Page 29 of Break Me Like a Promise (Oak Valley)

Her eyes bounced the morning light streaming in from the window, deep emeralds that whispered of a forest filled with magic. Dragan’s heart definitely skipped a beat, her slightly crooked smile heightening his loss of breath.

“I-I’m fine. How are you?”

June giggled. “So formal. I’m okay. I’m a bit worried about the shop and I know you said you’d help me bounce ideas on promotional stuff but I’m stressed about the financials. So… Hi. Here I am. Sorry for barging in so early.”

“Don’t be. Colt just left, I was cleaning up. What’s going on with the shop?”

“Colton was here? Is he finally leaving his house?” June asked, pulling her laptop open again.

Dragan shrugged. He knew what it was like to need to leave his family home but feel held back by personal responsibility. Whereas Colton initially got out with scholarships and national acclaim, Dragan pulled himself out of the hole his parents had dug with hard work and passing the responsibility torch to his bother, the next oldest sibling, while still contributing when he could. He’d learned the hard way to be a little selfish and put himself first.

“Hm, well he certainly has the means.”

“What’s going on with the shop, June-bug? Juniper? Ju-Ju?” Dragan teased, trying to pull her smile back out. Since June’s parents passed away, her once fanciful upbringing was slowed and the pursestrings pinched. She never fell from her comfortable middle-class status, but that didn’t stop her from worrying about it.

Dragan wondered if the nearness to his own poverty influenced her fear, but shook the insidious thought from his mind when she turned her laptop around and showed him The Little Prince Bookstore’s budget sheet.

There was a lot of red.

He scrolled through the sheet, mentally crunching the numbers on the fly to reach the sums she had. He may have done poorly in school and not gone to college, but he was smart. He didn’t need the colors to tell him where her problems lay.

“This… It’s not good, June.”

Her face fell, and he kicked himself for being Captain Obvious. That wasn’t going to help her.

She rested her chin in her hand, and when she met his eyes he saw tears pooling. “I talked to the landlord about rent. I cut back on over-stocking. I set up a store on the website. I post on social media multiple times a day. I don’t know what else to do, Dragan.” A tear slipped and she hid her face behind her hands, shoulders shaking in silence.

His heart dropped to the floor. “We can figure this out, June. I’ll never let you lose the bookstore. I promise.”

Dragan didn’t know how he’d keep his promise, only that he would.

If there was nothing else he could do or no other way to be the strapping, wealthy educated man she deserved, he’d at least find a way for her to keep the small town family bookstore.

He’d give his life to make June happy, even if that was all he could give her.

28

The bakery was thankfully quiet as Colton cleared papers from the desk in the back room. He’d had to work with Katie on how to call out of work today. Despite crashing on Dragan’s couch the last few nights, Colton had still gone to work, careful to avoid his dad. Calling out of work when the boss was your dad never worked out well, but he couldn’t afford to miss an interview for his new lease on life.

His redemption.

A pang of guilt swept through him at asking his mom to let him hide in the back room, where it was relatively clean and the steady hum of mixers was still faint. He couldn’t risk going home, not yet, and he knew Dragan was off today and needed his apartment to work on his own side project.

His mom had given him a defeated smile, told him of course he could use the back room, and left him to manage the front of the shop.

Colton checked his reflection in the video call preview, adjusting the collar of the ironed button down he’d borrowed from his slightly bigger friend. Thankfully, Dragan took more pride in his appearance than Colton, so the shirt was neat as a pin, the accompanying suit jacket neatly tailored, the navy tie formal but with a playful golden floral pattern. Some of his recipe creations sat in a pile on his right, photographs of his best artistic work resting on his left.

His papers almost went to floor when the ring from an incoming video call nearly gave him a heart attack.

“Hello,” he said, smiling at the petite Asian woman and the big black man on the other side of the screen.

“Hello, Mr. Taylor! I’m Annette Li and this is Julien Dubois. We are the sous-chefs under Chef Hermé.” Annette’s voice was cheerful, held even higher by her lilting French accent. “It is a pleasure to meet you.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you as well, please call me Colton.”

“Will do. As you know, we wanted to interview candidates before doing a kitchen interview,” Julien started, his own French-accented voice deep and calming. “I will not lie, we were both very impressed with the images you sent in with your essay.”

Colton chuckled. “Impressed because of my football background?”

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