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13

JUNIPER

Marissa arrives just before lunch carrying a basket covered with a checkered cloth, and the sight immediately makes me suspicious. Nobody brings covered baskets without an agenda.

"That's rude."

Marissa laughs as she sets the basket on the counter. "You made a face."

"I did not."

"You absolutely did."

I glance at the basket. "What is it?"

"Food." She places a hand over her chest. "I spend all morning cooking and that's the reaction I get?"

"You don't cook."

She gasps — loudly enough that several customers glance over. Traitorous customers. "I cook."

"You order food and transfer it into your own containers."

Marissa points at me. "That still counts."

"It absolutely does not."

Her laughter fills the bakery, in that time everything feels normal. Like it used to, before the complaints, before the sabotage, before every day became another fight to keep Sweetbell standing. Marissa's smile softens. "I came to help."

Something tightens in my chest. She's been saying some version of that for weeks. "You're already helping," I tell her.

She shakes her head. "No. I mean really help." Her gaze drifts across the bakery — the display cases, the tables, the handful of remaining customers — then settles back on me. "You don't have to do this alone."

A familiar guilt takes hold in my stomach, because she keeps trying, and every time she does I find myself searching for what she isn't saying. I hate that about myself. Marissa and I have known each other almost forever — birthdays, secrets, entire summers spent getting into trouble together. She should be the last person I question.

Yet something never quite settles right, and I can't explain it, which only makes me feel worse.

"What are you offering?" I ask carefully.

"The least I can do." She reaches across the counter and squeezes my hand. "We've been friends forever, June."

The nickname tugs at something old and familiar, something comforting, something that only deepens the guilt. Because part of me still feels uneasy, and I still don't know why. "I appreciate it," I tell her honestly.

The smile she gives me is warm and relieved. "Good."

I smile back. Yet even as the conversation continues, a thought lingers somewhere behind everything else — the sense of a deal buried in this exchange, unspoken and invisible, hovering slightly out of reach. The thought makes me feel terrible. Marissa hasn't done anything wrong, and distrusting her feels deeply unfair. I spend the rest of the conversation trying to convince myself of exactly that, and I almost succeed.

The library has become our unofficial headquarters. I find Brock exactly where I expect him — surrounded by paperwork, naturally, the table covered with complaint reports, invoices, customer statements, and shipping records, with enough handwritten notes scattered between them to give me a headache just looking. He doesn't look up when I arrive. He's focused on a ledger, brow furrowed in the expression that has become strangely familiar over the past weeks.

"Good afternoon," I say.

"You're late," he replies, without lifting his eyes.

I pull out a chair. "You sound disappointed."

"I'm not."

I grin. "That's practically affection." His gaze finally rises, and the gaze he throws me suggests otherwise. I sit anyway — Brock has long since accepted that discouraging me is mostly a waste of energy.