Your Love Came Late, I Chose Another novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Bakery

I stood in the dining room with the photo in my hand.

Ronan came and looked at it over my shoulder.

"That's the wedding car," he said.

"That's the wedding car."

"Which means he knew exactly where you'd be standing at six-thirty."

Bree snatched it from me and stared.

"With roses," she said. "White roses. For Tara. At six-thirty in the morning." She looked up. "Noelle. That little shit didn't fill in. He planned this."

"Maybe."

"Maybe? He's grinning like it's his birthday."

The old man by the window cleared his throat.

"Miss," he said to me, "are there any more of those peach things?"

I laughed, which was not what I expected to do.

"Yes, sir. Coming right up."

I put the photo in my grandmother's tin with the 1979 card and the 2019 menu.

Then I went back to work, because the dining room was full and Darren Kearney didn't get to have my Sunday.

That night, in Ronan's bed, I lay awake with my head on his chest.

"Ask it," he said into the dark.

"Ask what?"

"Whatever you've been chewing on since breakfast. I can hear you thinking."

"I want my own place," I said.

His hand stopped moving on my back.

"Not from you," I said quickly. "From them. A bakery. My name on the door. Something nobody can serve papers on, because I made it after."

"How much have you got?"

"Forty-one thousand dollars. Eight years of saving."

He was quiet for a moment.

"I could..."

"Don't."

"I didn't say anything."

"You were going to offer me money."

"I was going to offer you a truck," he said. "For moving ovens. It's a very good truck."

I kissed his collarbone.

"The truck I'll take."

On a Tuesday in the middle of May, I signed a lease on a narrow storefront on upper King Street.

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