Stuck In A Bakery (With You), Chapter 16


For a long moment, Marinette lay very still in Adrien's arms, facing away but remaining snuggled up.

Adrien's sense of panic mounted second by second. Having her next to me like this is... it's the most wonderful thing ever. And I have a feeling that I might've just prevented it from ever happening again...

"Marinette?" he told her, very gently. "You don't have to answer that if you don't want to. The last thing that I want to do right now is to make you uncomfortable... and here I am asking you about exactly that."

"It's okay," she replied. "Adrien... it's a fair question. And I haven't been fair with you about it before now."

"What do you mean by that?" Adrien wondered.

"I'm going to tell you. But you have to promise me that you'll let me say all that I have to say, and not interrupt me... and that you'll let me ask you something else before you... do anything. Is that okay?" asked Marinette, quietly.

"It is," said Adrien. "But you can stop any time that you want to. I promise that, too."

"I have never meant to lie to you about... well... anything, Adrien," she began. "And for the most part, I never have. Everything about how much I treasure our friendship, how happy I am to have you here with me this week, how relieved I am that you're safe, how much I think of you as a person and as a friend... all of that is absolutely true. And none of that will ever change."

"I'm very glad to hear that... because you know how wonderful I think that you are," replied Adrien. "And the closer that we've gotten this week, the more I've..."

"Stop, please," Marinette halted him. "You are very sweet, as always... but I need to keep going with this."

"...Okay. You have my complete attention," Adrien agreed. "I want to hear it, very much. And I want you to know that you can always come to me about anything... I don't care what it is, Marinette. I'll always try to be easy for you to talk to."

"The first time that a girl falls in love... I don't think it's supposed to be easy," whispered Marinette.


Time... and space... and probably breathing as well, at least momentarily... simply stopped for Adrien Agreste, all at once.


"It started as a crush," said Marinette, forcing the words out of herself now that she had no choice but to continue. "I mentioned that day on the school steps, the one with your umbrella..."

"Uh-huh," Adrien gasped, unable to add anything more yet.

"You woke something up in me that day, Adrien Agreste. It's not like I didn't know what boys were before that... but something about your kind gesture, how you needed to make things right with me, just... lit a flame in me," she blushed. "Like nothing that I'd ever felt before. That was how it started. And I had absolutely no idea what to do next."

"So I... flailed around, trying to make sense of it to myself. Trying to get your attention without being too annoying," smiled Marinette. "A lot of little things, friendly things, that registered as 'friendly' to you because I couldn't tell you that I was putting my heart behind them. I'm the kind of person who can be better with gestures than words... especially when a handsome boy makes my tongue twist and my balance fail me every time he smiles at me."

"You seem awfully good with words right now, Marinette," whispered Adrien.

"Right now, things are... a little different," she replied. "So there were even little gifts, like your lucky bracelet... and I just melted the day that you made me one to match... or the scarf that I made you for your birthday. Or a Valentine that I forgot to-"

"Wait. Wait," gasped Adrien. "The blue scarf? Marinette, that was from you?"

"It was," Marinette admitted, shyly. "I brought it to your house, but didn't sign the card. Then I, well... snuck into your party and I did sign it and I don't know what happened from there. But it meant a lot to you that your father got it for you... so it wasn't so important to me to correct that."

She stole a glance back at him, and saw awe and wonder in his face. "Unfortunately," she told him, "that's not the lie I was referring to."


Adrien felt a strong urge to spin Marinette around and to kiss her with every bit of emotion he had in him... but, knowing that he'd promised to hear her out first, he held it back.

"So, yes... that day after Troublemaker, when I shut my locker door and there you were! And I was beyond embarrassed that Jagged Stone ran his mouth on live TV..." Marinette continued, "you asked me if I thought of you that way, if I had a crush on you. And I lied right to your face! Even after you called me out on that, you were kind enough to pretend that I wasn't."

"It's not that you don't have an impeccable fashion sense," she smiled as an afterthought, "but all those pictures on my wall had nothing to do with that."

"And at the wax museum..." Adrien prompted her.

"...Alya was pushing me very hard to confess to you that day. So I thought I'd get some practice in with your statue... and then it was actually YOU... and I just wanted to turn into a bird and fly away," she lamented. "I've never been more embarrassed in all my life than I was right then."

"Oh! ...Alya knew about your feelings?" asked Adrien. "And she never told Nino? Because he never told me."

"Everybody knew, Adrien. Our whole class does. Ms. Bustier does, I'm sure of it. Kagami knows. It's not like I'm very good at hiding it..." she breathed, beginning to cry. "Except from you."

Adrien's arm around her waist squeezed her just a little more tightly, feeling the emotions rolling through her. "I... Marinette... can I say something, briefly?" he asked.

"...Y-yes," she whispered.

"I need to tell you that I didn't know. Not for a very long time... and even then, never for sure. I truly wish that I had, for a lot of reasons," he replied, getting choked up himself. "I... thought that I'd figured it out once, when you left me a note... and then I compared it to that sweet, sweet Valentine I'd gotten without a name on it... and the handwriting matched. But by then, I thought that you were with Luka."

"I'm not with Luka. Not like that," said Marinette. "He's an absolute darling, and it could happen someday... but it hasn't. I don't know that it ever will, and if it doesn't, it's not his fault. He's been nothing but honest and open with me."

"That... is very good information for me to know," gulped Adrien. "But if you felt strongly about me all along... if you had feelings that were so strong... why didn't you ever tell me?"

Slowly, Marinette rotated in his arms, so that they were now face-to-face.


"I would never have hurt you, Marinette. You know that, right?" he pleaded with her. "But if I had known..."

"...Remember what I said about not being brave, about holding myself back because I was afraid that I'd get hurt?" Marinette said, her blue eyes wide and innocent. "That doesn't... just go away. It's easy to fall back into that when I'm scared. And when I looked at you every day and felt my heart pound, my thoughts jumble up, my body quiver... I was so scared that you wouldn't feel the same way, that you would say 'no, I don't like you like that.' Or 'no, there's someone else,' because of course someone sweet and smart and beautiful like you could have your pick of anyone."

"You... might be a little bit wrong about that," Adrien ventured.

"But I know that there was someone else, right?" asked Marinette. "You told me so yourself, that day in the car. That's when I knew that Kagami had-"

"I... I didn't mean Kagami that day," replied Adrien.

That froze Marinette in place. "Kagami... wasn't 'the girl that you love?'" she gasped, dumbstruck.

Adrien's eyes closed, realizing his slip-up. "Not then. Not yet," he whispered. "And... I can't tell you who it was. It's... very complicated, okay? But I can tell you this much; I just said 'who it was' and I meant that. It was my own hopeless crush, and it didn't work out, and I'm doing my best to move on from that now."

Looking at her face as it screamed out at him silently, begging to understand, he added, "I promise to you that that is the truth. Can you trust me on that for now, Marinette?"

"I... can," she agreed, reluctantly. "You're not the liar here."


"Marinette..." Adrien said, locking eyes with her once more, "there is a difference between lying and not being able to say certain things. About protecting your own feelings, about not understanding what they meant or what to do about them. I don't want you to feel bad about any of that, okay? You did what was right for you at the time."

"And if there was someone else who had your heart back then," Marinette replied, "maybe I was right to do so."

"I'm not thinking about then right now, Marinette. I'm thinking about now. How there is this wonderful, amazing, beautiful girl in my arms right now, and it humbles me how m-much she cares about me. It nearly made me cry last night. I want to c-cry right now," he managed. "And as b-brave as you were right now telling me all of this - and don't tell me that you weren't! I gave you an out, you didn't have to confess it all like this," he assured her...

"...there's something that I need to tell you in return."

"B-before you do that..." Marinette insisted, with urgency in her voice, "I said that I had to ask you something else first. I really, really do."

"...Okay," Adrien replied, backing down from his own confession. "Please, ask me."

"Adrien," sighed Marinette, "one reason that I could say what I just did, why I could be so comfortable with you this week... is that I know that you're with Kagami now. I managed to, well... accept that. It's not that I think any less of you, that my feelings for you are less than they were. They've grown so much deeper this week, if anything! I feel like you're... you're... a part of my life that I could never be without."

"I do, too," glowed Adrien. "I..."

"...And it would be very easy for me to fall head-over-heels for you all over again," Marinette declared, almost as a warning. "For me to love you... that way... instead of as your dear, dear friend. So I'm going to ask you something, before you do something right now that we both, um... might end up regretting before long. If we do... what I feel like we might be about to do..."

"...What are you going to tell Kagami about that?" she asked him.


Adrien processed that for a moment, the weight of it hitting him squarely.

"I... I'm not sure yet," he managed, finally. "I need a little time to think before I... we... yeah, you're right."

"Take all the time you need," Marinette told him, solemnly. "You don't have to change anything between us."

"You don't think that I want to?" asked Adrien, incredulously. "After hearing what you just told me?"

"I know that you're very much into Kagami. And she thinks the world of you, too," Marinette soothed him. "What we have... is something special, Adrien. But I want you and her to be happy, too. And I don't want you to lose what you have there to be with someone that... well... you already have, in other ways."

Adrien closed his eyes in frustration. "Kagami did know, by the way. She told me that you have feelings for me... and I didn't listen to her, I didn't believe her," he groaned. "One reason that I let things with her move forward was that I thought I knew that you weren't... you would never..."

"And that's m-my fault," Marinette gasped. "Completely. Not yours, not hers. So I'll make you a deal."

"What's that?"

"I want you to take whatever time you need and think about all of this. That means talking with Kagami... face to face, when you're able," Marinette insisted. "Even if you decide to... change your mind... nobody's dumping anyone over text messages or on the phone, no matter what. And you might see her again in a week or two, and your heart might swell up and you might fall for her all over again..." she added, "and if that happens... if I have my own place in your life, I'll be so happy for you."

"But if we start doing more than... this now...," she sighed, "that makes everything ten times more complicated. And do not get me wrong, Adrien Agreste..." she added, looking up at him. "Right now, I want to kiss you so much that it hurts me. It feels like heaven, you holding me like this. But we shouldn't open that next door yet... if we ever do. We need to get back to our normal lives, whenever we can, and figure things out from there. And you have things that you need to figure out first."

"Though, I will admit..." she smiled, leaning in close again, "I will take all the cuddles that you're giving out. We both need them right now."

Adrien pulled her in as tightly as he could, hugging her, her head on his shoulder.

"I just... I just needed to be honest with you tonight, Adrien. To tell you the truth," Marinette whispered. "You deserve to hear it. To know."

"Marinette?" he whispered back. "I love you, too."

"I know you do, Adrien," he heard her say, very quietly. "I know."