Chapter 1
Willa
Ialwaysimaginedleavinghome would feel like freedom.
Me behind the wheel, highway stretched out in front of me, the past shrinking in the rearview mirror while my favorite song played and the wind tangled in my hair. Maybe I’d cry. Maybe I’d laugh. Either way, I thought it would feel cinematic.
It doesn’t.
My hands are clenched around the wheel so tight my knuckles ache. The defroster is working overtime, and my breath still clouds the windshield because I’ve been talking to myself like a woman on the verge for the last forty miles.
This is fine,I mutter.Totally fine, Willa. You’re twenty-two. You have your own money, your own little car, and your own... bakery.
The word still sounds made up when I say it out loud.
A bakery.
Left to me by a grandmother I never met, in a town I didn’t know existed until six months ago.
A bakery that came with a letter from a lawyer explaining that my grandmother had been quietly sponsoring my life from behind the curtain, paying for my culinary training through so-called scholarships and contest wins I thought were fate.
Turns out they were family.
That money paid for the supplies stacked in the back seat of my car. Flour, sugar, a few treasured pans, and the French rolling pin my last pastry chef told me I’d earned.
It also bought me this chance. This quiet little escape from a life I was done pretending to love.
From Jack.
My ex-fiancé.
The man who swore he adored my curves, right up until the moment he started comparing me to the women he was texting behind my back. Someone thinner. Sharper. Smaller. Someone easier.
He didn’t want a partner. He wanted a woman who stayed quiet, stayed sweet, stayedless.
He wanted a good girl with a hollow center.
Not someone who questions things. Not someone who takes up space.
Not someone like me.
Fresh start.I keep saying the words like they’ll eventually stick.
New beginning. Clean slate.
No more pretending I don’t see the red flags.
No more shrinking to fit inside someone else's idea of love.
Just me. And Hope Peak.
My mom told me I lived here once. Briefly.
I was a baby. My father was violent. Controlling. And when my mom realized his family wanted to keep me, to raise me herewithout her, she ran. She packed up what she could carry and left in the middle of the night with me.
And now I’m coming back, with her blessing.
It’s late afternoon when I finally turn off the highway onto a narrow, two-lane road. Pines crowd both sides, their snow-covered branches heavy and still. The sky has faded into a pale gray, full of unspoken promises.
