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“Was it all the pies?” I slipped out of his arms and ran back to the door. “Evie, was it all of them? Every one I brought?”
She wrinkled her nose but nodded. “Yeah. Looks like there was a piece taken from each one, and they’re all like that.”
I went to my coat hanging by the door and grabbed my phone out of the pocket. If it was all of our pies, and they were made on two different days…
My phone screen was buried in notifications. I wasn’t very careful about giving out my number. Not when I had to make so many deliveries. It was just easier. Now there were text messages and missed calls. Voice mails. I barely had to scan them to see they were all the same. Some anger, some horror, some wondering if I was okay or the victim of a practical joke.
I felt the blood drain from my face, and Jude caught me under the arms before my knees had a chance to buckle, guiding me on wobbly legs back to my chair at the table.
“Lena.” He crouched in front of me. “What is it?”
Somewhere I found the strength to swallow and look him in the eye—I doubted I could do the same to anyone else right now. “It’s not just our pies,” I whispered. “It’s all of them.”
You could hear a pin drop in the room. Everyone was shocked by the declaration.
First the cookies, and now this? Obviously, there was no way to contain this. Everything was already out and wrecked. How many Thanksgivings had I ruined? It didn’t matter if Jude and Evie were right. Sure, the idea of Thanksgiving wouldn’t be ruined without pie or dessert, but people’s expectations would be.
What they thought of me, too, would be changed.
If this kept happening, I needed to check my suppliers. Maybe shut down the bakery and tear the kitchen apart. The ventilation. Anything and everything something could touch or be put inside of that might have an impact on the outcome.
Jude still crouched in front of me, his big hands over my knees. There was nothing harsh in his gaze. Only sadness for me and comfort. I blinked back the emotion threatening to overwhelm me. “What am I going to do?”
“Here.” Evie put a big bowl of ice cream down in front of me. A mixture of vanilla, chocolate, and doused in chocolate sauce and a maraschino cherry. “Eat that. No one was ever hurt by a bowl of ice cream. The rest of you, the ice cream bar is open. Get your asses up and make some sundaes.”
It was a spell that unlocked everyone, and they moved. Soon, there was conversation and laughter as Liam and Noah shoved each other to get to the sprinkles, and Grant put some chocolate sauce on his finger, dabbed it on Cori’s nose, and kissed it away.
But every time one of them looked in my direction, I made sure not to meet their eyes. If I did, I was afraid I would fall apart. This was everything I hadn’t wanted. I was the one who made things better and not worse. And I’d ruined everything.
I could see the way it would all crumble. First, my reputation, which I was sure was already hanging by a thread. Then the business. I couldn’t keep it open if they thought they were going to get a rancid baked good every time they purchased something from me. Or something that would crumble to bits before they even had a chance to eat it.
Then I would have to do something else. Move to a different state and become a nun. That might be a little dramatic, but I wasn’t crossing it off the list of options yet.
“Do you want to go?” Jude asked.
I shook my head. The mood was already tenuous, and I didn’t want to make the cloud of failure worse by abandoning my friends. “No, not yet. I can’t do that to them.”
Jude’s mouth tightened. We’d never gone back and talked about my nightmares, but I was sure this was on the list of things we would eventually get to. I just hoped it wouldn’t be tonight. I wasn’t sure I could handle it now.
“Will you share your ice cream?” he asked, allowing a small smile.
The bowl Evelyn had put in front of me had enough for about three people. “Yeah.”
“Come on.” He tugged me up out of the chair and grabbed the bowl, settling us together in front of the fire. I was mostly in his lap, and if nothing had happened, maybe I would have thought it was too much, too soon for everyone to see us tangled up like this. But right now, Jude’s touch was the only thing keeping me from freaking out entirely.
My phone kept buzzing in my hand.
“Evie?” Jude called her over.
“Yeah?”
He took the phone from my hand, and I didn’t fight him. I wasn’t reading the messages anyway.
“Can you put this with Lena’s things, please?”
She caught a look at the screen and the literal phone book of notifications. “Yeah.”
We ate the ice cream together, sharing a spoon. The sugar helped, but then again, sugar always helped. That was the point of the fucking pies.
