Chapter 26
NAOMI
I thought I’d learned long ago how not to cry.
My mother, the pillar of strength she was, had taught me the hard lesson in the back of her bakery. And on days where the pastelitos didn’t come out right or the oven burned you, on nights where the boy you liked didn’t call you back, it was your job as a strong, Miami-raised Cuban woman not to let the emotion reach your eyes.
I thought I’d learned that lesson.
But Sawyer shows me differently.
The second he leaves my apartment after Sevin, the numbness sets in, seeping slowly into my limbs. I turn off the oven, collect the burnt pastelitos from the floor.
And it isn’t until I pick up that last pastry that I think back to the day that everything changed—the day I found out my parents died in that awful car accident.
Aun
