Chapter 10
For once, everyone was letting her decide.
She leaned against the railing.
“Can I tell you something?”
“Always.”
“If Roman hadn’t lied about you being his girlfriend, I don’t think any of this would have happened.”
“I prefer blaming Sophia.”
“Fair.”
She smiled.
Then grew thoughtful.
“When I first came to the bakery, I thought everyone eventually left.”
My heart tightened.
“Your dad.”
She nodded.
“Then Mom moved.”
A pause.
“And Roman kept trying to protect me from everything.”
She looked through the glass doors toward him.
“He didn’t understand that sometimes I just wanted people to tell me the truth and let me choose what to do with it.”
“You taught him.”
“You did too.”
I shook my head.
“He taught me things.”
“Like what?”
I thought about it.
“How to accept coffee I don’t need.”
She laughed.
I continued.
“How to let people help without feeling like I’m failing.”
“That one’s boring.”
“It gets worse with age.”
She bumped her shoulder against mine.
Then quietly:
“You stayed.”
I looked at her.
She wasn’t sixteen anymore.
But for one moment I saw the girl in the gray sweatshirt studying a morning bun through the glass.
“I did.”
Inside, Roman noticed us watching.
He lifted one eyebrow.
Lily lifted her hand in a tiny wave.
Roman smiled.
Not because everything was fixed.
Families like his didn’t become simple.
Neither did mine.
Elena and Lily still misunderstood each other sometimes.
Roman still had to fight his instinct to take control when he was worried.
I still occasionally interpreted generosity as interference.
Sophia remained Sophia, which nobody had found a treatment for.
But we had learned something important.
Love did not mean making someone’s choices for them.
Protection did not mean withholding every difficult truth.
Strength did not mean needing nothing.
And trust wasn’t proven when everything was comfortable.
Trust was what happened when someone handed you the truth and believed you were strong enough to decide what came next.
A week before our wedding, Roman came into Honey & Rye at eight fifteen.
There were twelve people in line.
He went to the back.
I watched from behind the counter.
He waited.
Patiently.
When he finally reached me, I said, “Coffee?”
“Yes.”
“Anything else?”
He looked through the display case.
“I’ll take every pastry.”
The entire line went silent.
I stared at him.
Roman held the expression for three seconds.
Then smiled.
“I’m joking.”
The customer behind him laughed.
I reached slowly beneath the counter.
His eyes widened.
“Clare.”
I lifted a small paper bag.
Flour.
He took one careful step backward.
“You wouldn’t.”
I smiled.
And from a table near the window, Lily called out:
“She absolutely would.”
Roman looked around Honey & Rye.
At Lily laughing.
At Sophia pretending she hadn’t encouraged me.
At the customers who no longer fell silent when he entered.
At me.
Then he laughed too.
A year and a half earlier, Roman Duca had walked into my bakery believing every obstacle had a price and every problem had a solution.
I had believed the safest way through life was to owe nobody anything.
Lily had believed adults would always make the important decisions before telling her.
All three of us had been wrong.
Roman learned that love without choice becomes control.
Lily learned that being disappointed by people doesn’t mean they will always leave.
And I learned that independence and loneliness can wear remarkably similar clothes.
I put the flour away.
Roman leaned across the counter.
“Thank you.”
“For not throwing it?”
“For throwing the first one.”
I smiled.
“You really are terrible at negotiating.”
“Maybe.”
He looked toward Lily.
Then back at me.
“But I’ve gotten much better at hearing no.”
And that, more than the ring on my hand, the wedding waiting one week away, or the key to his house in my pocket, was how I knew we had built something real.
May you like
Not because Roman Duca had finally convinced me to say yes.
Because he had learned that my no mattered just as much.
