As much as I know how quickly things could start shifting out of control, I’m happy. Every day I go to sleep thinking the buzz of joy from knowing Reid wants me and loves me will fade, or that something will come crashing down and turn it on its head, but it doesn’t come. Day after day goes by and the moments I spend with Reid and Roman start to make it seem like maybe I could rebuild if I lose the bakery. Before I saw only darkness and suffering if it was taken from me, now I know I have Reid by my side to stand with me. Even if we end up living out of a car, it would be together.

Still. I can’t ignore it much longer. The deadline to pay is coming, and if my plan to take advantage of the strawberry festival doesn’t work, I don’t know what else I can do. I’ll have to let the shop go. Reid might lose his business too. We’d be completely and totally doomed, and my biggest fear is the fresh, almost delicate feelings between us might not survive something like that, no matter how real they are.

I have to laugh at myself from time to time. He’s turning me into a lovestruck teenager. I feel like I’m saying and feeling all the things a woman my age would scoff at hearing. He’s the one. He’s mine--forever. The words bounce around my thoughts like rays of warm hope, only seeming to grow stronger with every passing day.

The last week has been wonderful, like something out of my dreams. Reid and Roman stop by the bakery during their lunch break and Reid sneaks me out back or into the walk in to steal kisses and sometimes more. I know he wasn’t kidding about wanting me to be pregnant, because he doesn’t miss any opportunities to try. Not that I’m complaining.

“Hello, cadet, this is Lauren. Do you read?”

I smile awkwardly, realizing I was just standing like a zombie and daydreaming. “Sorry,” I say.

“You may want to tell him to take it easy on you. I think Reid Riggins is banging you so hard your brains are turning to jello.”

I blush bright red. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, grabbing a tray of batter and moving it to the prep table with a grunt.

“Mhm,” says Lauren, folding her arms. “You know the walls of the walk-in aren’t soundproof. Right?”

My blush deepens. “Okay, okay. I get it. Can we not talk about this right now? I’m kind of trying to get everything ready for tomorrow and I need to focus.”

Lauren laughs. “Well, if you want to focus, you may want to stop daydreaming about Mr. Magic Cock.”

“Would you please not talk about Reid’s penis?”

Lauren grins. “Listen to you. Penis.” She rolls her eyes upward and waves her hands dramatically, imitating me in a ridiculously high pitched voice. “Oh Reid, please place your large penis inside my vagina. Perhaps you could penetrate me so deeply that the head of your manly erection presses against my cervix!”

“Stop it,” I laugh. “I’m not that bad.”

“Prove it then. Say ‘cock’.”

I shake my head, trying to laugh off her request. “Say it!”

“Cock!” I snap.

Mrs. Stevens looks up from her daily struggle between the danish and doughnuts. I cover my face with my hand, turning to Lauren and glaring.

Lauren bursts out laughing. “I didn’t tell you to yell it. Don’t look at me. You’re supposed to be the mature one here.”

“Well, if you’re done being totally inappropriate--”

“You’re the one yelling about cocks at two in the afternoon,” she reminds me conscientiously.

I slam a ball of batter down on the table and give her my best evil eye. I swear, being around Lauren is a test of willpower at times. “As I was saying. I’m going to need you here by five tomorrow morning. I want everything over to the Francis’ farmhouse by seven at the latest. I have a couple of the guys from the high school football team coming to help move the ovens into trucks.”

“Five in the morning, hmmm. Pretttty early. You sure, boss?”

“Lauren. You realize this is the only chance of saving the bakery, right? I don’t even have any idea if this can work, but it’s the only shot I have. So can you please just help me on this?”

She gives me a rarely genuine smile and squeezes my shoulder. “You know I’m always here for you, girl. Five in the morning. I’ll be here.”

I stand outside Tara’s door, holding my hand up to knock, but hesitating. I keep replaying what Reid said about her in my head. I can’t help thinking how right it seemed. Hasn’t my history with Tara been a long chain of attention and inattention? She reaches out to me and wants to be close when she needs something from me, and when she doesn’t, she pushes me away. I’ve just been too blind to see it, I guess. Still… I know she’s hurting. Whether she has tried to use me before or not, we have too much history for me to just let things linger this way. I have to at least try to patch things up or I’ll never forgive myself.

I knock.

A few seconds later, the door opens slowly. For the first time I can remember, Tara isn’t wearing makeup. Yes, she seems to have at least washed her hair and combed it and she’s wearing a cute outfit, but there’s no trace of mascara or concealer on her face. Not even a little blush. She starts to close the door when she sees me, but I put my hand on the door, pressing hard.

“Wait, please. Tara, I just want to talk.”

“And fuck my ex-husband,” she says, trying again to close the door.

“Tara, you’re letting me in there whether you like it or not.”

We have a brief, pitiful struggle over the door before I finally push my way inside. There’s a little bit of slapping and clothes yanking before we separate, breathless and glaring.

“What the hell!” yells Tara. “Did you come over here to beat me up or something? Because you know I could totally take you.”

I roll my eyes. “I said I just want to talk.”

“Yeah, and then you charged me like a wild animal.”

“You wouldn’t let me in,” I say, grinning a little.

Tara bites back a smile and sighs. “Fine. I’m going to have a drink. Do you want anything?”

“I’m okay,” I say, plopping down on the couch, which she has inexplicably put in the middle of the far wall, where it barely fits.

She sits down with a drink a short time later, swirling some kind of cocktail and squeezing a lime into it before taking a sip. “Okay, shoot. You came to talk. Let’s hear it.”

“I just wanted to say I’m sorry things between you and Mark didn’t work out. It wasn’t really fair for me to blame you for what Mark was doing. I know you had no say in it.”

She sips her drink, eyeing me over the rim of her glass. “Apology accepted. And I’m sorry for some of the things I said to you too.”

It’s not the best apology I’ve ever heard, but before the last few weeks, I was used to getting no apologies at all, so I’ll take it for now.

“I’m also sorry it wound up like this. Reid and I. I really care about him though, and my feelings for him have nothing to do with you.”

She takes a long sip of her drink and laughs to herself. “I think I always thought we’d get back together. Some stupid part of me thought dating his brother would wake him up and make him want to fight to have me back. I think all I did was push him farther away. I guess we never were good for each other in the first place. I never really talked about it, but Reid is a good man.” She shakes her head, looking down at her drink thoughtfully. “He is a better man than I deserved. I guess that scared me. It made me feel inferior and insecure. So I did something stupid.”

“Even though it didn’t work out with Reid, you have Roman,” I say encouragingly. “You know Roman loves you. It’s important that you be there for him. He needs his mom.”

She raises her glass to take a sip and then grimaces, setting it down a little too hard on the end table and shattering it. “Shit,” she says, jumping up and hurrying to pick up the glass.

By the time I get up to her to help, she’s already crying, hot tears streaming down into her glass-filled hands. “I fucked it all up,” she sobs. I’m just a big, stupid fuck up.”

I kneel down, avoiding the glass and hug her. “There are other guys, but you only have one son. It’s not too late to change for him.”

She sniffs, looking down at her shaking hands and gets up to throw away the glass. She pauses in front of the cabinet and then opens the doors above the sink, reaching behind some plates to pull out a bottle of liquor. She opens it and pours it down the sink, following it with several other bottles of alcohol she produces from various places in the kitchen.

Before I leave she hugs me tightly. “You’re a good friend, Sandra. You deserve better than the way I’ve treated you all these years.”

I hug her back. “I’m ready to start over if you are,” I whisper.

As I’m leaving Tara’s house, I’m grabbed by the arm. I’m about to scream when I realize who it is.

“Mark? What are you doing? Let me go,” I snap, yanking my arm away from him.

He laughs off my discomfort, patting down the air to try to get me to calm down. “Look. I came by to tell you not to waste your time tomorrow. I know what you and your employees are planning. Let me tell you. It won’t work. Not a chance in hell.”

The corner of Mark’s mouth pulls up in a sneer and he hitches his pants, leaning close enough that I can smell his sour breath. “Tell me, Sandra. Do you honestly believe you’re going to sell enough fucking baked goods to get the money? Come on. Be realistic.”

I purse my lips and force a tight smile. “If you didn’t think there was a chance of me raising the money, why are you creeping around at night trying to talk me out of doing it?”

He runs his tongue along the bottom of his teeth, nodding his head and grinning. “I see why my brother likes you. Tell you what, Sandra. Once this all blows over, you ever get tired of oil stains on your sheets you give me call, okay? Here’s my card.”

I look down at the card, smile politely, and drop it in a pile of dog poop by the sidewalk. “What do you know,” I say. “It blends right in.”