Baking Me Crazy (Donner Bakery, #1)(70)

Joss turned her back to me.

I got out of the truck, slammed my door, and marched around, good and pissed now. "Great, so now I can wait a week or two until you've deemed the topic safe? 'Sorry about that, Brian, I couldn't answer you about the job because my girlfriend shut down on me.'"

She glared, still holding the truck door where she stood. "You're such an asshole when you don't get your way." She paused and tapped her chin. "Oh wait, you always get your way. Everything gets dropped in your stupid, golden boy lap."

I laughed under my breath. "Lashing out unnecessarily. Mature choice, Joss."

"I'm twenty-one fucking years old," she yelled, head tilted back as her words echoed off the trees. "I get to be immature sometimes. Now get out of my way."

"We are not done talking about this," I said, even as I did what she asked. She took two even steps to her car, yanking open the door after her other arm was braced on the roof, all without so much as looking at me again.

"Right now?" she said, lifting her chin stubbornly. "Yeah, we are."





Chapter 25





Jocelyn





There was a crack in the concrete in front of the bakery. I never noticed it until I pushed over it the next morning. For a second, I stopped and stared down at that crack. An imperfection that escaped my notice. Not because it would hurt me, or make it hard for me to get where I needed to go, but it was there all the same.

Someone might trip over it. Stub their toe. Stumble a little on their way in to buy a banana cake for their grandma's birthday party.

I found myself noticing those types of imperfections everywhere for the next twenty-four hours. All over town.

Daisy's Nut House needed to replace one of the lights on their sign. It flickered a little bit.

A member of the Iron Wraiths rode his bike down the middle of the road, whistling and hooting at me. I flipped him my middle finger when he passed in the thundering rumble.

I guess I had blinders on, too, in my own way.

Go about my day. Do what I needed to do.

Not focus on the bad because it was too easy to feel like your head was submerged under murky water. I'd learned that lesson too many years ago. Allowing the bad, the inadequacies, the defects to take center stage was an invitation to a life of misery.

But over those short hours, I made sure to look for the good stuff too.

A neighbor who I never talked to fixing the way our mailbox leaned to the side. He waved as I pulled my car down the long driveway. I lifted my hand in return.

Joy scooping change out of her apron when one of the little kids who came in after school didn't have quite enough for a treat and slipping it into the cash register when she thought no one was looking.

Cletus fixing the big mixer before Jennifer came in without her asking.

Good people doing good things for the people who lived and worked with them.

Every little thing I saw, good or bad, felt like an item added to a list. Two columns written in indelible black ink.

If your heart is here, Levi had said, if Green Valley is the only place you can imagine yourself, then I'll beat the pavement as long as I need to in order to stay right here with you.

It was the scariest possible thing he could have ever said to me. Because as I drove home, bubbling and full to the brim with righteous indignation, I'd desperately tried to ignore the realization that I'd never thought about it.

How dare he, I'd thought.

I'm always catching up.

Can't I ever just feel things in my own time?

That's not fair, came right on the heels of that one. If I didn't own up to the fact that Levi never pushed me to cross a line until I'd indicated that the line might be flexible and flimsy, then I probably wasn't deserving of the love that he'd held on to for so long.

When I approached hour twenty-five, my phone silent and my heart heavy, I pulled into the driveway and saw my mom's car. When I had something to discuss, something to work through and untangle, she was never the person I went to. She never had been, even before I got sick.

I let myself in quietly, in case she was still asleep, but when Nero came running to me from the kitchen, I knew she was up.

"Hey, bub," I whispered as he attacked me with pink tongue and waggling butt. The effusive greeting made me laugh, and I instructed him to drop his paws from my lap, which he did immediately.

"In here," my mom called. "I'm just making some eggs if you're hungry."

"I'm okay, thanks."

She was in blue scrubs with her dark hair twisted into a low knot. She told me once that I looked like my father, and it wasn't hard to imagine because there was nothing familiar in her face, nothing I could match to mine. Her face was tired, her movements slow.

"Long night?"

Over her shoulder, she nodded, then looked back at the eggs she was scrambling on the stovetop. "Lots of babies last night. If it wasn't a full moon, I'd wonder what was going on."

"You're up early."

It was midday, a time she would normally be sound asleep.

"I took some overtime. Figured the extra money wouldn't hurt."

I was quiet, watching her move the spatula around the pan. Nero nudged my hand, and I scratched his head.

"What's wrong?" she asked without looking at me. "Was it work?"