She chewed her bottom lip in thought before finally plucking the strawberry iced with sprinkles from the box. “Thank you.” She took one perfect bite out of it. “So, donuts, pie… I’m guessing you have a major sweet tooth.”
“You guessed right.” I downed an original glazed in two bites for emphasis, and she laughed as she took another bite. “Tell me more about your bakery. Did you always want to bake?”
She looked down at her partially eaten donut for a moment. “I always enjoyed it,” she said tentatively. “I started out baking cakes in my tiny apartment and delivering them to people long before Livvie Cakeswas born. It was one of those things that kind of took on a life of its own.” Her phone pinged with a text, and she set her hot chocolate down so she could extract it from her back pocket. “It’s Ella.”
“Making sure I’m on my best behavior?”
“Something like that.” She smirked.
“You mentioned that Ella works with you?” I plucked a chocolate glazed donut from the box and scarfed it down.
She nodded. “About a year after I opened the bakery, Ella’s husband passed away. Grace had just turned five, and at the time Ella was a stay at home mom.” She took another bite of her donut, lost in thought for a moment. “Ella’s been my best friend since our freshman year in high school. No matter what, it’s always been the two of us, you know? When Craig died, I knew I had to make the business work. It had to succeed because I had to make sure she and Grace were taken care of. So, Ella joined me full-time, and now we’ve been named the city’s top bakery six years in a row. I couldn’t do it without her.”
“I was really shocked to learn you guys weren’t sisters,” I said as she finished off her donut. “The way you guys are with each other, I assumed you were.”
“We are.” She smiled fondly. “In all the ways that matter. Grace and Ella are my family. My folks passed away a few years ago, and I never had any siblings. Grace and Ella are all I have left.” She sighed and opened her mouth as though she were going to say something else, but she didn’t.
“Does that mean there’s no special someone in your life?”
“I told you about the two special someones in my life.” She raised her brow at me before taking a drink of her hot chocolate.
“I meant a different type of someone.” I held the box out to her again as she grabbed a maple glazed donut and took a bite. “A romantic someone.”
She took another bite, not in any hurry to answer my question. “Not anymore.” She glanced over at me quizzically. “Why do you want to know?”
“Because I have a sweet tooth, and you own a bakery.” I nudged her playfully.
Why wouldn’t I want to know? She was beautiful and freaking hilarious, but there was something else about her that drew me in. There was something in her eyes that said she was no stranger to heartbreak, and that was something we had in common.
She studied me a moment as though she were considering if she should press the question further, but didn’t. “What about you?” She took another small bite of her donut. “Tell me about your family.”
I plucked a cream-filled donut from the box. “Honestly, the band is my family.”
“Isn’t that a thing that all bands say while secretly hating each other?”
“Sometimes.” I laughed. “But in our case it’s true.” I took a big bite and chewed thoughtfully before finally returning the partially eaten pastry to the box. “I grew up in foster care. My dad died when I was a baby, and my mom struggled with addiction her entire life. I guess the drugs kind of won out. By the time I was in foster care permanently, I was already eleven years old. A lot of people want to adopt babies, but they’re not exactly lining up to adopt the kid with behavioral issues and a drug addict mom.” I sucked in a breath, shocked at how easily my life story began to tumble out of me. There was something about Liv that made me want to show her the version of me most people never saw.
“Jax…” Her face softened, and her eyes met mine.
“I had two different sets of foster parents, and neither of them were exactly winning parent of the year awards. They were both content to collect their checks. In exchange, I had a roof over my head, but notparents,you know?The second family I was placed with, the Millers, lived across the street from Derek. We used to ride our bikes together in the neighborhood, and because of Derek, I met Dallas. That’s when my life started to change. They became the brothers I never had.”
“Were they the ones that got you into music?”
I nodded. “We spent most of our time at Dallas’s house. His dad had this old record player and a massive record collection. After school, we’d go hang out in his garage and listen to music for hours. Everything from Bob Dylan to Fleetwood Mac to Pink Floyd and Michael Jackson. Dal’s dad got him and Derek a couple of guitars from some thrift store. He signed them up for lessons, and they started teaching me to play too. Once Dal got his drum set, he passed his guitar on to me. That’s when I became obsessed with it. Music was my escape. After Derek and I graduated, he went away to the same college as Dallas, and that’s when they started Dallas Knights.”
“That’s when it was just the two of them, right?”
“Yep. Meanwhile, I was waiting tables at two different restaurants just trying to survive. I rented this shitty studio apartment that didn’t even have a kitchen, but I fucking loved it because it was the first thing besides my guitar and my car that was mine. I would go to work for fourteen to sixteen hours every day and come home and practice until my fingers were numb. By that time, I was writing songs and playing at every coffee shop or writer’s night I could get to between shifts. One night when Derek and Dallas were home for the summer, I invited them to a round I was playing at some hole in the wall bar. They heard me sing some of the songs I’d written, and that’s when they asked me to join their band.”
“How did you guys connect with Luca?”
“For a few months, it was just the three of us. We played some shows together that summer while they were still in town, and people really liked our stuff. We started with some cover songs and slowly started doing some of my originals, but it felt like something was missing.” I took a sip of my hot chocolate. “When they went back to school that fall, Dallas rented this little run-down house off campus with a garage for us to rehearse in, but he needed a roommate. He put out an ad, and as luck would have it, Luca was the one that found it. The rest was history. From the second the four of us played together the first time, we knew we had something special. Thankfully, a lot of people agreed with us.”
“Wow,” she said. “I love that. You guys clearly have a strong bond.”
“We definitely have our issues from time to time. Luca and I probably butt heads the most. He came from a similar background as me. He grew up in a group home in Lexington, and until he joined the band, he didn’t exactly have a lot of friends. He can be a bit closed off sometimes, but we’ve been around him long enough to know that’s how he copes. Honestly, if I hadn’t found Derek and Dal all those years ago, we might have been a lot more alike.”
“I never would have pegged him for being closed off,” she admitted. “He seems very comfortable with attention.”
