It’s 5:15. Too early.
“We’re not open,” Gwen calls, her voice tight.
“We just want to talk!” a woman says.
I step to the swinging door and look through the round window.
Five people. Phones raised. Filming. Waiting.
“Tess!” someone calls. “Did you dump the Billionaire Baker?”
“Is Sunrise & Soul real?”
“Did he buy you?”
I stumble back like I’ve been struck.
“They’re here,” I whisper. “They’re at the door.”
The front window feels enormous. Exposed. A stage.
This isn’t my bakery anymore.
It’s a fishbowl.
“Lock it,” I say. My voice is empty. “Lock the front.”
“Tess, we have to…”
“LOCK IT!” I scream. “Pull the blinds. Flip the sign. We’re closed.”
Gwen runs. The deadbolt slams home. The bamboo blinds crash down, cutting off the world in ugly slats of dim light.
She comes back holding the OPEN sign.
I stare at it. At my flour-dusted hands. At the violated dough.
Something inside me sinks all the way to the bottom.
I didn’t just lose him.
I lost the ability to breathe.
I lost the quiet.
I lost the illusion that if I worked hard enough, carefully enough, I could keep my world small and safe.
He didn’t just break my heart.
He changed the rules.
And for the first time since I opened Sunrise & Salt, I don’t know how to bake my way out of this.
Chapter 22
Leo
I sit in a glass box, a thousand feet in the sky.
