Page 2 of Bears & Bakeries (Sweet & Stocky #2)

TWO

All Stitched Up

B enedict Owens was trying to avoid a panic attack.

Well, not a panic attack . He didn’t get those. Because he had nothing to panic about. He lived in a lovely neighborhood and drove an expensive car and was blessed with excellent health. Not including his current chest tightness with crippling inability to breathe, of course.

But that was nothing to worry about.

Because that reaction was expected.

He always felt like this on opening day.

Benedict leaned against the inside of his front door, careful not to crumple his custom suit. He clicked through the music on his phone, finding his most-played track. A rainstorm in a forest, calm and continuous. Like he was alone in a cabin, far from here and far from now.

Benedict set his alarm for ten minutes—ten, tiny minutes of escape. And that was all he allowed himself before grabbing his keys.

Because he was already late.

And he needed to be there for his clients.

* * *

The sparkling sky seemed to mock Benedict as he walked toward the shop, currently hidden on the other side of a street corner. The blue above was bright and peaceful, like there was nothing in the world to worry about.

But that was clearly inaccurate—because he had hundreds of reasons to worry. Because what if he’d missed something over the last few months? What if he’d suggested the wrong location or butchered the social media strategy? What if he’d screwed up the marketing or been too pushy with a decor idea? What if all the money and all the plans had come to nothing, and he was left staring at an empty store and crestfallen faces?

And it would all be his fault. Because his clients had trusted him as their business adviser.

And he’d fucked everything up.

Benedict stilled himself at the corner, cool in the sharp lines of shade. He waited for his pulse to calm, caught between two worlds. Because this was the final point of ignorance. Once he rounded the bend, he’d be confronted by the reality of his efforts—success or failure.

He thought for a moment about turning back, but forced that idea aside. Because he’d promised Chloe and Castor that he’d be there. And he needed to follow through this time.

For his clients.

For himself .

With a ragged breath, Benedict turned the corner.

And he almost leaped in relief.

Stitch Me Up was packed, so full that he had to ease his way through an all-ages throng to reach the store window. Through the glass, children inspected vibrant balls of soft yarn in peach and chartreuse and ultramarine. A group of college-aged girls in beanies and oversized sweater dresses thumbed bolts of fashionable plaids and distressed denims. An immaculately besuited gay couple gestured to a wall of crochet hooks.

And there, scurrying through the store, was one-half of Benedict’s clients—Chloe, all slender tattooed arms and paint-stained overalls. Her partner, Castor, was clacking lacquered black nails against the cash register. Even by their usual standard, Castor’s beard looked incredible today, like a Viking had tied their saffron braids with pastel trinkets.

They were the same trinkets that were wrapped in little packages on the counter, which half the customers seemed to be buying.

Impulse purchases , thought Benedict, thrilled that his idea had made their final cut. And in the corner was the sign-up sheet for the sewing classes. That had been another of Benedict’s ideas, to help this place feel more like a community hub than a store. It was good marketing, and aligned perfectly with Chloe and Castor’s personal?—

A tall truck rumbled past the crowd. It was just for a moment, but long enough that the window in front of Benedict clouded, becoming less a pane of glass than a shadowy mirror.

Suddenly, Benedict was staring at his own reflection—a tall, broad man in a navy suit and starched white shirt, pulled together with a deep purple tie and matching paisley pocket square.

The mirror showed a stiffly professional demeanor. The demeanor of someone who had it all. Who knew it all.

Which was exactly how he didn’t feel right now. Because in that terrible second of shade, the store had looked suddenly empty—ransacked and boarded-up and failed.

The tightness returned to his chest as Benedict pushed his way through the crowd. The same crowd that proved he was being stupid, that there was nothing to worry about. Because the store hadn’t failed. There were hundreds of people here. He’d done everything right, everything he could!

But that logic didn’t matter. Not to the clench in his lungs and the sheen of cold sweat across his forehead. Not in the awful pressure against his chest, like he was trapped under a pounding waterfall, crushed and drowning and freezing at the same time.

When Benedict finally reached the soft leather of his car, he cranked the heat to full, trying to thaw the ice in his veins.

His fingers were numb when he reached for his phone. He’d thought it would be different this time. That after ten fucking years, he was finally done with this shit!

But nothing had changed.

Nothing would ever change.

With his jaw clenched, Benedict blocked Chloe and Castor’s numbers.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, tears running down his cheeks. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

As he pressed hard against the head rest, Benedict tried to convince himself that it was better this way. That it was kinder.

Besides, it wasn’t like he’d need their numbers.

Because Benedict would never see them again.

* * *

Benedict’s home office desk was covered in neat piles of paper.

He slid the business plan for Stitch Me Up into a clean folder, flicking through the pages of yarn options and logo designs. All the things that Chloe and Castor had thought impossible. All the things that Benedict had helped make real.

With slow solemnity, Benedict closed the folder. Because this was how he wanted to remember them. Bright and clean and orderly. A universe of possibility where nothing had gone wrong yet.

He found a free spot on his floating bookshelf. A hundred other folios were held between tidy bookends, the colors marching in a neat rainbow gradient. He plucked one of them at random and could almost smell the craft beer from the page, grassy and herbal.

It was for Hops and Honey, the brewery he’d helped Dan the football coach create. The man had seemed so rough at first, and Benedict had expected him to make some snide comment at having a black, bisexual business adviser. But he’d actually turned out to be the most doting, marshmallowy father of three little girls.

Like so many people, Dan had thought that his business idea was impossible. That he was too old. That it was too late.

And Benedict had shown him different.

Benedict had let him dream .

During his business degree at Berkley, when the rest of his class would conduct mock negotiations over some billion-dollar acquisition, Benedict would shy away from the more ruthless tactics, never understanding why so many students seemed to relish their combativeness, like they were Roman gladiators in front of a baying crowd.

One time, a professor had pulled him aside and told Benedict that he lacked the killer instinct . She’d said it mournfully, but Benedict had never been happier. Because he didn’t want a killer instinct.

He wanted a kinder instinct.

That was why he’d never worked for the big consulting firms. Why he was earning a tenth of his contemporaries. Because this was where his sparkle lay. Not in beating someone down, but in giving them a hand up.

Benedict ran a thumb over the page in the folder. There were three photos of three little cuties, their faces turned into different beer labels.

Bridgette, bright and floral.

Esme, cloudy and mellow.

Charlie, red and nutty.

It had been a stretch goal of Dan’s—a series of beers named after each daughter. They hadn’t been ready when the brewery opened, and Benedict didn’t know if Dan had ever made it happen.

Benedict hadn’t gone back to see.

Benedict never went back to see his former clients.

Not anymore.

“Hellooo? Bro Bot?”

Benedict screamed as the unexpected voice ripped him from a nostalgic haze. He jammed the folio into the shelf like a teenager caught with a dirty magazine, causing one of the bookends—a black cat in a business suit—to slam on its side.

There was nothing inherently startling about his twin sister and housemate, Beatrice Owens, who looked like she needed a foot rub rather than a scream to the face.

“And hello to you too,” she said, booping his nose.

Her once-bold morning makeup was softened from the workday. A yellow estate jacket was unbuttoned around her full figure. Long dreadlocks were relaxed across her shoulders, rather than in the loc bun she usually wore at the office. And, like always, her elbow cradled a handbag that was worth more than Benedict’s laptop.

“Tris!” he barked, once he’d caught his breath. “What have I told you about sneaking up on me?”

“That I should do it more often?”

Just as Benedict was about to retort, the folios started toppling from the shelf, tumbling to the floor like a row of cliff divers in an old newsreel. Page after page flapped open, revealing little stories about tea shops and interior decorators and after-school education centers.

Once the carnage had stopped, Tris toed a stray folio with a bronze Louboutin. “Have you thought about having a normal bookcase? You know, with edges? Edges are big these days.”

“Are you going to mock me, or help clean up?”

“First one, please!” she said, collapsing into his office chair. “How was the day? Good opening?”

“Yeah,” he said, with only a slight groan from bending down. “They had a line all the way to Connor Street by the time I left.”

“Wow, they got that many people in just five minutes?”

“I stayed longer than five minutes!”

“Ten?” she said, kicking off her shoes. When he didn’t respond she added, “Yeah, let’s call it ten.”

“They were busy! I didn’t want to distract them.”

“I’m sure they would have loved your distraction .”

“Tris! They’re happily married.”

“I thought that made it hotter for you?”

“God, I should never have told you about Vegas.”

“Vegas? I was talking about Sacramento. What happened in Vegas?”

“Nothing you need to know about. And fine—if I’d met Chloe and Castor out in the wild, I probably would have gone there. But do you really think I’d be stupid enough to bang a client?”

Tris rubbed her foot. “Speaking of, I caught up with Crina?—”

“For the record, I never banged Crina.”

“Ewww, no! She’s like a hundred years old! I meant speaking of other clients!”

“Oh, that makes more sense.”

“Did you hear that she’s shutting down her dance studio?”

Benedict’s blood froze. His eyes darted to a pink folder halfway down in the scattered pile.

Oh, fuck.

Oh, fuck.

Oh, fuck.

Not Crina. Jesus, anyone but Crina. She was one of the most vivacious people that Benedict had ever met—a former Ballerina from Romania who’d decided at sixty-seven to quit her evening job as a cleaner and return to her first passion.

Depth charges exploded in Benedict’s guts. Then the questions followed, cold and shameful.

How did I screw up her business plan? What terrible advice did I give her? How has her dance studio gone broke after only eight months?

Tris rushed to the floor and helped gather the folios. “Shit! Sorry, end-of-day brain. She’s not going bankrupt or anything. She’s moving to a bigger studio. Her wait list is so long that she’s hiring a second instructor.”

“Oh,” said Benedict, breathing a deep sigh.

Tris picked up a folio from the pile.

Benedict’s eyes snapped to it.

It was different from the others.

White.

Unmarked.

Barely touched.

And not because it was new.

It was one of the oldest in his collection.

Tris held her grip as Benedict tried to yank it from her. “And you’d know Crina was successful if you actually visited her once in a while. She asked after you. Said she hadn’t heard from you since the opening.”

Benedict tugged the folder away, sliding it into the least-visible part of the shelf. “These stores aren’t my businesses, Tris. I can’t hold their hands forever. I’ll do everything I can during the planning phase, but once they open, they have to trust their own instincts. Me going back and visiting them? Giving them advice for years and years afterward? That wouldn’t help anyone. Trust me. ”

* * *

It was later that evening when Benedict wandered back into his office. Or maybe it was early. It all depended on your perspective.

The rug was soft under his feet. From down the hall came the chainsaw growl of Tris’s snoring, although she’d deny it with vicious pillow attacks if he ever brought it up.

Normally he’d chuckle at that, at how insistent Tris was that she never did anything bro-ish like snoring or farting or burping, even when everyone knew that she did.

But he wasn’t chuckling now.

Because his mind was elsewhere.

The shelf of folders glared at him, the colors muted in the dark. Slowly, he reached for the white folder from earlier. The one that Tris had grabbed so hurriedly.

It opened to pages covered in curious shapes, all swoops and lines and blocks of color. Paintings that looked like a dream.

A dream that could have made a fortune.

A dream that could have changed the world.

A dream that ended in bankruptcy .

With a life ruined.

With a client destroyed.

And it was all because of Benedict’s incompetence.

His neglect.

His stupidity!

Benedict eased the folder back on the shelf, the guilt as strong as it was ten years ago. His unread emails provided some solace—some escape. He found a suitable business inquiry from a Mr. Locky Sorenson, sent a few hours earlier.

That made Benedict feel better.

Because wallowing wouldn’t help anyone.

All he could do was move on.

And not make the same mistakes again.