Chapter 7

EMMA:

The community center class had a habit of running late, the kind of late that didn’t feel dramatic until you were standing outside with your notebook half shoved into your bag and your head still full of portion charts and nutritional breakdowns you were fairly sure would evaporate the moment you needed them. I had signed up because it felt like the responsible thing to do, the sort of decision you make when people trust you to feed them every morning and you want to believe there is more to it than instinct and repetition. Three hours in, I was no longer convinced butter deserved the reputation it had been given, though I suspected I would ignore that conclusion the next time I needed it.

By the time I crossed toward North & Rye, I was already mentally rearranging the afternoon prep list, trying to claw back the time I had lost. That was when someone said my name.

“I was looking for you.”

Ethan was standing outside the café across the road, hands in his jacket pockets, watching me like he had been there long enough to decide patience was easier than repeating himself. I slowed without meaning to, adjusting my bag strap as I took him in.

“You know where I work,” I said.

“You weren’t there.”

“I have a life outside the bakery. Occasionally.”

“I was beginning to wonder.”

The laugh slipped out before I could stop it, light and unhelpful, and I crossed the road toward him without really deciding to. He fell into step beside me as if it was already agreed, keeping a distance that didn’t feel like avoidance or intrusion, just space that made the walk easier.

“I’m taking a nutrition course,” I said after a moment, more to fill the air than anything else. “Thought it might help with the menu.”

“For the bakery?”

“Where else?”

“I’d say you’re already doing a pretty good job.”

“That’s generous.”

He smiled at that, and the conversation settled into something that didn’t require effort. We moved through the street without urgency, passing shopfronts and commuters, the kind of ordinary city noise that made everything else feel slightly less important. By the time we reached the crossing, I had almost stopped thinking about the list waiting for me back at the bakery.

“Can I ask you something?” he said as the lights changed.

“You already are.”

His mouth tilted like he had expected that answer.

“Is there anywhere around here I could skate?”

“There’s a community rink a few blocks over. Mornings are quiet. After school it turns into chaos, and the local league takes most evenings.”

“I’ve been thinking about getting back on the ice.”

The way he said it made me look at him properly. It wasn’t tentative or nostalgic. It sounded decided, like something he had already stepped into internally and was only now catching up to physically.

“You’ve decided to stop hiding.”

“I have. Sitting in my apartment waiting for strangers to decide who I am isn’t going to change anything.”

“You sound very sure of yourself.”

“I know who I am.”

There was no performance in it, no edge meant to convince me. Just certainty stated plainly enough that it didn’t invite argument. We walked on for a few steps in silence before the question I had been circling finally surfaced.

“How does someone spend three years loving you and then wake up one day and decide to ruin your life?”

He didn’t answer immediately, and the pause felt less like hesitation and more like he was choosing not to waste the question.

“I don’t know,” he said at last. “I keep trying to make the woman I knew fit the person she’s become.”

“And?”

“It doesn’t work.”

“Maybe she didn’t become someone else,” I said. “Maybe she was always that person.”

He glanced at me then, properly, as if the idea had weight he hadn’t assigned to it yet.

“I’ve wondered that,” he said quietly.

We left it there. The conversation didn’t need to be solved in the middle of the street, and the silence that followed didn’t feel awkward enough to fix. North & Rye came into view as we rounded the corner, familiar enough to pull me back into the shape of my day.

“I should probably make something clear,” I said as we slowed.

“Go ahead.”

“I don’t automatically believe you. Women come first for me. If what they’re saying is true, I don’t want anything to do with you.”

“I understand.”

“I barely know you. I’m not getting pulled into something like this because we’ve shared a couple of coffees. We’re not friends.”

“I know.” His expression shifted slightly, something softer settling in. “We can be. I thought we already were.”

That pulled a laugh out of me, sharper this time.

“That’s optimistic.”

“I bought coffee twice.”

“That’s still not friendship.”

“It’s a start.”

I shook my head, but I was smiling as I reached for the door.

The warmth of the bakery hit first, then the noise. Phones ringing, overlapping voices, the kind of tension that didn’t belong in a place that usually smelled like sugar and butter. Christine was behind the counter with the cordless pressed to her ear and her mobile vibrating in her other hand. She saw me and looked relieved for half a second before it disappeared again.

“The phones haven’t stopped,” she said, covering the receiver.

“Customers?”

She shook her head.

“Reporters.”

The landline rang again before I had even set my bag down.

I picked it up. “North & Rye.”

“Can you confirm Ethan Brooks is a regular customer at your bakery?”

“No comment.”

I hung up and it rang again immediately, another voice already waiting on the other end like they had been queued up for this moment. By the third call, I stopped waiting for introductions.

“I wondered how long it’d take,” Ethan said quietly behind me.

I turned. “You expected this?”

“I hoped it wouldn’t reach here.”

The phone rang again, sharp and insistent, and when I looked back he was already moving toward the door.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“For what?”

“Not for existing. For bringing this here.”

I didn’t answer quickly enough to stop him from leaving, and by the time the call I was on ended, he was gone.

“Emma.”

Christine was already holding out her phone.

“You need to see this.”

I took it.

North & Rye’s page filled the screen. Yesterday we had been sitting at 4.9 stars. Now it was 2.8.

A new review appeared as I watched.

“Shame on any business that supports abusers.”

Then another.

“Hope the publicity was worth it.”

Then another.

“Never coming back.”

More followed before I could even process the first three, none of them from names I recognised, none of them from people who had ever stood in my shop waiting for bread to come out of the oven. The rating dropped again while I watched, the number shifting like it had no intention of stabilising.

Behind me, the phones kept ringing.

Outside, Ethan was already gone.

And as another review loaded onto the page, it became clear this wasn’t something passing through.

It was something arriving.