“I’m so sorry,” I repeat.
“Don’t be. Because then I got to the hospital and you were wearing the ring. You were confused and beat up and it was terrifying, but every time I saw that ring on your finger, I believed everything was going to be okay. It had to be.”
“Sounds like I’d finally come to my senses.” But what damage had I done in the weeks between?
“You needed to know. No one else does. We kept it quiet. I wanted the decision to be yours. All that matters is that you decided to put on the ring. And when I saw you in that hospital bed, my ring on your finger…” He shakes his head. Swallows. “God, it’s such a cliché, but you’ve truly made me the happiest man in the world. You owe me no apologies.”
“What I did hurt you.” I glance over my shoulder to make sure our private conversation stays that way. “I owe you every apology for that.” And maybe more than an apology. Maybe an explanation. Maybe the truth.
He draws me against him and crushes me to his chest, and I breathe him in and swallow back my tears. I could tell him. Maybe I should, but the idea of losing this…
I look up at him. “When did you propose?” I ask quietly.
“Three months ago.”
“I brought the booze,” Granny says when my mom leaves her dining room to retrieve dessert. She pulls a flask from her skirt, unscrews the cap, and takes a gulp before passing it to me.
I grin and take a swig myself before passing it on to Lizzy.
“Oh, Hanna, I’ve been dying to do something about this.” She grabs at the air around my head, flicking away invisible pieces of God-knows-what.
“Granny, what are you doing?” Liz asks.
“Apparently Hanna neglected to keep her aura clean while in the hospital,” Maggie grouses as she takes her turn with the flask.
“No, it’s been like this for months.” Granny shudders, flicking away more invisible aura ugliness. “Come to my office for a thorough cleansing. No bride should go into her wedding day with so much darkness in her aura.”
“I’ll think about it,” I lie.
I have the world’s coolest grandmother—as evidenced by the fact that she cashed in one of her investments to buy each of her granddaughters her own muscle car a couple of years back. But she’s also the world’s kookiest grandmother. I squirm under her assessing gaze, relaxing only when she shifts it to Maggie.
“Yours looks better than it has since you were fourteen,” Granny tells Maggie. “I told your mother she shouldn’t stop you from shacking up with that rocker. Best thing that ever happened to you.”
Maggie blushes—a rare sight. “Thanks. I think so too.” Then Mom’s coming back into the room, and Maggie has to hide the flask under the table.
“Where is the Sexy Beast anyway, Maggie?” Granny asks, using Asher’s music-world nickname.
“He has a concert in Chicago tonight,” Maggie says. “It’s sweet of you to ask.”
Lizzy snorts. “Granny’s only asking because she wants her eye candy back.”
Granny winks. “Damn straight.”
“Nanci!” Mom protests.
Granny shrugs. “What? I might be old but my eyes work just fine, thank you very much. And your daughters are doing a mighty fine job of giving me nice views as I go into old age.”
“Well, it doesn’t bother me at all if you want to check out my man,” Maggie says. “But he and Nate are touring together for the next week and a half, so you’ll have to wait.”
“Will he be home a week from Saturday?” Mom asks. “I’m throwing a casual engagement party for your sister.”
Casual. I’m sure. Mom doesn’t know the meaning of the word. Case in point, the crystal goblet holding my water.
“When he comes back into town, he’ll have Nate with him. They’re trying to get a project finished up by the end of the month, so he’ll be busy, but I’m sure he can get away for a couple of hours.”
Lizzy and I exchange a look, and I force myself to relax as Lizzy leans across the table toward Maggie, an interrogator going in for the kill. “So Nate’s coming back to town? Will he be staying at your house?”
Maggie rolls her eyes. “I think it’s in Nate’s best interest that I not tell you where he’s sleeping, Liz. No offense.”
“They’ll probably have to work late into the night though, huh?” Liz asks.
Laughter bursts from Maggie’s lips. “You’re pathetic. If the guys emerge from their music-making cave long enough to have a beer, I promise to invite you over.”
Lizzy squeaks, and I elbow her under the table. “Calm down,” I say between my teeth.
“Thanks for dinner, Mom.” She pushes her plate away and looks at me pointedly. “Hanna, were you going to come back to the bakery with me tonight? To work on the calla lilies for Saturday’s wedding cake?”
“Sure.” I’m halfway through the three dozen gum-paste lilies I need to decorate Saturday’s monstrosity of a cake order.
“I’ll see you later,” Maggie calls.
As we head out the front door, I can hear Mom talking. “You could learn a thing or two from Hanna, Maggie. Instead of giving it up to Max the first chance she got, she’s waiting until marriage. Maybe if you weren’t living with Asher, you’d be wearing his ring by now. You know what they say about the cow and the milk.”
I turn to Lizzy, wide-eyed, and she throws a hand over her mouth. I open the door just as Maggie says, “Mom, if you think sex is like milk, you’re doing it wrong.”
Lizzy and I are laughing by the time we climb into Lizzy’s car, and I have to lean my head back against the seat and catch my breath.
“Here’s the plan,” Lizzy says when we’re on the road and headed to the bakery. “We’re going over there when Nate comes back into town. You’ll corner him. Get some answers.”
The smile falls from my face. “What if I don’t want the answers?” I whisper. “I mean, I do. Of course I do. But I’m scared, Liz.”
She pulls into a spot in front of the building and puts the car in park before reaching over to squeeze my hand. “You could just wait and see if your memories come back.”
“They’re starting to. I remember more every day, but it’s all stuff from fall semester and the beginning of my relationship with Max. None of my memories are answering my questions yet.”
We go inside the bakery and head to the back, working together to pull out supplies for Saturday’s calla lily explosion.
“Today, Max told me something.” I run my fingers along the prepared flowers, searching for imperfections. “He didn’t propose right before my accident like everyone assumed.”
Lizzy frowns. “Then where’d the ring come from?”
“He proposed before that. A long time before that. And I told him I wasn’t ready.”
She covers her lips with her fingers and studies me. “You’ve always wanted Max.”
“I know.”
“When did he propose?”
“Three months ago.” I drop the flower I was inspecting and walk to the back door and push it open. I can’t breathe. I need fresh air. “I didn’t give him an answer and held on to the ring all this time.”
“Three months ago?” She arches a brow. “As in, after you met a sexy rocker?”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” I say.
“I think we’re still missing something,” she says.
“What do you mean?”
“That night you came home from the hospital and Nate climbed in bed with you in the middle of the night… Did you lock the door?”
“I did. I’m sure of it.”
“So you gave him a key.” She nods. “That says something about your relationship, I think.”
“Why would I give him a key?” Panic starts that slow-clawing climb in my chest. “Didn’t you say he’d never been to town?”
She shrugs. “Maybe you knew he’d be coming.”
“And I gave him a key when Max already has one? Really? I mean, I was obviously being reckless, but that seems a little over the top.”
“So you think he broke in?”
“I don’t know,” I whisper. “But I know I locked the door.”
“What if he had a key for a different reason?” Liz asks.
“I’m not following.”
“What if he has a key to your apartment because he owns the building? What if Nate is your silent partner?”
“Fuck,” I whisper.
“Think about the timeline. You go to Asher’s concert and meet Nate either shortly before or shortly after Max proposes, and within a couple of weeks, someone’s buying this vacant building downtown and setting it up to be your bakery and apartment. Maybe you screwed around with Nate because you were feeling insecure and then he offered you your dream on a platter right before Max proposed.”
“Why would Nate buy a bakery for a woman he just met? And if I was committed to Max, why would I let him?”
“Girl, your life has gotten better than my daytime soaps. Days of Our Lives cannot compete with this shit.”
“Maybe I wasn’t choosing Nate over Max. Maybe I was choosing my business over Max. I mean, what if Nate does own it and he was going to sell it or something if I married Max?”
“That would be pretty dickish.”
“Yes, but he’s a spoiled rock star. Of course he’d be a dick about getting his way, right?”
She frowns. “That’s one big insult to his personality wrapped up in a clichéd assumption.”
“Even if there were no strings attached to our agreement, that’s gotta be awkward, right? What if Max marries me and finds out I’m in business with the guy I was once cheating on him with?” I gasp and throw my hand over my mouth. “Liz, Max and I are planning on living upstairs after we get married!”
“Shit,” she breathes. “You need to find out if Nate’s the silent partner.”
I nod. “And I need to find out before the wedding.”
11
“IT’S SO screwed up,” Drew says. “The whole town hates her and thinks she’s this total slut, but nobody really cares that it takes two, you know?” She scoops the cookies off the tray and slides them onto a cooling rack. “Can you imagine if we made all the cheating men walk around with a red A on their chests? No one would be ashamed. They’d just wear it all proud. Probably be embarrassed if they didn’t have one. I swear. I hate the world sometimes.”
I bite back my laughter. Drew’s junior honors English class is American Literature, and she has to finish The Scarlet Letter before school starts on Monday. Just yesterday, she was groaning about having to read “this stupid old book,” and now she’s so into it she can hardly stop talking about it.
“I’ve made my last latte,” Lizzy says, pushing into the kitchen. “I’m tapping out. Drew. You’re up.”
Drew groans but otherwise doesn’t protest before going to man the front of the store.
“Thank God,” Liz says when Drew’s safely on the other side of the kitchen door. “I had to get her away from you before you started getting a complex and embroidering an A on all your clothes.”
I wrinkle my nose. “I didn’t even think of that, but thanks. Thanks a lot.”
“So did you make an appointment with the lawyer to find out about the silent partner?”
I nod. “I’m going in next week.”
“Good. Want me to go with you?”
I bite my lip and nod. “Is that pathetic?”
She rolls her eyes. “No. I’m, like, your assistant manager or some shit. What affects your business affects me.”
“Thank you so much. The lawyer’s in Indianapolis, and I’m not supposed to be driving.”
“And you’re a scaredy cat.”
“True fact.” I grab a hot pad and swat her with it before opening the oven.
The chocolate chip scones smell so delicious my mouth literally waters as I pull them out of the oven. I’ve been trying to be good about my eating. I haven’t even been home from the hospital a week, and I’ve already gained weight. Dr. Perkins doesn’t want me getting on the scale, but I don’t need a scale when it’s getting harder to button my jeans.
“Do it,” Lizzy says behind me. She grabs one off the tray and breaks a corner off to pop it in her mouth. Her eyes float closed and she moans. “Jesus Christ, Hanna. I don’t need a man. I just need your baked goods. All of your baked goods.” She grabs my forearm and squeezes. “Promise me you’ll never cut me off.”
I giggle and break a piece off her scone. The butter and flour practically melt on my tongue. “God, I’m good.”
“Are you sure you want to be eating that?” someone asks at the door.
Lizzy and I turn to find my mother walking into my kitchen with her old critical eyes on my baked goods. I’m not used to my mom looking at me with approval. She’s terrified of fat, extra weight, and clothing sizes in the double digits. My inability to keep my weight down was always a point of anxiety for her. And I always felt like a failure. Until I woke up in the hospital with my new body. Then all that disappointment was gone from her eyes.
It’s back now as she eyes the half-eaten scone in Lizzy’s hand.
“She’s sure,” Lizzy says. “It’s delicious, and she hasn’t stopped working all day to eat lunch.”
“Don’t be. Because then I got to the hospital and you were wearing the ring. You were confused and beat up and it was terrifying, but every time I saw that ring on your finger, I believed everything was going to be okay. It had to be.”
“Sounds like I’d finally come to my senses.” But what damage had I done in the weeks between?
“You needed to know. No one else does. We kept it quiet. I wanted the decision to be yours. All that matters is that you decided to put on the ring. And when I saw you in that hospital bed, my ring on your finger…” He shakes his head. Swallows. “God, it’s such a cliché, but you’ve truly made me the happiest man in the world. You owe me no apologies.”
“What I did hurt you.” I glance over my shoulder to make sure our private conversation stays that way. “I owe you every apology for that.” And maybe more than an apology. Maybe an explanation. Maybe the truth.
He draws me against him and crushes me to his chest, and I breathe him in and swallow back my tears. I could tell him. Maybe I should, but the idea of losing this…
I look up at him. “When did you propose?” I ask quietly.
“Three months ago.”
“I brought the booze,” Granny says when my mom leaves her dining room to retrieve dessert. She pulls a flask from her skirt, unscrews the cap, and takes a gulp before passing it to me.
I grin and take a swig myself before passing it on to Lizzy.
“Oh, Hanna, I’ve been dying to do something about this.” She grabs at the air around my head, flicking away invisible pieces of God-knows-what.
“Granny, what are you doing?” Liz asks.
“Apparently Hanna neglected to keep her aura clean while in the hospital,” Maggie grouses as she takes her turn with the flask.
“No, it’s been like this for months.” Granny shudders, flicking away more invisible aura ugliness. “Come to my office for a thorough cleansing. No bride should go into her wedding day with so much darkness in her aura.”
“I’ll think about it,” I lie.
I have the world’s coolest grandmother—as evidenced by the fact that she cashed in one of her investments to buy each of her granddaughters her own muscle car a couple of years back. But she’s also the world’s kookiest grandmother. I squirm under her assessing gaze, relaxing only when she shifts it to Maggie.
“Yours looks better than it has since you were fourteen,” Granny tells Maggie. “I told your mother she shouldn’t stop you from shacking up with that rocker. Best thing that ever happened to you.”
Maggie blushes—a rare sight. “Thanks. I think so too.” Then Mom’s coming back into the room, and Maggie has to hide the flask under the table.
“Where is the Sexy Beast anyway, Maggie?” Granny asks, using Asher’s music-world nickname.
“He has a concert in Chicago tonight,” Maggie says. “It’s sweet of you to ask.”
Lizzy snorts. “Granny’s only asking because she wants her eye candy back.”
Granny winks. “Damn straight.”
“Nanci!” Mom protests.
Granny shrugs. “What? I might be old but my eyes work just fine, thank you very much. And your daughters are doing a mighty fine job of giving me nice views as I go into old age.”
“Well, it doesn’t bother me at all if you want to check out my man,” Maggie says. “But he and Nate are touring together for the next week and a half, so you’ll have to wait.”
“Will he be home a week from Saturday?” Mom asks. “I’m throwing a casual engagement party for your sister.”
Casual. I’m sure. Mom doesn’t know the meaning of the word. Case in point, the crystal goblet holding my water.
“When he comes back into town, he’ll have Nate with him. They’re trying to get a project finished up by the end of the month, so he’ll be busy, but I’m sure he can get away for a couple of hours.”
Lizzy and I exchange a look, and I force myself to relax as Lizzy leans across the table toward Maggie, an interrogator going in for the kill. “So Nate’s coming back to town? Will he be staying at your house?”
Maggie rolls her eyes. “I think it’s in Nate’s best interest that I not tell you where he’s sleeping, Liz. No offense.”
“They’ll probably have to work late into the night though, huh?” Liz asks.
Laughter bursts from Maggie’s lips. “You’re pathetic. If the guys emerge from their music-making cave long enough to have a beer, I promise to invite you over.”
Lizzy squeaks, and I elbow her under the table. “Calm down,” I say between my teeth.
“Thanks for dinner, Mom.” She pushes her plate away and looks at me pointedly. “Hanna, were you going to come back to the bakery with me tonight? To work on the calla lilies for Saturday’s wedding cake?”
“Sure.” I’m halfway through the three dozen gum-paste lilies I need to decorate Saturday’s monstrosity of a cake order.
“I’ll see you later,” Maggie calls.
As we head out the front door, I can hear Mom talking. “You could learn a thing or two from Hanna, Maggie. Instead of giving it up to Max the first chance she got, she’s waiting until marriage. Maybe if you weren’t living with Asher, you’d be wearing his ring by now. You know what they say about the cow and the milk.”
I turn to Lizzy, wide-eyed, and she throws a hand over her mouth. I open the door just as Maggie says, “Mom, if you think sex is like milk, you’re doing it wrong.”
Lizzy and I are laughing by the time we climb into Lizzy’s car, and I have to lean my head back against the seat and catch my breath.
“Here’s the plan,” Lizzy says when we’re on the road and headed to the bakery. “We’re going over there when Nate comes back into town. You’ll corner him. Get some answers.”
The smile falls from my face. “What if I don’t want the answers?” I whisper. “I mean, I do. Of course I do. But I’m scared, Liz.”
She pulls into a spot in front of the building and puts the car in park before reaching over to squeeze my hand. “You could just wait and see if your memories come back.”
“They’re starting to. I remember more every day, but it’s all stuff from fall semester and the beginning of my relationship with Max. None of my memories are answering my questions yet.”
We go inside the bakery and head to the back, working together to pull out supplies for Saturday’s calla lily explosion.
“Today, Max told me something.” I run my fingers along the prepared flowers, searching for imperfections. “He didn’t propose right before my accident like everyone assumed.”
Lizzy frowns. “Then where’d the ring come from?”
“He proposed before that. A long time before that. And I told him I wasn’t ready.”
She covers her lips with her fingers and studies me. “You’ve always wanted Max.”
“I know.”
“When did he propose?”
“Three months ago.” I drop the flower I was inspecting and walk to the back door and push it open. I can’t breathe. I need fresh air. “I didn’t give him an answer and held on to the ring all this time.”
“Three months ago?” She arches a brow. “As in, after you met a sexy rocker?”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” I say.
“I think we’re still missing something,” she says.
“What do you mean?”
“That night you came home from the hospital and Nate climbed in bed with you in the middle of the night… Did you lock the door?”
“I did. I’m sure of it.”
“So you gave him a key.” She nods. “That says something about your relationship, I think.”
“Why would I give him a key?” Panic starts that slow-clawing climb in my chest. “Didn’t you say he’d never been to town?”
She shrugs. “Maybe you knew he’d be coming.”
“And I gave him a key when Max already has one? Really? I mean, I was obviously being reckless, but that seems a little over the top.”
“So you think he broke in?”
“I don’t know,” I whisper. “But I know I locked the door.”
“What if he had a key for a different reason?” Liz asks.
“I’m not following.”
“What if he has a key to your apartment because he owns the building? What if Nate is your silent partner?”
“Fuck,” I whisper.
“Think about the timeline. You go to Asher’s concert and meet Nate either shortly before or shortly after Max proposes, and within a couple of weeks, someone’s buying this vacant building downtown and setting it up to be your bakery and apartment. Maybe you screwed around with Nate because you were feeling insecure and then he offered you your dream on a platter right before Max proposed.”
“Why would Nate buy a bakery for a woman he just met? And if I was committed to Max, why would I let him?”
“Girl, your life has gotten better than my daytime soaps. Days of Our Lives cannot compete with this shit.”
“Maybe I wasn’t choosing Nate over Max. Maybe I was choosing my business over Max. I mean, what if Nate does own it and he was going to sell it or something if I married Max?”
“That would be pretty dickish.”
“Yes, but he’s a spoiled rock star. Of course he’d be a dick about getting his way, right?”
She frowns. “That’s one big insult to his personality wrapped up in a clichéd assumption.”
“Even if there were no strings attached to our agreement, that’s gotta be awkward, right? What if Max marries me and finds out I’m in business with the guy I was once cheating on him with?” I gasp and throw my hand over my mouth. “Liz, Max and I are planning on living upstairs after we get married!”
“Shit,” she breathes. “You need to find out if Nate’s the silent partner.”
I nod. “And I need to find out before the wedding.”
11
“IT’S SO screwed up,” Drew says. “The whole town hates her and thinks she’s this total slut, but nobody really cares that it takes two, you know?” She scoops the cookies off the tray and slides them onto a cooling rack. “Can you imagine if we made all the cheating men walk around with a red A on their chests? No one would be ashamed. They’d just wear it all proud. Probably be embarrassed if they didn’t have one. I swear. I hate the world sometimes.”
I bite back my laughter. Drew’s junior honors English class is American Literature, and she has to finish The Scarlet Letter before school starts on Monday. Just yesterday, she was groaning about having to read “this stupid old book,” and now she’s so into it she can hardly stop talking about it.
“I’ve made my last latte,” Lizzy says, pushing into the kitchen. “I’m tapping out. Drew. You’re up.”
Drew groans but otherwise doesn’t protest before going to man the front of the store.
“Thank God,” Liz says when Drew’s safely on the other side of the kitchen door. “I had to get her away from you before you started getting a complex and embroidering an A on all your clothes.”
I wrinkle my nose. “I didn’t even think of that, but thanks. Thanks a lot.”
“So did you make an appointment with the lawyer to find out about the silent partner?”
I nod. “I’m going in next week.”
“Good. Want me to go with you?”
I bite my lip and nod. “Is that pathetic?”
She rolls her eyes. “No. I’m, like, your assistant manager or some shit. What affects your business affects me.”
“Thank you so much. The lawyer’s in Indianapolis, and I’m not supposed to be driving.”
“And you’re a scaredy cat.”
“True fact.” I grab a hot pad and swat her with it before opening the oven.
The chocolate chip scones smell so delicious my mouth literally waters as I pull them out of the oven. I’ve been trying to be good about my eating. I haven’t even been home from the hospital a week, and I’ve already gained weight. Dr. Perkins doesn’t want me getting on the scale, but I don’t need a scale when it’s getting harder to button my jeans.
“Do it,” Lizzy says behind me. She grabs one off the tray and breaks a corner off to pop it in her mouth. Her eyes float closed and she moans. “Jesus Christ, Hanna. I don’t need a man. I just need your baked goods. All of your baked goods.” She grabs my forearm and squeezes. “Promise me you’ll never cut me off.”
I giggle and break a piece off her scone. The butter and flour practically melt on my tongue. “God, I’m good.”
“Are you sure you want to be eating that?” someone asks at the door.
Lizzy and I turn to find my mother walking into my kitchen with her old critical eyes on my baked goods. I’m not used to my mom looking at me with approval. She’s terrified of fat, extra weight, and clothing sizes in the double digits. My inability to keep my weight down was always a point of anxiety for her. And I always felt like a failure. Until I woke up in the hospital with my new body. Then all that disappointment was gone from her eyes.
It’s back now as she eyes the half-eaten scone in Lizzy’s hand.
“She’s sure,” Lizzy says. “It’s delicious, and she hasn’t stopped working all day to eat lunch.”
