Page 67 of Buried Dreams

“Thought I did,” I admit, “but I lied to myself.”

“Me too,” she replies with a soft smile on her face.

“So are you saying you love me?” I ask, and she smirks.

“Maybe.”

“You going to get your ass over here right now?” I ask, and she shakes her head. She turns toward the stove, turning it off before she walks over to me. When she is close to me, I yank her to me, picking her up and placing her on the island.

She puts her hands on my face. “You ever stop loving me?” I ask the same question she asked me.

“Sadly, no.” She leans down to kiss my lips. “Thought I did.”

“I’m sorry. You’ll never know how sorry I am.”

She rubs my cheek. “Make it up to me,” she urges softly. “Every single day, make it up to me.”

I grab her around her waist, picking her up off the counter. “Every single day, I plan on doing just that.” I walk toward my bedroom. “Starting right now.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

EVERLEIGH

“How do I look?” I ask my mother when I step out of the bathroom wearing my ruffled baby-pink skirt and a smocked white gauze top with puffy short sleeves that tie in the back. “Mom,” I groan. “We’re supposed to be dressed the same.”

“We are,” she counters. “It’s literally the same shirt and skirt. I just had to add an extra layer, or else I would forget and bend over and give away the farm.” I look around the kitchen, seeing the six people we hired to help us today. “What time is the photographer going to be here?” she asks, looking around, shaking the nerves out of her hands.

“Any minute,” I reply, turning and capturing the people working in the back.

“You and that phone,” my mother hisses.

“Hey, this phone”—I hold up—“went viral last night.” I shake it. “The video of you coming into the bakery was seen over twelve million times in twenty-four hours.”

“I don’t even know what that means,” she admits, smoothing down her skirt. “What if no one comes?”

“To the grand opening?” I roll my eyes. “I made five hundred donuts. They better fucking show up,” I say, and she laughs.

She doesn’t have a chance to say anything else because the door opens and the photographer for the local paper comes in. We sit at the table by the window, side by side, with the top of it overflowing with cookies, cupcakes, donuts, and cups of coffee. I look over at my mother, who smiles at me. “Proud of you,” I say, and she throws her head back and laughs.

“I’m the one who is supposed to say that,” she chides as the photographer tells me to look at him. Two days ago, the reporter called to tell me she wanted to do a story about how the town rallied around us to help rebuild the bakery after it burned down. She asked me a slew of questions, and today, the photographer came out to snap a couple of pictures before our big opening at noon.

He takes what feels like a million pictures before he finally leaves thirty minutes later. I get up and take one look around, seeing the display cases filled to the rim with donuts and cupcakes. The bottom shelf has platters of cookies we are testing out. Five platters of cake sit on top of the display cases, thanks to Harmony. Two platters are cut into slices and then three are full cakes ready to be sold.

I made them add gold hanging lights over the cases just for show, and I have fake white and pink flowers dangling so it looks like a garden. I snap a couple more pictures of the bouquet of balloons beside the front door. “Mom,” I call to her, holding up the camera, “what do you want to say about the opening?”

“I want to thank everyone in Montgavin for coming out and volunteering their time for us to be here today. We couldn’t have done it without any of them.” She smiles. “But most importantly, thank you to my daughter who put aside her life to come back and take care of me and the bakery when I got sick.” She blinks away the tears. “I couldn’t and wouldn’t want to do this without her.” I stop taping her as the door opens, and I look up to see Saige and Brock come into the bakery.

“Ms. Maddie!” Saige shrieks, running over to her, wearing the sundress she picked out last night at dinner to wear today. Her hair is parted in the middle with two tiny braids on each side, tied in the back. “This is so pretty,” she says, looking around. My eyes go to Brock, who holds flowers in one hand. He is wearing his gray slacks with a white button-down shirt that is not tucked in, the collar open, and the sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

“Hi.” I smile big when I see him.

“Hi, baby.” He smiles back as he walks up to me, wrapping his free arm around me and pulling me to him. I think he’s going to kiss my cheek, but he bends his head and his lips softly find mine. I open my eyes big, looking over at Saige to see if she saw. We had dinner last night and there was no talk about who I was, at least not when I was there. I’ve been going since 3:00 a.m. today, so I haven’t had a chance to ask him about it. “You look beautiful.”

“Hi, Everleigh,” Saige greets. “We brought you flowers.” She grabs the flowers from Brock’s hand, holding them up for me to see the pink peonies. “They are the same color as the walls, so they match.”

“These are beautiful,” I compliment, grabbing them from her. “Thank you so much.”

“Dad says you’re sleeping over tonight.” My eyes shoot straight to Brock.

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