Page 92 of Sweet Ruin

Love.

Loyalty.

Even something as silly as payroll.

A few days ago, Skye listed that out without a second thought, stuck between “ingredients” and “insurance,” just one more in a long list of problems.

But payroll isn’t just payroll.

Payroll is Priya. Payroll is her daughter, the cutest little cherub who’s ever been born, who’s spent Saturdays here for as long as she can remember, eating the broken cookies out of the tray. Little Zara, who calls me Miss Delilah in a teeny, tiny, delicate voice.

Payroll is Angelica, who is putting a brother through school in Queens.

Payroll is Cameron, who I know for a fact has forty dollars in his account at any given moment.

Payroll is Jolene, who is sixty-four years old and works because Social Security isn’t enough to make ends meet anymore.

Payroll is people who trust me to do right by them.

So that’s what I’m going to do.

I wrap my arms around Pri and hug her as hard as I can. She holds on right back. She’s smaller than me by a lot, and shaking badly, but I try to hug her in a way that keeps all the pieces together. She deserves that.

She’s right: I don’t have to be her keeper or her savior or her servant. I don’t have to do that for anyone.

But I’m choosing to do it anyway.

That’s what love is.

“Listen to me,” I tell her fiercely. “This place is going to be here.”

She sniffs with her face pressed against my shoulder.

“This place is going to be here,” I say again. “I’m not losing the bakery. Whatever happens with Connor and the loan and my mother and the whole rotten circus, this building is going to stay mine, and you are going to keep your job, and every single thing under the sun is going to be okay.”

“You don’t have to make me promises⁠—”

“You and Zara are not going hungry,” I say, “and you’re not losing that apartment. That’s the promise. Not a maybe, not we’ll see how it goes. I’m telling you as your boss and I’m telling you as your friend. We. Will. Be. Okay. All of us. Do you hear me?”

She pulls back and looks up at me. Her eyes are swimming with more tears.

But she nods and says, “Okay.”

“Again,” I say, with a firm shake of her shoulders. “One more time with feeling.”

“Okay,” she says, cracking the tiniest of smiles. “We’ll be okay. All of us will be okay.”

“That’s the spirit. I love you, Pri.”

“I love you, too, Delilah.”

We hug once more, then struggle to our feet. It’s been a lot of emotions in a short and unexpected window, so we separate and lose ourselves in manual labor for a little while.

In a strange way, I almost feel settled. I don’t know what the future holds. There are a lot of holidays between now and Easter, and there’s so much I don’t know about what it means to spend them with Kane Makov.

But I know one thing:

I’m about to find out.