Page 72 of Always Been His

“But if he likes you, he’ll make it work,” I press.

“It’s fine,” she insists, moving to the cooling rack and lifting the cardamom rolls off with more attention than they require. “I don’t want to make it work. Dom dreams of travel and law and the whole world, and I like it here. I’ve always liked it here. This bakery, this town, this life. It’s mine and I built it and I’m not leaving it.” She sets a roll on the rack with a decisive click. “We went in with our eyes open. When he goes to New York, it’ll be over.”

“You already said it’s fine twice,” I point out.

“Because it is fine.”

“Iris.” I deadpan.

“What?”

“You like him,” I murmur. “A lot.”

She goes still for half a second. Then she resumes moving the rolls.

“Yeah,” she admits, finally looking up at me, her blue eyes steady and a little tired. “I like him a lot. But it doesn’t matter, because I’m not going to ask someone to put their entire future on hold for me, and he isn’t going to ask me to give up everything I’ve built here for New York. We’re both too practical for that.”

“You know what’s funny?” I offer.

“What?” she clips.

“Your brother spent two years being furious at me for not fighting harder for us,” I tell her. “And here you are building an expiration date into something before you even have a chance to find out what it could be.”

“It’s completely different.”

“Is it?”

“Yes,” she huffs, setting the tray down. “Because Gray is here, and you’re a superstar who can technically be anywhere And also,” she points the spatula at me now, swapping it out for the rolling pin mid-argument in a way that is very Iris, “Gray is going to completely lose his mind when he finds out about Dom and me. He’ll be furious that his best friend touched his little sister, and he’ll stand there being hypocritical about it while he’s in love with my best friend, and I need you to be absolutely ready to point that out to him. Loudly.”

“I will point it out so loudly,” I promise.

“Good,” she mutters, turning back to the rack.

“He is a good person,” I offer, after a moment. “Dom. From everything Gray has ever told me, he genuinely cares about the people he loves.”

“He is leaving for law school.” Her voice has gone flat in a way that means she has said it to herself so many times, it has stopped feeling like a sentence and started feeling like weather. Something fixed. Something you cannot argue with, only endure. “It’s his dream and it should be. I would never want him not to go.”

“Two weeks,” I echo softly.

“Two weeks,” she confirms. “And if it is meant to be, he’ll come back.”

She says it calmly, like she made the choice in private and is only saying it out loud now to make it more real. I know that voice. I’ve used that voice. It’s the voice of someone who has already done the grieving in advance so the event doesn’t hurt as much when it arrives.

I don’t say any of this.

Because Iris Douglas has been quietly holding up everyone in her orbit since she was twelve years old, and if she has decided that this is hers to carry on her own terms, then the least I can do is let her carry it without adding to the weight.

I reach over and lift a cardamom roll off the rack without asking.

“Sienna,” she warns.

“You owe me at least one,” I return, taking a bite. It’s still warm, the sugar crystallized on top, the cardamom sitting deep and sweet in the dough the way it only does when someone genuinely knows what they are doing. My eyes close for half a second. “Iris. This is obscene. This is the best thing I’ve tasted in … years.”

She tilts her chin up slightly. “It’s called the Sienna Swirl.”

I look at her. “You named one after me even when we’re not speaking.”

“I named it before we weren’t speaking,” she mutters. “It’s been on the menu for six months. It was supposed to be a surprise for the next time you came home.” She pulls off a piece without asking, the same way she has been stealing food off my plate since first grade. “And then you came home and did what you did, so.”