied straight enough to satisfy even the fussiest aunt in Mistwood.
He wanted it to feel warm when people walked in.
Easy. Which was why he burned the first tray of scones every week—“insurance against getting too full of himself,” he claimed—and whistled so loudly in the mornings that the neighbors complained.
He made the shop smile for him, even if it meant scrubbing counters with too much elbow grease or slipping an extra dusting of sugar where only the light would notice.
Because to Wesley Rivers, a bakery should do more than feed people. It should trick them, if only for a moment, into believing the world wasn’t quite as cruel as it liked to be.
He checked the ovens twice before dawn. Lined the counters with flatbreads that still sighed steam when torn. He sang while he worked, and when the words slipped his mind, he invented new ones that rhymed badly.
Because Wesley liked bright. He wanted bright.
And yet, his favorite corner in Sugar High Bakery wasn’t bright at all.
He’d carved it out for her—the shadow in the back where the windows didn’t quite reach. A wrought-iron table, black cushions instead of pink, a crooked little shelf of books leaning like conspirators against the wall. A pot of rosemary in place of roses. A candle that burned green instead of gold.
Her place. His witch’s nest, tucked in among all the sugar and cream.
Maude sat there now—hood tipped low, curls spilling loose, a book balanced on her lap while Grim draped himself around the rosemary pot like poured ink. She looked utterly at ease, utterly out of place, and impossibly his.
Wesley’s chest ached with it—this quiet vision of her. He drank her in as though her presence alone might sustain him. Every glance was a feast. Every scowl a prayer. Saints, she didn’t even know.
Maude lifted her head when he laughed, as if the sound tugged her by some invisible thread. Her eyes caught his across the bakery. Green. Striking. And then she glanced away like she hadn’t looked at all.
When she closed her book and rose, his pulse leapt.
He tried for neutral, casual, the same face he wore for customers.
But this wasn’t a customer. This was Maude Harrow—witch, cursebreaker, sharp-tongued, impossible—the woman who had wound through him like breath, unnoticed until the thought of losing it left him gasping.
“Need a hand?”
He blinked once, certain he’d misheard, then again, because his heart had the audacity to leap. “You—” he said, unable to mask the shock. “You want to help.”
“Yes. Don’t make it a thing.” She crossed her arms, a smile tugging at her mouth. “I’ve spent weeks mocking this place. Might as well see what all the fuss is about before I die.”
His throat worked before he managed, low, “Come on, then,” sweeping the counter clear like he hadn’t been waiting weeks for her to want this.
She stepped up, and the air shifted. The counter glowed faintly in the firelight, dusted with sugar instead of flour. He set a bowl before her: dark chocolate, chopped fine, every shard gleaming like a heap of black jewels in the low light.
“Tempering,” he said. “We’re making truffles.”
Her brow arched. “Sounds violent.”
“Don’t worry, the casualties are mostly spoons.”
He showed her—the melting over low heat, the steady stir, the pour onto the marble slab.
The rhythm of scrape and fold, dragging the shine back into the chocolate before it dulled.
She didn’t scoff. She watched, lips pressed, eyes intent.
Her attempt was clumsy. Too much wrist, not enough patience—the chocolate streaked and refused to gloss.
She swore under her breath, and he bit back a grin that threatened to give him away.
“Not bad,” he said, gently.
“Don’t patronize me.”
“Wouldn’t dare.”
The next fold came smoother, less fight in her wrist, more focus in her hand.
She caught the rhythm faster than he expected—scrape, lift, fold, the sheen returning under her stubborn persistence.
He slowed his own pace until it matched hers, steady beside fierce, the sound of metal on marble finding a cadence that belonged to them both.
She muttered every time the chocolate resisted. He hummed absently, as he always did when baking. And somehow, the two sounds twined together, rough and soft, until the air in the bakery felt charged with more than just the scent of cocoa.
And then Maude did the last thing he ever expected—she sang.
Not words; just a melody, low and unguarded, spilling out of her as her eyes burned and the sound threaded through the warm kitchen air.
Wesley’s hands went still. The tune was simple, lilting, old.
It slid beneath his skin, hooking deep, tugging at nerves long gone numb.
His chest tightened, breath catching wrong in his lungs.
He didn’t know the melody—couldn’t place it—yet some part of him leaned toward it with the certainty that he’d once known every note.
It felt like home, like warmth, like safety—like something he’d lost and only now remembered to miss.
His head tilted, eyes narrowing. “I’ve heard this before,” he said, searching her face. “Haven’t I?”
Maude’s smile trembled, brittle with sorrow. She let the melody slip from her lips, quiet as a secret, until the last note faded.
Silence lingered, broken only by the hearth’s crackle and Grim’s low, contented purr.
“What was that?” His voice was careful. “A spell?”
“No.” Her throat worked. “Not a spell. A memory. A…feeling.”
“Yours?”
She shook her head, whispering, “No. Yours.”
Wesley’s brow furrowed. “Maude, I—”
“When you hummed it,” she said quickly, eyes fixed on the chocolate as if it might save her, “back when we first met—I hated it. I thought you were just trying to get under my skin. And then I realized…it wasn’t for me at all. It was for you. For her.”
Wesley froze. Something flickered through him—grief? Wonder? Both, knotted so tightly he couldn’t pull them apart.
Her. She meant…
His chest drew taut, ribs straining against a memory that wasn’t there. No matter how hard he reached, he couldn’t find it. He couldn’t remember his mother’s face—not the way he once had. But the song—saints, the song…it was hers.
Maude’s voice shook, but she pressed on. “I kept it. Because you gave it up. Somebody had to hold it. Somebody had to remember.”
His head shook before he realized he was moving. “Maude, I don’t—” His voice cracked. He tried again, hoarse. “I don’t understand.”
Her chin lifted, color flaring high across her cheeks. Her green eyes burned—wet, furious, unguarded—and in them lived every sleepless night, every wall she’d built brick by brick, now splitting all at once.
“It means I love you, idiot.”
The words struck like a blow, then unfurled like wings. He swayed with them, drunk, undone. His mouth went dry. He tried to laugh, to breathe, to move, but all he could do was stare—at her, at those verdant eyes burning into him as though she’d branded truth across his heart.
He felt it—her love—imprinted upon him as though the very fibers of his being had been stitched with it, indelible and irrevocable. And for once, Wesley Rivers, the man who always had a quip, a grin, an easy way out, found himself speechless.
“Say it again,” he managed at last, the plea ripping out before he could stop it. He needed to hear it—needed it the way the tide needs moon, the way hands reach for warmth in winter.
“I love you.” Tears clung to her lashes. “Fiercely. Stubbornly. Like a curse I can’t undo.”
His laugh broke, raw, almost a sob. He cupped her face in chocolate-sticky hands. Salt streaked his lips as he kissed her tears away. “I love you too,” he whispered against her mouth. “So much it’s absurd.”
“Absurd suits us.”
It did. Absurd. Perfect. Them.
Her smile outshone every corner of his laughably bright bakery. Every time, it unmade him. He thought he’d be ready for it by now. He never was.
The chocolate lay forgotten. Grim leapt onto the counter, tail flicking as he settled in to watch them with glowing eyes, the picture of feline judgment. Maude laughed against Wesley’s mouth, tears still shining, and he thought he could live a thousand lifetimes and never have enough of her.
He was hers. Entirely.
Always.