Page 51

CHAPTER 51

CINNAMON ROLLS

EMORY

There are so many cars at Lily and Brant's house that we have to park almost a block away. No surprise, since someone—I give Kayden one last side eye as I get out of the car—couldn't decide what to wear today.

More accurately, he knew exactly what he wanted to wear—a perfectly tailored all black suit, ruined by a t-shirt of Darth Vader baking cinnamon rolls—and then refused to listen to reason when I told him how stupid it is.

"You're still stuck on my shirt? Everyone will love it. You'll see. Plus, it's an essential part of the theme."

"The theme is that Chloe's adoption is official, and they're finally, legally, a family."

"There can be more than one theme," he says as he balances the four trays in one hand and shuts the trunk lid with the other.

The cinnamon rolls he baked this morning are surprisingly cute. Each one has a larger, round cinnamon roll at the center with two smaller rolls attached on either side. He even used icing to draw simple faces on the larger rolls. I knew right away what they were, but no one else will. No matter how many times they've seen Star Wars.

"Can you think of a better way to celebrate May the Fourth than with Princess Leia cinnamon rolls?" he asks as we walk toward Lily and Brant's house

I roll my eyes. He insists on using the full name every time he talks about the cinnamon rolls. "Chloe's adoption day," I correct him. "It just happens to be on May fourth. It's not like they planned it."

He stops just in front of their door. "No, they didn't plan it, but it's almost like there's something else that did. Some... force maybe?"

I just shake my head. "There's no mystical energy field controls my destiny."

I wait for him to continue the quote. To tell me to let go my conscious self. But he doesn't.

"You know what else today is?" he asks, his face turning serious. "Our anniversary." He shifts the trays to one hand and holds out his other hand for me.

I take it, basking in the warm glow that still moves through me at the simple touch. "Pretty sure it's not," I tell him.

"Exactly seven months since Chloe's birthday party. We stood right here. Afterward was the first time we?—"

"Yes." I say it quickly to shut him up because I'm not sure who else might be close enough to overhear him. "I know exactly what first we had that day. But seven month anniversaries aren't a thing. It's not like you go around celebrating random anniversaries of the first day we met or something."

He squeezes my hand. "Four hundred and sixty-six days."

I snort. "Sure."

"Four hundred and sixty-six days since I first saw you outside the Sting dressing room. Seven months since our… first time. Sixty-six days since you agreed to marry me for real."

I gape at him. "You're serious?"

"I have an app that counts each milestone. I celebrate them every day. Did you know today is the ninety-one-day anniversary of our first kiss?"

"You really are the world's biggest dork."

"I think you mean the world's biggest di?— "

The front door opens. "Hey, I saw you two on the doorbell camera. Need me to take something?" Lily asks, completely unaware of what she just saved me from.

"Can you just hold these trays?" I ask her.

With nothing between us, I yank Kayden by the lapels—I've always wanted to do that to someone—and kiss him. Every kiss with him feels like I'm slipping under my favorite blanket.

"I celebrate each of those." I whisper as I take a step back.

"Oh my god, get a room. Oh, what are these?" Chloe stands on her tiptoes to see what's in the trays as Lily beams at me. "Oh, Leia buns for May the Fourth! Can I have one, you guys?"

Kayden elbows me. "See? Princess Leia cinnamon rolls. And that's up to your… mom? I'm not sure what you decided about that."

Lily and Chloe look at each other and wince. Both of them had painful relationships with their biological mothers, so that title doesn't mean the same thing for them that it does for most people.

"We're just sticking with Brant and Lily. 'Guardian' if it's anything official." Lily says. "But…" She practically shimmers as she looks at Chloe. "She's our daughter! Someone wouldn't agree to be called that until Brant gave in and told her that she wouldn't have to do dishes for a month."

"I should have held out for two months." Chloe does her best to hide her excitement, but I know better. She and I text a couple of times each week. The night Brant and Lily asked her about it, she was so thrilled her message to me had more typos than correct spellings.

Chloe spent the first fifteen years of her life with people who refused to even gender her correctly, let alone give her the love she deserves. So this means more to her than most people will ever understand. But since she's Chloe—and a teenager—she doesn't want to actually admit that, even if everyone can see the truth.

"Why is no one answering the big question?" Chloe asks. "Princess Leia cinnamon roll, yes or no? "

"Not yet," Lily answers her. "Go make room on the food table for these." Chloe's huff as she marches away is real this time.

As soon as she's gone, I squeal and throw my arms around Lily, just as Kayden saves the four trays from being crushed between us. "My best friend has a daughter!"

"Dying… hypoxia." She pretends to choke. Or maybe she's not pretending. My arms are wrapped pretty tight around her, but I'm just so happy for her.

"Now come on," she says once I let go. "You know almost everyone, but there are some Gulls players here. I'll introduce you two to them."

"That's right, because my best friend has her dream job as a baseball trainer too!" I hug her from behind.

"Oh my god, will you quit?" She slaps at my hand and looks over her shoulder at Kayden.

He's following us, but with the trays stacked so high, I can only assume he's using a combination of echolocation and prayer to make sure he doesn't bump into anything.

"I think my best friend is doing alright for herself too," Lily whispers to me.

I smile so big it makes the tops of my shoulders tingle. "I think so too."

Just before we get to the back door, I take the top tray from Kayden so he can see the step down out of the house. It's not more than five seconds before someone snatches it away from me.

"Princess Leia cinnamon rolls for May the Fourth, nice!" Sammy inspects the tray he just took out of my hand.

Kayden nudges me between my shoulder blades. When I turn to look at him, he's smirking. I flip him off. Just because two people made the connection to May the Fourth doesn't mean anything.

"I saw these on my Pinterest feed."

Lily and I look at each other and then back at Sammy. "You have a Pinterest account?"

He shrugs as he sets the tray onto the space Chloe made. "You don't have to be suspicious. I signed up for real reasons. I like looking at the pictures of all the desserts."

"Nobody was suspicious. We were just?—"

"Oh, May the Fourth cinnamon rolls. What a brilliant idea." Poppy doesn't even look down at the tray before he winks dramatically at Kayden.

"You cheated and told them!" I slap his shoulder.

He shrugs me off. "It's not cheating. I'm allowed to tell my teammates what I'm making for dessert."

"And Chloe?"

"Are they finally here? Let me see these May the Fourth cinnamon rolls everyone has been talking about." A middle-aged woman comes up to the table. "So cute! Leave it to Kayden."

She wraps Kayden in a hug and then looks at me. "You must be Emory. The red hair is kind of a giveaway. Plus, Kayden hasn't stopped giving you that look since you two walked in." She opens her arms, and I step forward, caught off guard.

"Uh, yeah. That's me." I give Kayden a questioning look as the woman closes her arms around me.

"Emory, this is Tracy. Brant's mom." Kayden's voice is warm, like he's introducing his own family. "And that's Brant's dad over there."

I look in the direction Kayden's pointing. There's a man wearing a shirt emblazoned with "My Granddaughter" across the chest and a picture of Chloe printed below. He's standing beside the girl, nodding eagerly at her every word.

On Chloe's other side, there's a boy about the same age as her with his arm around her waist. The boy —the one she's been obsessing over.

They make a cute couple, and I'm glad to see her so happy. I'm also glad she invited him today. This way he can meet every single one of the people who will turn his life into an endless mire of misery if he ever hurts that girl.

"Oh my god, you made it!" Lily exclaims behind me.

I turn to see her embracing another woman I've never met, but I think I know who this is. Lily told me there's a new girl working for the Gulls. She's new to town and doesn't know anyone, so Lily has taken it upon herself to become the woman's first official friend in Salt Lake City.

"Brant and Chloe are somewhere around here," Lily tells her, "but here's Emory. My bestie since college."

Her curly brown hair looks cute pulled back in a low ponytail. I have the feeling there will be lots of people in town eager to know her soon, whether she wants the attention or not. "Good to meet you."

"You too." She beams back at me. "I'm?—"

"Samara? That's really you? What are you doing here?" Sammy interrupts.

Obviously Lily isn't the only person she knows in Salt Lake City, but based on the way Samara's shoulders tense and her smile freezes, she doesn't exactly consider Sammy a friend.

"Come on, I'll introduce you to my teammates, and you can—" Sammy stops when he finally sees the look on the woman's face. "You can tell me why you're here," he finishes in a whisper.

Samara's face is pale as she turns back to Lily. "Apparently it's not just baseball players and your friends who are here?"

Lily looks between Sammy and Samara, obviously confused. "Sammy's a friend. He and my husband both play for the Sting. You two know each other?"

"Yeah," Sammy answers. "For a long?—"

"We thought we knew each other once, but we were wrong. I really need to go. Congratulations, Lily. You and your family." Samara’s movements are stiff as she backs away, shoes scraping across the concrete patio. "Tell Chloe thanks for the offer, but I guess I won't need her after all for—" She casts a quick glance at Sammy, and her fury is so searing that even I take a step back. “For you know what. Anyway, see you around the ballpark, okay?"

For a second, I'm sure Sammy is going to follow her. Then he thinks better of it and walks the other direction, grabbing an open beer from someone's table and finishing it in one swallow .

Kayden kisses my cheek and takes off after him, putting his arm around Sammy when he catches up.

"What was that about?" I ask Lily.

She looks as lost as the rest of us. "I have no idea. She just moved to Salt Lake last month. She told me her grandma's the only person she knows here."

“Some woman Sammy hooked up with?"

She shakes her head. "It seemed like more than that."

"Yeah…" I watch Kayden lead Sammy to the other side of the yard. "To be honest, I'm just glad she wasn't in on Kayden's May the Fourth joke. Did you know about the cinnamon rolls before we got here?"

She laughs. "I think he told everyone."

"He's going to pay for this when we get home."

"You do have that cute, murdery look in your eyes. Come on, I'll take you around and introduce you to anyone you don't know, while keeping you away from your fiancé. I don't think the Sting would appreciate losing the highest paid player in the league while they're in the middle of a playoff run."

"Fine. But once the season is over, anything goes."

I let her lead me around the backyard while she introduces me to her coworkers, players from the baseball team, and then to the rest of Brant's family, who flew in just for this. The entire time, she does a masterful job of keeping me just out of arm's length from Kayden.

But as soon as she leaves my side, he appears. "Happy May the Fourth, Nyx." He slips his arm around my back and leads me to a loveseat. "Looks like the Princess Leia cinnamon rolls are a hit."

I sit beside him and glare at him. "You set me up."

"Maybe." He leans in and kisses the tip of my nose, as if that will make it better. Okay, maybe it does make it a little better. "I've never seen Brant as happy as he is tonight."

I look up. Brant has one arm around Chloe's shoulders and the other around Lily's. The sight makes my heart swell. "Same with Lily. Chloe too. They deserve it. "

"Do you ever think about that?"

"What? Revenge for your May the Fourth joke? It's all I'm thinking about."

He pulls me so close I might as well be on his lap. "I'll make it up to you, I promise. But no, do you ever think about what you deserve? What else you want in life?"

I study him, trying to memorize him in this moment—just like I do every moment. The way the flickering orange light of the fire pit dances on the side of his face. His pupils are wide, and the shadows cast by the fire make the cut of his jaw even more handsome than usual.

"I used to think I wanted my own practice—just like Dad—but I don't anymore. I love working at the clinic. I love the people and the pets I get to see there every day. Even Dr. Karchin is growing on me, in his own cranky way. But the thing I love most is coming home to you every day. As long as I have that, I'm satisfied with anything. What about you?"

He shakes his head. "I don't know what I deserve, but I already have everything I want." He pats his lap, and I climb onto it, brushing my lips lightly across his as I do.

"Me too."