She’s right. We’ve made progress.
But it’s not enough. And I don’t know if we can finish what we started before we have to break up or get married.
We reach the Gingerbread House. I start to turn in, but she tugs my arm and stops me. “I’ve never been in here,” she whispers.
“If you don’t want—”
“Are you serious? Of course I want to go in. But give me a minute. I need to make sure I’m prepared.”
I smile my first real smile since leaving the cabin this morning as she closes her eyes and sucks in a large breath beneath the fake arch of the gingerbread doorway. Smells like cinnamon and ginger and nutmeg here in the doorway.
Honestly, it smells a little like Lorelei herself.
Dad used to say she’s loved baking since before she was born. She brings all the baked goods except the fruitcake anytime there’s a family gathering.
Never gingerbread, though.
Unless it’s just the two of us, and even then, only when she’s visiting me in San Francisco.
I stop and stare at her.
Fuck me.
Fuck. Me.
That’s the answer.Loreleiis the answer.
At least, she should be.
But I don’t think either of our families are ready for that.
I don’t know ifLoreleiis ready for that.
“Okay,” she says. “I’m ready.”
I hold the door for her, brain puzzling again if this could work, and the two of us step inside the bakery.
“Oh, wow,” my sister whispers as she pauses to take in everything from the gingerbread floor to the gumdrops and candy canes to the menu and the candy light fixtures, which I hadn’t noticed the other day. Peppermints light the bakery.
That’s awesome.
If you’re into this kind of thing. Which I would like to be without remembering how many times my family has insisted that the people running this bakery are terrible.
I stifle a sigh.
It’s killing me at the moment that there are solutions that would likely make everyone happy if it weren’t for a family feud that we’ve only begun healing.
Lorelei and I are the only people here except for a lone woman I don’t know behind the counter. She’s arranging gingerbread men on a plate, and her entire expression lights up when she sees us.
“Amanda’s in the kitchen,” she says. “You can go on back.”
“It’s like a magic candy land,” Lorelei says.
“Without Hansel and Gretel,” I mutter.
She bumps her shoulder into mine with a laugh. “Youarein a mood. We’re gonna have to fix that before tomorrow.”
Tomorrow.
