“Babe?” she asked when she walked into the back of the empty shop.
“Front!” River yelled.
Kennedy smiled and locked the back door she had just entered from using the key River had given her for just that purpose and pushed open the door that led to the front of the shop. River was restocking candy in one of the giant barrels, but she looked up and smiled at Kennedy.
“Hey. What are you doing here?”
“You’re closed, right?”
“Yeah, just got the last customer out of here and locked up. Did I know you were stopping by?”
“No,” Kennedy replied and placed her bag down on the counter. “I missed you.”
River stood up fully and said, “Yeah?”
“It’s lonely at my rental when you’re working.”
“Going stir crazy?” River asked.
“A little, yeah.” Kennedy walked over to her. “I talked to Zane. They still want me for this mom movie.”
“Mom movie?” River asked before Kennedy leaned in and kissed her. “Ken, we’re closed, but those are glass windows,” River pointed out.
“Honestly, I don’t care anymore, River. I’m not saying we should make out on the street corner, but we’ve only had dates at my place or yours, and I want to be able to take you out for real.” She wrapped her arms around River’s neck. “I talked to Jessie today. She thinks it’s still too soon for Cam and me to not have questions about cheating and moving on too fast tossed our way, but I’m going to talk to Cam to see if she’s okay with it because I want to be able to grab coffee with you in public and not worry if I want to hold your hand, or just have dinner in an actual restaurant.”
River wrapped her arms around Kennedy’s waist and said, “As long as you’re doing that becauseyouwant to and not because you thinkIneed it.”
“You’re not tired of having to keep this quiet?”
“No, but I’m also not a celebrity, so it’s different for me. Compared to you, my relationships have always been private.”
“You know this means that your shop will be even busier than ithasbeen, right? And it also means that even if we don’t officially come out as a couple, once people see us a few times, they’ll know, and you’ll be in the public eye. It changes everything, River.”
“I know. I don’t really care about the public eye thing. I just want to make candy and run my shop.”
“That might get hard.”
“How hard?”
“River, people won’t just come in here for candy. They will come in here to take pictures of you or with you, ask you questions about you and me, and it could get hectic.”
“I hadn’t thought about that,” River replied.
“So, maybe not now, then?” Kennedy said, but she was really asking.
“Can I still make candy in the back?”
“What? Of course, you can. It’ll die down, too. Maybe by then, you’ll have like five shops all over Southern California, and you’ll be running your empire from an office-slash-kitchen where you can make whatever you want whenever you want to.”
“I don’t know about the whole empire thing. I’ve been thinking about one day opening another shop someplace else, but that’s years from now.”
“LA?” Kennedy asked, hopeful.
“I don’t know. I started turning a profit, and I thought about it more and more since we’ve stayed so busy.”
“I vote for LA.”
River chuckled, backed Kennedy up, and said, “And I vote we continue this conversation in the back because anyone can see us.”
