Page 38 of Ashes of Us
Not Piper. Someone younger, college-aged maybe, wearing a black apron.
I parked across the street and sat there like an idiot, engine idling.
The line stretched to the door. A steady stream of people coming and going with white bakery boxes, coffee cups, the kind of foot traffic that said business was really good.
She'd done it. Everything she'd talked about doing someday, everything I'd told her to wait on, to be practical about… she'd just done it.
Pride and grief hit me so hard I had to close my eyes.
I should leave. Put the truck in gear, drive back to Station 34, pretend I'd never come here. She didn't want to see me. Hadn’t she made that abundantly clear by blocking me everywhere?
But I was here now… and I’d spent three days unable to think about anything else.
I turned off the engine.
Sat there.
A woman walked out with a white bakery box, smiling down at whatever was inside. Then a guy with two coffees. Then a mom with a kid who was already tearing into a croissant.
All of them had been inside. Had seen her. Talked to her. Been part of her world in a way I no longer was.
My hand was on the door handle.
Scott's voice echoed in my head:Leave her alone.
Maya's:She doesn't want to see you.
Morrison's:I'm disappointed in you, Sullivan.
I hesitated. What would I even say to her?Sorry I cheated on you, but your cupcakes are great?
She gained nothing from me walking in there. Just disruption. Just pain dragged back into her life when she'd worked so hard to move past it.
I'd come here for me. To ease my own guilt, my own regret, my own desperate need to see her face one more time.
That wasn't love. That was selfishness.
The same selfishness that had destroyed us in the first place.
I started the engine, put the truck in gear, and drove away. But I didn't go back to Station 34. Instead, I drove three blocks, parked in front of a coffee shop, and sat there staring at my steering wheel.
I'd come all this way. Sat outside her bakery like a creep. And I couldn't even walk through the door because I knew—I finally, actually knew—that she deserved better than me showing up and making her life harder.
Was this growth? Or just cowardice dressed up as respect.
It felt like shit either way.
I pulled out my phone and stared at her blocked number for a long moment. Then I opened my notes app and started typing.
Not to send. Just to say.
I saw your bakery today. I didn't come in. I wanted to… but I know you don't want to see me. I know I don't have the right.
It looks amazing. Everything you said it would be. I'm so proud of you.
And I'm sorry. For all of it. For not believing in you when it mattered. For making you feel like you had to wait for my permission to chase your dreams. For destroying the best thing that ever happened to me because I was too stupid and selfish to know what I had.
You deserved better than me. You always did.
