𝑀𝐴𝐺𝑀𝐴 | 𝐉𝐀𝐈𝐌𝐄 𝐑𝐄𝐘𝐄𝐒

𝟏𝟗 | 𝐓𝐀𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐀 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐄

・𝐑𝐄𝐈𝐍𝐀・

𝐒𝐎𝐌𝐄𝐇𝐎𝐖, 𝐒𝐇𝐄 𝐇𝐀𝐃 made it to work on time.

Her makeup was a little worse than usual, and she had risked getting pulled over with the speed she was driving at—but hey, she was on time, and that's all that mattered.

She went through her usual routine of getting the café ready. And despite her favourite music playing and all the cleaning she was doing, all she could think about was last night.

Well, there were two parts to that.

Her mind allowed her only a few moments to blush about the way Jaime had held her the night before. Nothing like that had ever happened before—not including the time she had woken up in his bed, but that had only been because she had dropped onto his bed after a night of partying and refused to move. Only for a second did she wonder if he had felt the same butterflies she did. She quickly reminded herself that he had only done that because he cared for her as a friend. Probably nothing more.

And with that out of the way, her thoughts settled to the worse of the two things. Her dream just flashed through her head, over and over again.

She didn't know what was so different this time. Why it hurt more. After all, nothing had changed.

She wondered, did her parents even think about her anymore? Did they search her up online, check what she was up to? What did her brother think of her?

After all these years, did they still hate her as much as they did before?

She would be lying if she said the thought of visiting them didn't interrupt her mind from time to time. At first, it seemed like an outlandish idea—her parents had hardly even liked her before the incident, what would make things any different? And she doubted that Henry would stick up for her either; judging by the fact that she never received any responses to her letters, he was done with her.

But things were different now. Reina was an adult. She had a good degree. She had her powers fully under control. She would definitely avoid mentioning her current job, but, surely, her aspirations to become a lawyer was impressive enough.

Now, she was exactly the daughter they wanted.

The clock showed that there was ten minutes left until she had to open. That gave her enough time to double-check that everything was ready, plus make herself a coffee.

All the coffee machines were cleaned and ready to go. She had finished doing all the leftover dishes from yesterday. All the pastries were in order, and all the little signs that had the names on it were perfectly legible. The sweeping was done, the tables and counter were wiped, and all of the lights were on. Everything was ready.

She debated for a moment what coffee to make herself. After the night she had had, she had an excuse to have something sweet.

Making a caramel macchiato required no thoughts from her at this point; she had made so many that she could just turn on autopilot. And with nothing else to distract her, her mind immediately went straight back to her family.

Their home wasn't that far—around four hours by car, she would guess—so it wasn't impossible for her to go over. But was she really thinking of going? She wasn't so sure she wanted to lift her own hopes up. After all, the possibility of them rejecting her was definitely bigger than the opposite.

But a chance to see Henry—to see how big he's gotten. That motivated her more than anything.

She sighed before she took a sip of her coffee, and then winced at how hot it was. She could figure this all out later; she needed to focus on work. Being the only one working would be difficult if her mind was on something else. She really wasn't in the mood to deal with complaining customers.