There’s a note.
Small. Cream-colored. Expensive stationery, because of course it is, because Dario Marchetti doesn’t do anything without style.
Three words. Neat handwriting.
Are you okay? - D
The box slips from my fingers. Hits the counter. Tips. Chocolates scatter across the surface, rolling, falling, bouncing off the floor.
I don’t catch them. I can’t move.
He found me. Which means Enzo found me first, because Enzo’s the one who tracks, who follows, who sits in shadows watching. Enzo found me and told Dario and now they know. They know where I am. They know I’m alive. They know about the bakery and the town and probably, fuck, probably Saul.
They know I moved on.
Except I didn’t move on. I just kept living. There’s a difference.
Isn’t there?
Are you okay?
Are you okay really meant, I’m thinking about you. Are you okay meant, I care if you’re hurting. Are you okay meant, I love you but I don’t know how to say it.
And now he’s asking again. After six weeks of silence. After I left without saying goodbye. After I built a life with someone else.
He’s asking if I’m okay.
I sink onto the stool behind the counter.
And then it hits. The ugly crying. The real shit. The kind with snot and open-mouthed gasps and the full Greek tragedy of my life collapsing on a pile of luxury confections.
I cry until I can’t anymore.
I’m having a full emotional breakdown in my bakery over chocolates while wearing an apron that says ‘Life is what you bake it.’
The universe has a sick sense of irony.
My phone is in my hand before I realize I’ve picked it up.
Saul’s number. One tap.
He answers on the second ring. “Hey. I’m about an hour out. Everything okay?”
“No.” The word comes out cracked. Broken. “No, I’m not okay.”
“What happened?” His voice sharpens. Shifts into marshal mode. “Are you hurt? Is someone there? Do I need to…”
“They found me.”
Silence.
“Dario sent chocolates. To the bakery. With a note.” I’m crying again, I realize. When did I start crying again? “He knows where I am. Saul, they know, and I don’t know what to do.”
More silence. Longer this time. I hear him breathing.
“I’m turning around,” he says finally.
“You don’t have to.”
