When Lucy and I get to the shop, she helps me carry in the food, cakes and tiny creme brûlée cups covered in foil. As she enters the shop, she wears a mile-long smile. Murph is busy with a customer, leaning over an old man’s arm. When he glances up, he gives us a genuine smile. When his eyes meet mine, they’re soft and apologetic, a far cry from the brooding stern man I met the first time I walked in here.

It’s not the same as rich words, but it does something to melt the bitterness still wrapped around my heart.

To be totally honest, I mostly brought Lucy because I wasn’t sure I could be alone with him yet. I need a buffer, someone to lighten the mood or else I was afraid I’d end up throwing punches again.

Lucy and I take the cakes to the back, leaving them for Logan when he comes in later. Murph usually works the daytime shifts, I’ve noticed, and I’m glad. I don’t know if I can face his friends just yet. I just want the humiliation from last night to wear off so we can go back to the way things were...before everything changes again in two weeks.

After a few moments, Murph comes in the back and picks up Lucy, who’s looking around like she’s in the coolest place on earth.

“Thanks for bringing them by,” he says to both of us without looking me in the eye.

I want to forgive him. So bad. But something about it still hurts.

“Hey, little Lucy. There’s a big chair out front where you can watch for people to come in. If anyone walks in, you call for me, okay?”

She nods with a big smile.

“Here,” he says, grabbing a sketchpad from his desk and handing it to her with a set of pens. “Draw me something.”

She’s gone, rushing up front and clearly excited to have some purpose at his shop.

“That’ll bring in the business,” I say with a laugh, but his light smile for Lucy is gone. He’s watching me with so much remorse in his eyes, I can’t even look at him.

What if his midnight apology was from the liquor too? What if he’s not sorry and meant what he said?

But before I can say another word, he takes my hand and pulls me to his body. I rest against the hard wall of his chest as he buries his face in my neck, his hands sliding in my hair and around my waist.