Chapter Ten
Belle
By the time Monday hit closing time, my whole body felt like one long bruise.
The day had been brutal in that very specific holiday way—customers smiling while they asked for miracles, ovens working overtime, and my brain running a constant mental checklist that never got shorter.Even with Marcy, Jessa, and Owen moving like a well-oiled machine, Cookie Haven still felt like it was one bad slip away from collapsing into flour and panic.
I kept it together anyway.
I always did.
At five forty-five, I flipped the sign toCLOSEDand locked the door.The cases were empty, and all of the orders for the day had been picked up.I leaned my forehead against the cool glass for one stupid second just to breathe.The lights in the front window blinked softly around the gingerbread village display.
Salt and Pepper circled my ankles like they were herding me out of my own stress.
“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered.“I know.You want outside, you want dinner, you want me to stop staring into the void.”
Pepper barked like he agreed.
Salt just stared at me like I was an employee who’d messed up inventory.
We were halfway through our final walk-through—ovens off, mixers unplugged, cooling racks cleared—when Marcy wandered in from the office, shrugging on her coat.
“You’re going home,” she said, like it was a commandment.
“Do you want me to just poof home?”I joked.
“You know what I mean.”Her eyes narrowed.“You’re not staying here to deep clean.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
Marcy made a skeptical noise that said she didn’t believe me for a second.Then her gaze slid past me toward the front window.
My stomach tightened before I even turned.
Saint was outside.
Just leaning casually against his truck with his hands in his jacket pockets, watching the bakery like he was making sure I existed.
The second my eyes caught him through the glass, something inside me eased like my whole nervous system recognized him and loosened its grip.
Pepper saw him too and started wagging his nub so hard his whole back end wiggled.
Salt’s nub twitched once, controlled, like he was trying to act like he didn’t care.
I went still.
Because suddenly, I remembered something I’d been trying not to think about all day.
Mary.
Mary and her warm smile and her unapologetic way of taking up space in my bakery, like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Mary, who had said very casually, like she was inviting me to a book club and not into Saint’s family.
You should come over for Christmas.If you don’t, it’ll ruin Christmas.
I’d laughed when she said it because Mary had to be exaggerating.
