Chapter fifteen

Poppy

“Can you see it, Poppy?”

Rowan asked, pressing her hands together and spinning in a circle. It was difficult to look past the chipped tiles the color of pea soup, the water stains on the drop ceiling, and the walls riddled with nail holes and smoke stains, but I could. I could see everything we’d ever dreamed Red Blossoms Bakery could be, and a few things Aiden had dreamed up himself.

“We’ll put up new sheetrock, of course,”

Aiden said. “I was thinking we could save a small space by the front windows for consultations and make the rest workspace. Do you want it open, or would you like a wall between you and the customers, Hell Cat?”

“Whatever you and Rowan think.”

Aiden narrowed his eyes. “Theo’s an idiot.”

“Agreed,”

Rowan said, clearing her throat, “but we’re not talking about it.”

My sister really was perfect, which meant I needed to be fully in the moment for her, not replaying everything that happened at Theo’s the other night and trying to figure out what went wrong, again.

“Maybe we could have a half wall with a door,”

I said. “I’d like to have the sunlight from the front windows, but I don’t want people creeping into my work area.”

“Are you OK with them seeing you work?”

Rowan asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t like people breathing down my neck when I’m sculpting serious art, but I don’t mind when I’m decorating.”

“I like the idea of a half wall,”

Aiden said. “This wall here,”

he said, thumping the plaster, “isn’t load bearing, so we can knock it down.”

“I have to check the lease first,”

Rowan said, ruffling through her color-coded file folders.

“Shouldn’t be a problem,”

Aiden said, clearing his throat and looking everywhere but at us.

Son of a bitch.

I’d wondered why the rent had mysteriously gone down five-hundred dollars per month for the perfect space. “You’d know, wouldn’t you?”

He grabbed my arm. “Poppy and I are going to discuss her worktable while you read through the lease,”

he said to my sister.

“OK,”

Rowan said, not even bothering to look up from the stack of papers in her hands as Aiden pulled me into the worn commercial kitchen.

“You bought the building,” I hissed.

“Keep your voice down,”

he said, shifting his feet like a toddler who needed the potty. I’d never seen Aiden O’Malley flustered. It was almost adorable.

“Explain,”

I said, crossing my arms.

“I knew this was the right space before I showed it to you, so I made the owner an offer and bought it with an LLC.”

“What if we’d hated it?”

“Then I’d have fixed it up and rented it to someone else. This is a great location.”

“It is, which is why you’d have had no problem getting the rent the original owner wanted,”

I said poking his chest as hard as I could. He didn’t even flinch. Pretty sure it hurt my finger more.

“Don’t tell Rowan,”

he said, gripping my shoulders. “Please. She’ll tell Cal, and he’ll have questions I don’t want to answer.”

“If I’m going to lie to my sister by omission, I need a good reason.”

Aiden nodded. “Fine. But this stays between us.”

“Obviously.”

He released my shoulders and took a step back as if giving himself space for my potentially violent reaction. “I got money from the accident to start my construction business, which has been doing really well for a while now. I’m a lot better off than anyone knows.”

“You sued Theo?”

I said louder than I meant. I cringed and we both waited for Rowan to storm into the back, but all we heard was the frantic flipping of papers in the other room.

“Of course not,”

he said in an angry whisper. “But my parents sued his parents’ insurance company. And Cal’s. I had a ton of medical bills we couldn’t pay.”

“Makes sense,”

I said, softly. “But why be so secretive about it?”

“Because,”

he said leaning against one of the pocked walls, “it felt wrong. Still does. I think that suit was the last straw for Theo’s parents. They left for Greece right after the case settled. My parents gave me all the money left over after they paid my bills. I felt like a dirtbag taking it, but without my scholarship I couldn’t afford college, and I had to start my career somehow. Theo and Cal never talked about the lawsuit. I doubt they even know about it. Theo was in jail when it happened, and Cal was focused on PT and school. But it’s never set right with me. I’m just trying to pay it back however I can.”

I got it. Helping Rowan was helping Cal, and helping my sister and me build our dream bakery and slashing the rent was likely the only way Aiden would ever be able to gift Cal any of the money he’d gotten. No doubt it was the same reason he’d bought the house on Maple when Theo needed a place to live.

“So, we good?” he asked.

“Yeah. Now please say something obnoxious. I’m dangerously close to thinking you’re decent.”

“Should I make the wall waist height so your customers can admire that great rack of yours?”

“Wow, that didn’t take long.”

He held up his hands. “It’s a gift.”

“I honestly don’t care how tall you make the wall, just so it lets the light in and keeps the people out.”

Aiden nodded and scribbled something in the notepad he’d carried around in his back pocket all morning. “For what it’s worth,”

he said without looking up, “I’m still rooting for you and Theo.”

“Yeah, well don’t hold your breath. All I need to work is our prep table, so let Rowan take the lead with the kitchen design. I have a fuck-ton of hearts-and-flowers cookies to decorate, so I’ll see you around.”

To his credit, Aiden didn’t try to stop me. I slipped past Rowan, who had her nose buried in the lease agreement, and out the door, climbing into Tallulah and speeding away before my sister realized I’d gone.

At least I really did have a fuck-ton of hearts-and-flowers cookie pops to keep me occupied. Rowan had this idea for custom cookie bouquets for Valentine’s Day, and I needed to decorate a sample to figure out how long each would take before we set a price and popped the order form on the website. The sample was going to have the names of everyone who worked at Karma and would sit on the café counter with a stack of order forms.

Thankfully, Chris was still at school and Mom was still at work, so I had the house to myself. I cranked my emo punk playlist and lost myself in AFI, My Chemical Romance, and royal icing. The stainless-steel table was littered with piping bags in various shades of pink and red when I finished. In all, I had a dozen flower cookies and five hearts attached to colorful cake pop sticks. Each heart had a name piped in pretty script: Lauren, Cammie, and Wyatt—who’d started at Karma after I left—plus the Karma Cats, Desdemona and Medusa. I stuffed a foam block into one of the heart-shaped pots I’d found for cheap online and arranged the cookies. Once I finished, I noted how long it’d taken me and stepped back to admire my work. I decided we should include a cake pop add-on for anyone who wanted to take the bouquet to the next level.

I’d never admit it, but I loved Valentine’s Day. It started when I was a kid, making handmade cards for everyone in my classroom. The number of cards I made got smaller and smaller each year as kids broke off into cliques that didn’t include me, but the card designs became more intricate, part watercolor, part three-dimensional cutouts. Last year, I only made them for Mom, Rowan, Chris, Wilson, and Lauren. I suppose this year I should make ones for Cal and Cammie. Probably Aiden too since he’s done so much for Red Blossoms Bakery. Which meant I couldn’t not make one for Theo.

Talk about emotional whiplash. I vacillated between wanting to cry for Theo, yell at Theo, and just plain wanting Theo so often I should have been curled in a ball mumbling to myself. It would be easy to hate him for what he did. For a moment, I thought he was finally ready to be more. He’d kissed me with so much passion, gave me the most satisfying orgasm of my life, and then apologized like he’d stepped on my hurt foot and not my heart. The worst part of the evening I had to own: Making him kiss me one last time. Like he’d change his mind once he felt my lips again. Nope. What’s worse, that kiss broke me. He’d poured himself into it, and I got a taste of what it’d be like to be adored by a man like Theo. I’ve been choking on it ever since.

I wanted to skip class tonight, give myself more time before I faced him again, but I promised. I just needed to keep busy for the next few hours and then attach myself to Wilson like a barnacle.

I grabbed one of the sketch pads I used for custom cakes and settled on the couch to start my card designs. I usually went the funny route with cards for my friends. Since I wasn’t in a laughing mood, I’d have to figure out Cammie’s, Lauren’s, and Wilson’s later. I drew a garden scene for Mom, a mountain scape for Rowan, various football accouterments for Chris, which could probably work for Aiden as well. For Cal, I went full sappy with a picture of him and Skye with the rest of our family. I’d brainstorm later for something sentimental to cut into 3-D letters.

So far, I’d succeeded in making at least one person cry every year when we exchanged cards, and this year, I had my sights set on my future brother-in-law. Mom and Rowan were the sure bets, but I was never one to back down from a challenge. Valentine’s 2021 will hold a special place in my heart as the year I made Chris bawl like a baby.

I looked over the sketches, satisfied. I could go the humorous route with Theo’s card as well, but I wouldn’t. That’d be too easy. I started messing around with tattoo-like designs around the border and stopped. Something about it wasn’t right. I flipped to a fresh sheet and a clear image popped in my mind. After a few minutes of drawing, I realized I wasn’t sketching a card design, but an idea for a sculpture.

My pencil moved without pausing, and the image started to form on the page. I kept going, adding details and layers until everything was there. I dropped the pencil and massaged my hand. Could I make this? Or more to the point, should I?

I was so lost in the sketch, I hadn’t realized Rowan was watching me until I looked up from the page and found her leaning on the wall by the couch.

“How long have you been there?”

I asked, shuffling the card designs on the coffee table, so she wouldn’t see them, like those were what had her staring at me with her mouth open.

She plucked the sketchbook from my lap, and for the first time, I didn’t hate that she was seeing something so unfinished.

“You need to take this to class tonight,”

she said in a firm voice.

“Hell no,”

I said, leaning forward to grab the sketch book. She pivoted with surprising ease for a woman with a serious spinal injury.

“I already have my sketch for class,” I huffed.

Rowan shook her head. “It’s a nice picture of Chris, but no. This is the one you need to take.”

“I can’t,”

I said and bit my tongue to keep from crying.

“This,”

Rowan said, holding up the sketch, “is real and raw and—”

“Personal. Which is why I can’t take it to class.”

“Ah, sis,”

Rowan said, sitting on the couch beside me and wrapping me in a hug. “That’s exactly why you should.”