Page 25 of Candy & Her Saints

To do that, I have to find a couple of thousand dollars to buy ingredients.

Luckily, we normally buy things in bulk. So, we have the basics already stocked.

I glance around my room.

I don’t own much but I can sell what I have. Everything within the bakery is needed for the business. We can’t touch it. But my personal things — dresses, jewelry, and iPad — I can survive without.

Possessively, I snatch up my cushion and hug it to my chest.

I can’t give up my nest.

Please.

Then I close my eyes in desperation.

I don’t own enough to make up the money.

I’m going to need to ask Vito to sell his Harley.

He has nothing else. He’s never cared about possessions.

Well, apart from his alt rock music, and that’s all in music downloads.

Yet he saved for three years to buy that bike.

It’s his baby.

“Fuck,” I growl.

When my phone lights up with another message, I grab it like a lifeline.

I truly do need the distraction from the unhappiness weighing my soul.

I toss the cushion to the end of the bed and snatch the phone off my stomach.

When I read the message, however, I’m shocked by the care in it.

SEVEN: Tell me to fuck off, if I’m bothering you. But are you really okay?

No.

SWEET VENOM: Yes. I’m just tired and stressed.

I stare at the screen, as for a long moment, Seven doesn’t reply.

I want him to believe me because I can’t explain more. We both agreed to do this under our profile names.

I’m protecting him by keeping my pack name out of this.

I wish that I could share my problems, however, with someone outside my family.

Would Seven reject me, if I did?

Nobody would understand.

How could they?

He probably imagines that my Alpha Dad is being tyrannical about allowing me out by myself at night or what we watch on the television.

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