The Sweet Spot by Ariel Ellman Read Free Book Online

while she waited for you to get out Bast, and when you refused parole I forced her to stop waiting. I couldn’t watch my beautiful sister wither up and waste away at twenty-two. She deserved more than that.”
    “It was complicated,” Sebastian whispered, staring back at Sawyer with haunted eyes. “I wasn’t wallowing with a six-pack on a recliner in a dark room like your fat her Soy. I wanted to be with Ani more than anything, I swear to you.”
    “But you made a choice not to be Bast, just like my dad made a choice not to be a father to us when we needed him most, and Ani found someone else who recognized her worth. She met someone else who loves her and has made her happy for the last ten years, someone she has a daughter with Bast,” Sawyer whispered, staring back into Sebastian’s eyes, which were raw with anguish.
    “I know,” Sebastian whispered back hoarsely.
    “I love you Bast and I’m so glad you’re finally out,” Sawyer choked. “You were the shining light of my childhood. I always understood why Ani loved you; I hero-worshipped you my whole childhood. You were smart and strong, and kind and beautiful, and I wish that the accident never happened. I wish that you and Ani could have had your baby and lived happily ever after, but life went in a different direction Bast.”
    “And you have a new hero now,” Sebastian murmured, staring back at Sawyer thoughtfully.
    “It’s not that simple,” Sawyer protested weakly.
    “It never is Soy, it never is,” Sebastian replied quietly, leaning forward and kissing Sawyer’s forehead before he turned around and walked back to the bakery.
     
     

Chapter Five
     
    Sebastian returned to the bakery after he walked Sawyer home, and he spent the rest of the day there, watching Ani silently while she worked. He leaned against the bakery wall drinking coffee and casting Ani lascivious grins behind her customers’ backs, the suggestion in his eyes turning her face red.
    “Knock it off,” Ani laughed when they were alone and Sebastian pulled her behind the curtain and into the kitchen.
    “Do you remember our first kiss in your kitchen?” Sebastian asked huskily, pressing Ani against the counter and sliding his hands under her apron.
    “It was the reason I started baking again after my mother died,” Ani whispered back, staring into Sebastian’s eyes as he kissed her softly. “It was the day I made lemon bars again.”
    When An i’s mother died after a short and brutal battle with breast cancer the spring Ani turned twelve, she stopped baking for a year.  Sawyer would lay her mother’s purple ruffled apron out on the counter every day after school and take out butter to soften for scones every weekend morning, but Ani walked by them as if they didn’t exist.
    All of Ani’s memories of her mother were in the kitchen. Growing up, Ani and Sawyer woke in the mornings to the smell of freshly baked bread and they went to sleep at night with cookie crumbs clinging to their lips. Their mother tucked hot cross buns into their hands when they ran out of the house in the mornings and they tried to guess what cake would be waiting for their tea when they got home at the end of the day.
    Their mother’ s death was devastating for both sisters, but it hit Ani especially hard because of the baking connection that she had with her mother. By the time she was six, she was inventing recipes alongside her mother in the kitchen, and at ten, she was running a successful lemonade stand with her own creations, including her famous lemon bars and chocolate frosted spice cakes.
    “It was such a rough year,” Sebastian murmured as he and Ani thought back to the day of their first kiss. “You’d been driving me crazy for six months.” Sebastian lifted Ani up and sat her on the counter in front of him. “You were my best friend and had been trailing after me since you were in diapers, but then suddenly something happened to you.” Sebastian’s eyes filled with wonder at