Page 84 of Looks Real Good Now
“If you want it. Then yes, it’s yours.”
“But what about here? What about you?”
“This brings me to the second thing I wanted to talk to you about. Your dad offered me a job. Assistant coach, starting next season. So, that’s an option for me. But I am in a very fortunate position where I am not under any huge pressure to figure out my next steps. Suspicious amount of money, remember?”
She laughed, wetly. “Do you want to do that? Coach?”
This wasn’t about me.
“Can you run two bakeries in different cities?”
“Well, yeah it’s always been the dream, but it’s a lot of work and I’ve never been able to figure out the costs or the logistics.”
I dropped my bin bag and walked over to her, placing my hands on her shoulders.
“If you sat down and figured it out, you could make it work, right? You don’t need a location anymore. I know a guy who can give you a really good rate on a unit.”
She laughed again.
“Opening a bakery next to Westchester Bakes is career-ending. It will die before it even gets off the ground.”
“I remember someone telling me that their bakery would offer different things to Bakes, which is why it would work. Westchester would haveallits baked goods needs met if you rocked up too.”
She smiled. I wiped the tears off her cheeks and cupped her face in my hands.
“You didn’t answer my question. Do you want to coach? I’m not hypothetically moving to Westchester if there’s nothing for you there.”
“You’d be there. I go where you go. If you wanna stay here, then we’ll stay here. If you wanna open a new site back home, we’ll go there. I go where you go, Alana. So where do you want to go?”
47
Epilogue
Alana - 18 months later
Frankly, it was obscene.
And deeply unnecessary.
I had been staring off into space while my coffee brewed, thinking about all the things that could possibly go wrong tonight when he had joined me in the kitchen.
Wearing only his boxers and, for reasons unknown, his skates over one of his shoulders. He looked indecent. All sleep soft with pillow creases embedded into his cheekbones, his hair an artful mess. Forever thick thighs and strong arms. The skates on his shoulder were a reminder that he could still be lethal if he got onto that ice in a competitive manner, which was making him even sexier.
I watched him out of the corner of my eye while I dumped my V60 in the sink and picked up my coffee. He was pulling things together for his breakfast like it was normal to just roll out of bed and throw a pair of skates over your shoulder.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I asked once I had taken a sip of my coffee.
“There she is,” he laughed.
My eyebrows drew together. “There who is?”
“You. You were all in your head and I needed something that would drag you out of it. Come on, let’s hear it,” he said as he gestured down at his body.
“You look ridiculous.”
He smiled. “What else?”
“And you look like Mr. December.”
