Sweetly & Home Economically ✔

Epilogue

Holy sheet cake. This is it, Sweeties.

- Epilogue -

~¤°*°*°*°¤~

"I just want to make sure everything is on track for the grand opening."

"So why are you calling me?"

I bit my lip and spun on my heels to avoid Theo's piercing gaze. His patience was running out, if the heat prickling the back of my neck was any indication.

"Because my parents won't tell me," I muttered. "And neither will Jarod and Yvette."

Eli's cackling was so loud that I pulled the phone away from my ear and scowled at it.

"I wonder why," he shouted, "you dumbass!"

"Listen, you little shit-" I started, all of my patience gone.

Eli chuckled at me, "I'll never get used to you swearing. Anyway, stop bothering everyone and enjoy your-"

The phone was snatched out of my grasp, almost forgotten when Theo's lips brushed along the curve of my neck up to my ear.

He finished Eli's sentence in a heated whisper, "Honeymoon."

With a resigned sigh and fall of my shoulders, I watched as he turned my phone off and stuffed it into my luggage case. As if that wasn't enough, he wheeled it into the closet and closed the door.

"You know, I was wearing him down."

"The only one you should be wearing down right now is me," he said, prowling back over to me. "And I," he reached out and unzipped my jacket to push it off of my shoulders, "should be doing the same to you."

"I agree," I said, sliding his leather jacket off to join mine on the floor, "but it's not too much to ask for a little reassurance."

"Abigail?"

I smiled sweetly, "Theoden?"

He smiled back, appearing to be completely unbothered by my use of his full name. I knew what to look for though and smirked when I saw the slightest twitch of his eye.

"I assure you that both bakeries will be fine. We don't open the second one for another month and your parents have everything covered while we're away. What happened to the girl who stopped trying to handle everything on her own?"

She was still there, but it was hard being so far away when the preparations were on the cusp of either falling into place or falling apart.

A second bakery came about because Stressed thrived after we reopened it, even more so than before the fire. Theo and I kept working there through college. I couldn't see myself in a job anywhere else. I even found that I enjoyed the business side of it too, not just the baking and atmosphere.

Working alongside Theo was the frosting on the cake. Speaking of cakes, when Jennifer came back to work, my mom followed through and hired him as a cake decorator. He loved doing it so much that he practiced and honed his skills until his cakes were masterpieces. He was getting orders from all over the state and sometimes outside of it.

When Theo and I got engaged, we sat down with my parents to talk about the future and expanding the business. They offered to let us run Stressed together, while they operated a second location.

He and I took a few months to weigh the decision because I had to make sure it was what he wanted too, and that he wasn't just doing it for me. My parents took that time to think about the new venture as well, and we all came to the same conclusion.