Ren

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2

EmryThere were bad days, and then there were no good, very bad, horrible days. Putting your underwear on backward was a sure sign that the day had already been ruined and the safest bet was to crawl back into bed and wait it out.

Emry dressed and hauled her butt out the door because the proverbial donuts would not make themselves. Her day started at four, and she rolled up to the bakery before the birds and anyone with sense was awake. In the summer, the early hours were cool and quiet. In the winter, she questioned her life choices that involved a bakery and letting her sister take the apartment above the shop. Gemma just rolled out of bed and she was ready for work.

When Emry found her twin sister bloodied and bruised outside the bakery’s back door, she knew she should have gone back to bed. This was a no good, very bad, horrible kind of day.

“Did they…” Emry’s mind blanked at the blood smeared across her sister’s mouth. So many bad things could happen to a woman, and she didn’t want anything like that ever happening to Gemma.

Gemma shook her head, tissue pressed to a corner of her mouth. “Sent a message with their fists this time.”

Emry fetched the first aid kit from the bakery. She set about cleaning up Gemma. Her hands shook with anger, but that was fine. Anger kept her focused because fear didn’t do her any good.

The blood smeared across her cheek looked terrible, but it cleaned up easily. She pressed the alcohol swab to Gemma’s split lip, dabbing at the mess. Gemma hissed but did not flinch. “What happened?”

“I went out with Charlie last night.”

Emry’s back went up. Gemma’s friend always had a smug grin that made her dislike him. “I hate Charlie.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I hate him if he hit you.”

“This wasn’t his fault. He got busted up, too.” She repeated a familiar story. She went out for drinks with her friend and ran into a bill collector. Not the respectable, works-in-a-call-center kind of bill collector. “I told Charlie to be chill, but he went all white knight on me, which made it worse. So, they had to slap us around to make their point.”

“Oh, Gemma. None of that is okay.”

“It’s just money. We’ll find it,” Gemma said.

Just money.

“Because we’re rolling in it, Gemmy-bean,” Emry said with no small amount of sarcasm.

She briefly had a fortune after her match to an alien, but she returned promptly to Earth and opened a bakery with Gemma. Before the Invasion, before their father had grown ill from cancer, the LeBeaux Bakery had been a neighborhood institution. Two generations of LeBeaux-baked bread and decorated cakes in a small storefront. Reopening the bakery had been Gemma’s dream for as long as Emry could remember.

When their father lay on the sofa, too tired to do anything more than nap, Gemma planned. When the aliens dropped bombs, Gemma held her hand and whispered about the delicacies they would make. Such beautiful and astounding pastries that they had to be magic, sprinkled with stardust. They concocted fantastic recipes, unicorn cookies, and pixie cupcakes.

The money paid to her as compensation for upending her life and shipping her off to a radioactive planet—even if her stay only lasted two days—was a windfall. While the bakery had always been Gemma’s dream, she was glad to bring unicorn cookies and pixie cupcakes to life.

The Draft hung over Gemma, as it did every woman on Earth. Some of Emry’s alien cash went to a fixer who made Gemma’s name vanish from the Mahdfel database. That cost a pretty penny, but hey, problem solved. Money well spent.

Illegal? Hella. Uncommon? Not really.

Understandable? Very.

Only those shady people now had dirt on Gemma and threatened to report her if she didn’t pay. The blackmail demands had been steadily increasing for the year, growing from something they could budget for into something that broke the bank.

But then people who removed Gemma from the Draft blackmailed her. A payment here, some money there, and no one would suggest that the Feds look closely at Gemmarae LeBeaux.

Why not blow the whistle on the greedy bastards? Because prison. Anyone caught manipulating the genetic tests—either via DNA, database hack, or plain old no-showing for testing—was sentenced to prison. The punishment far outweighed the crime, in Emry’s opinion. Policy left too many people vulnerable and afraid to call the authorities for help.

“You know what I think we should do,” Emry said.

“I’m not a snitch,” Gemma said.

“It’s not snitching when you’re being blackmailed.”

She knew they were codependent, and it wasn’t exactly a healthy coping mechanism. As kids, they survived an honest-to-goodness alien invasion after watching their father fade away from a cruel illness. But they survived and everything would be okay. And it was until one night, long after life had returned to normal, a drunk driver took their mother.

Welcome to the new normal.

It was just her and Gemma and their damn bakery against the world.

“We’ll figure it out,” Gemma pleaded, dark eyes wide. “Come on, say, ‘Gemmy-bean, we’ll be okay.’”

Emry couldn’t, though. They couldn’t bake enough cupcakes and croissants to keep from drowning. These people had their hooks in Gemma and Emry. Nothing about this was okay.

“Change into something clean. The donuts aren’t going to make themselves,” she said.

Gemma worked the kitchen, and she worked the front. Usually, their roles were reversed. Emry was the better cook, and she didn’t need people gawking at her face. Gemma was better at schmoozing with the customers.

Today, however, Gemma jumped every time the computer chimed when a new customer walked through the bakery doors. If the people she owed money to wanted to pay her a visit during working hours, a flimsy half-wall would not stop them.

“Where’s your sister, darling? She’s always so amusing,” an older woman asked, her silvery gray hair in braids and twisted into an impressive updo.

“Zits. Like, wow, you wouldn’t believe. Now she’s too vain to show her face.”

Gemma shouted something rude from the back, and the woman chuckled.

Charming even when she was in the wrong. Emry felt a quick stab of jealousy because no one chuckled when she had a bad day and let out a few choice words. People either politely ignored her, eyes sliding over her scar and, consequently, her whole damn person, or they blanched like she was some monster that escaped the basement.

Fuck, she really hated working the front.

When the rush died down, Emry used the lull to break up the giant iceberg in the ice machine. The machine had a bad habit of shutting down overnight, causing the ice to melt and refreeze in a massive lump. It made Emry’s life easier—and let her blow off some steam—to go at it with an ice pick during service lulls.

The bakery wasn’t where Emry imagined herself when she entered culinary school with Michelin stars in her eyes, but it was a good enough place. Decent, at least.

Being in debt to people who you shouldn’t be in debt to hadn’t been the plan.

Thwack.

The ice pick stuck true, breaking off a large chunk. Gemma should have spent her ill-gotten loan on a better ice machine. Instead, she put a down payment on a larger shop with a huge kitchen, shiny new equipment, and mediocre parking. The tiny lot filled up fast during peak hours.

She told her not to worry about foot traffic. They’d do more special orders and catering.

Thwack.

The bakery wasn’t a mistake. It had eked by at the smaller location. Now they could barely afford rent and the interest on the loans. She worked all hours. Gemma worked just as much as her. Up before dawn and a few hours after the shop closed, cleaning and prepping for the next day.

Thwack. Thwack. c***k.

She was just so thoughtless. It didn’t come from a bad place, just misguided enthusiasm.

Maybe they should lose the bakery.

The thought crept in, and it felt like a betrayal. Interstellar cruise ships were always hiring cooks. She liked working in a busy kitchen more than baking bread and technicolor cookies. The more she had to make complex pastries and tiered wedding cakes, the more she craved simplicity. Stuffing people full of her favorite stick-to-your-ribs comfort foods sounded appealing.

Right out of culinary school, she and Gemma landed jobs on a cruise ship. It was busy work in a kitchen that never closed but satisfying. She worked until she felt she was chopping and prepping in her sleep, her hands jerking with the movement of an invisible blade. Gemma got to indulge herself in creating overly complex desserts that wowed the crowds.

It was good until it wasn’t, and that was all Emry’s fault. Her mouth. Again. The thing about cruise ships they never tell you is that they’re small. Even if the ship is huge, it’s small. Everyone is a passenger. There’s nowhere to go to blow off steam. When you’re sitting on the observation deck, having a drink, watching the stars, and trying to enjoy some time off, you’re still on the clock when a passenger comes along and starts making demands.

Some entitled passengers acted like the staff were personal servants, and Emry had enough. It wasn’t a huge deal, she thought, when she told the passenger she needed to ask someone else to take their food and drink order. What was a big deal, apparently, was telling off the manager who wrote her up for an adverse customer experience.

The next stop was feeding the crew on a commercial cargo ship, as long as she didn’t make any of her “strange Terran food.” That was decent enough until Gemma’s temper clashed with the captain. The smallest mistakes turned into infractions, which were docked from her—and Emry’s—pay. Unfair, true, but there was nothing to do but grin and bear it until they reached a port.

That had been a long two months, especially since Gemma couldn’t seem to keep her opinions to herself. Emry felt no remorse about walking away from that gig.

Shortly after, she was matched to Ren, and that experience turned out so well.

Then the shenanigans with the bakery. Cue two-and-a-half years later…

“Did the ice behave inappropriately?” a male voice cut in, chuckling.

Emry stabbed the ice prick into the frozen lump before turning her attention to the customer at the counter. An alien.

“Yeah, it was talking smack about my momma,” she said.

The man, violet complexion, and iron-gray horns picked up a laminated menu from the counter. “Anything I should avoid?”

“Everything’s good, but if you’re asking about allergens, Earth food is safe for aliens.”

“What do you recommend?”

“If you’ve got a grudge against your cardiovascular health, I’d suggest the sunrise croissant.” A poached egg smothered in three slices of cheese on a croissant. It was disgustingly delicious.

“Terran food. How adventurous. Let’s do that and a coffee.” The man set down the menu with a flourish, and Emry rolled her eyes at the showboating.

She poured coffee while the egg cooked in the microwave. Look, the sandwich was something anyone could make behind the counter in a limited space. It wasn’t fine cuisine.

“Nice place you have here,” the alien said, perusing the treats in the display case. “What does your mate think about it?”

“I’m not married,” she said without thinking. “I mean, he’s away and—”

“Sent you to Earth. Yes. I read the file.” His fingers tapped along the glass case. “Very vague. Sent you to Earth. That could mean almost anything.”

Emry clutched at the collar on her shirt, covering up the bite mark. The alien—not just an alien, a Mahdfel—made her feel exposed.

The microwave dinged, and she slapped together the sandwich. With no pride in her work, she shoved it in a paper bag. As an afterthought, she grabbed a plastic lid for the disposable coffee cup. “I recommend that you take your order to go.”

“Does it taste better if it’s to go?” His eyes sparkled, clearly enjoying toying with her, dangling bits of information about her that no one knew besides Gemma.