Page 31 of Ashes of Us
I knew this flavor. Knew the exact ratio of vanilla to butter, the way the frosting melted on my tongue, the slight crunch of turbinado sugar on top.
I looked down at what I was holding. A cupcake. Vanilla bean with buttercream frosting, the swirl piped with the kind of precision that came from years of practice.
My heart was suddenly pounding.
I set down the cupcake and turned to the box sitting on the counter, hands shaking as I reached for it.It was a white bakery box, the logo on top neat and simple:Rise & Shine Bakery.
The air left my lungs.
Rise & Shine. The name Piper had mentioned once, years ago, when we were still in bed on a Sunday morning and she was talking about her dream bakery. Back when it was just a dream, something she'd get to "someday" after we bought a house and had kids and life settled down. I’d laughed, told her it was risky, and that most small businesses failed.
Except she'd done it. Without the house. Without the kids. Without me.
I stared at that logo until the letters blurred.
"You good, Sullivan?" O'Brien's voice came from somewhere behind me.
I forced myself to turn around, to look normal. "Yeah. Where'd these come from?"
"Miller brought them in. There's this new place that just opened—Rise & Shine or something. Downtown on Main Street back in Riverside." He grabbed another cupcake. "His parents still live there. His mom drove these up for his birthday."
Riverside. Main Street.
Ten minutes from where I used to live. Five minutes from Station 47. The same downtown where we used to get coffee on Sunday mornings, where she’d drag me through that bookstore she loved.
She hadn’t left. She was still there, in the same town we’d built our life in… only now she was building hers alone.
"They're incredible, right?" Miller called from the couch. "My mom said the line was out the door at like seven in the morning. Place has only been open a week and they're already selling out every day."
A week. She'd been open a week and I hadn't known.
Why would I? I'd moved two hours away. Changed my number after she blocked the old one. Deleted social media because seeing mutual friends post about their lives—lives that didn't include me anymore—was too much.
I’d kept my distance from Riverside. Told myself it was for the best, that she needed space, that we both needed to move on.
And while I'd been here, working double shifts and trying to outrun my mistakes, she'd been building something. Creating the life she'd always wanted. The one I'd told her was too risky, not practical, not the right time for.
She'd done it anyway.
I picked up the cupcake again, turning it slowly in my hands. The frosting was perfect: not too sweet, the vanilla bean flecks visible in the buttercream. Exactly how she used to make them on Sunday mornings, back when I'd wake up to find her in the kitchen, flour in her hair, testing recipes she dreamed about turning into something real.
I'd eaten those cupcakes and told her they were good. Told her she should open a bakery…someday. Someday when we had more money, more stability, more time.
I'd never actually believed she'd do it.
But she had. And from the sound of it, she was succeeding.
I set the cupcake down, suddenly unable to swallow past the tightness in my throat.
"You sure you're good?" O'Brien asked, closer now. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
Maybe I had.
The ghost of the life I'd destroyed. The ghost of the woman I'd lost. The ghost of the future we'd planned that I'd set on fire with my own hands.
"I'm fine," I said, and walked away from the cupcakes, away from the guys, away from the evidence that Piper Hayes had moved on and built something beautiful without me.
I made it to the bunk room before my legs gave out.
