Chapter 25 #2
She smiled like she’d just handed me a loaded gun. “I don’t think they know that,” she said. “Hell, I bet Charlie was too little to remember.”
But now that I knew it, I was going to burn someone with it.
I left Maya at the bookstore, with her full support. We exchanged numbers, and she said she would be in touch as she finished up an exposé on the “historic preservation farce,” as she put it.
I stepped out just as the light shifted across the rooftops—summer’s last golden hour stretching like honey across the street. I turned to glance down Greenfinch Avenue, and I saw a light now on in Charlie’s bakery window.
There was a warm glow and the silhouette of someone with a willowy frame and honey blonde hair tied up in a feminine knot high on her head.
I walked down the sidewalk, slow and deliberate, carrying the kind of information that flips a losing game on its head.
I t was twilight, the light soft and slanting, gold brushing the world like a whisper.
The street was quiet except for the hum of cicadas and the distant clink of someone bringing in patio chairs for the night.
Across the road, behind a wide-paned window framed in fresh trim and hand-painted script that read Lemondrop , she was sitting inside her bakery.
It wasn’t finished yet, not entirely. But it was hers.
The place looked like it had been built out of a dream.
It wasn’t particularly modern and the lines weren’t clean and minimalist. The bakery was something warmer, more lived-in.
The walls were pale cream with beadboard wainscoting the color of sea glass.
The floors were honeyed beachwood—real planks, uneven and perfect.
A long row of rustic display counters ran the length of the front window, waiting for the future to show up in the form of sticky lemon bars, brown butter sea salt cookies, pistachio meringues, triple berry hand pies, sugar-dusted almond croissants, and cinnamon knots sticky enough to ruin your hands in the best way.
In front of the windows, nestled into cozy nooks, were small round tables with mismatched chairs—some painted coral, some pale teal, all with the kind of seat cushions that looked hand-sewn and a little lopsided.
There was a bench swing suspended by rope in one corner near a bookshelf half-stocked with paperbacks and vintage cookbooks.
It was the kind of place you’d want to disappear into on a rainy day. Or every day.
And in the middle of it all—bathed in the blue-pink hush of early evening—was Charlie.
She was sitting on the counter, legs drawn up beneath her, one arm slung around her knees, the other hand loosely holding a bottle of water.
Her head was tilted, eyes drifting around the room like she was trying to anchor herself to something invisible.
She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t even frowning.
But there was something in the way she looked at that space—at her space—that hollowed me out.
She didn’t know I was watching. Didn’t see me, standing half in shadow across the street with my hands in my pockets, carrying a truth I didn’t know how to give her yet. I wanted it to be done, to be certain that she’d win.
She looked small in the big, beautiful room. Not fragile. Just still. Like the whole world was paused in her breath.
In that moment, watching her inside her shop, I realized the thing I’d been shoving back into the deepest corner of myself was no longer sleeping. I didn’t think it, not in words. But the ache of it pulsed through my ribs like a vow I couldn’t speak. I wanted her like she was my air.
I crossed the street. I didn’t knock. I just opened the door and stepped inside.
“Hey,” I said softly.
She looked over, startled just enough to show she hadn’t expected anyone. But when she saw me, something flickered across her face—relief maybe. Or fear of letting herself feel it. “Didn’t hear a knock,” she murmured.
“Didn’t knock.”
I crossed the room, slower than I needed to. Her eyes followed me, cautious and tired. “What are you doing here?” she asked.
I didn’t answer right away. I just leaned against the counter next to her, hands braced behind me, heart doing something unreasonable in my chest.
“You were right,” I said. “The rejection was bullshit.” She blinked. I kept going, because if I didn’t, I was going to say something I wasn’t allowed to mean.
“The antique shop—the one they claim broke the food-use continuity? It was owned by the same woman who ran the coffee shop next door. A news reporter, Maya, suggested that they operated under the same LLC. There was an interior door connecting the two, and she sold snacks, tea, coffee beans, packaged goods—on both sides. So it would have been the same health permit. Same goddamn business.”
Charlie stared at me. It was like she was frozen, processing what this meant.
“The zoning board didn’t check deeply enough,” I said. “Or they didn’t care. They saw an easy ‘no’ and moved on. And I’m willing to bet they had someone persuading them to make the call.”
She opened her mouth. Closed it. Swallowed hard.
“And the frame shop?” I added, voice lower. “Next door? It’s being sold in a quiet deal to a shell company named Cove Title Group—fronted by Mariner Horizon. They’ve already bought two other adjacent buildings on this street. You’re next.”
Her face changed. I watched hope try to surface and immediately drown itself again. “So,” she said, in almost a whisper, “what does that mean?”
“It means,” I said, “we have grounds to appeal. And this time, it won’t be some Hail Mary.
It’ll be by the book, with receipts, with historic precedent and a community petition if we need it.
Maya Torres is running a story in the Beacon .
And I’ve got my office working on pulling the original health permit on file. I can fight this.”
She was so still, like breathing too deep might crack the illusion of this room ever being hers again. “I don’t want to get my hopes up,” she whispered.
“I know.”
“I’ve already poured everything into this place. If I get yanked again?—”
“You won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
She looked at me, eyes huge in the darkening light, some unreadable emotion wobbling behind them. “How?” she asked.
I could’ve said a hundred things. Could’ve laid out legal strategy or board precedent or quoted clauses from zoning code until she went cross-eyed. But none of that was why I knew.
I knew because I wasn’t going to let her fall. Not now. And not ever.
“Fitz?” She waited on a response.
“Because—” I started.
And it hung there, between us, like a promise. Like something dangerous.
And it stuck in my throat—because I couldn’t say what I meant.
I couldn’t say it when I hadn’t even admitted it to myself yet.
Not when she was still fragile and flayed open, sitting on the edge of the life they were trying to steal from her.
Not when I was still trying to pretend this was just law and justice and timing, not war and want and her .
So I let the silence say it—let the crack in my voice carry it, let the space between us burn with it.
But she just looked at me with those fucking perfect ocean eyes I could happily drown in—like she didn’t know whether to cry or beg me to come closer.
And I could feel myself break . Right there in her bakery—under strings of unfinished lights and dreams barely clinging to drywall—I fractured in quiet, irreversible ways. My logic, my control, the airtight compartments I’d locked her out of for years were gone.
All I knew was this: if she asked me to burn the world down for her, I already had the match in my hand.
So there was only one thing I could do.
I twisted around and faced her, slowly, like I didn’t trust the floor not to vanish under my feet.
She didn’t move, just watched me as I stopped between her knees.
She was still perched on the counter, legs slightly apart, the hem of her linen dress brushing the tops of her thighs.
Her bare feet now dangled beside my hips, toes flexing against the cabinet door like her body knew what was coming before she did.
I looked up at her, every nerve in my body pulsing with anticipation. We found ourselves in a familiar position, similar to the other night on the kitchen island.
Her breath hitched. “You gonna wreck me again?” she asked, voice low and accusatory? “Get your taste of pussy and then ghost me without even a kiss?”
That landed like a slap. Not because she was wrong. But because she was so goddamn right it made my ribs ache.
I met her gaze—dead-on, no flinch, no retreat. “I didn’t kiss you,” I said, voice like gravel, “because I knew if I did, I wouldn’t stop.”
She froze, looking up at me with suspicion. Then confusion.
“If I had kissed you,” I murmured, stepping closer, hands braced on the counter beside her hips locking her in, “I would’ve fucked you against that island until the sun came up. I would have razed the whole fucking house to get closer to you.”
Her mouth parted.
“So if you think I ghosted you—that I didn’t kiss you because you weren’t good enough to kiss—or that I didn’t want to,” I said, softer now, closer, “you’re out of your fucking mind. I didn’t kiss you because you were too goddamn much and I would never be able to walk away.”
She made a sound—quiet, strangled, a whimper swallowed behind her teeth.
“But you know what, Charlie? It’s already too late. I didn’t need to kiss you or fuck you to make it so I could never walk away. So I guess there’s no use in trying. So fuck it all.”
And then ?
I kissed her.
No warning. No buildup. Just heat and surrender and mouths colliding like they’d been waiting a decade to find each other.
Her hands came up immediately—one fisting my shirt, the other sliding to the back of my neck. I cupped her jaw, slowly anchoring us both as our mouths found rhythm. Pressure. Need. She gasped into me and I tasted it, used it, deepened the kiss with every second.
It wasn’t rushed. It wasn’t wild. It was slow like molasses pouring out of glass—the kind of kiss you give when you have waited so long that you can’t help but savor every taste. The kind of kiss that feels like a prelude and a fucking ending all at once.
I licked into her mouth like I had eternity to do it, like we were the only two people left on the planet, like I could devour her this way for the rest of my goddamn life.
Her legs tightened around my waist. Her body arched into mine—and I let myself fall. Hard. Helpless. Right into her.