Chapter 20
Twenty
Conor
Is she trying to torture me, or am I torturing myself? Eloise’s thank you hug threw me off guard.
She’s probably just emotional. Today had to be hard for her, going back to the house where she thought she would embark on a life with the one person she loved most in the world. So, I figured the easiest way to keep her mind occupied would be to work on her list, and the easiest thing to cross off would be baking the cake. Plus, I don’t want to assume she’s going to include me in her quest to do everything on her bucket list, so I didn’t want to choose one of the bigger tasks.
“I found this recipe, but you can search for one yourself if you don’t like it.” I hand her my phone, and she hesitates before taking it.
I watch as she reads it over. Her hair is down in light waves and veils her face, blocking her reaction to the recipe I picked out.
“I think this is good. We should definitely try vanilla before we do anything fancy.” She digs into her purse hanging off the breakfast stool.
“What’s your favorite cake flavor?” I ask.
“Probably chocolate on chocolate.” She uses both hands to push her hair away from her face and secure her long strands in a bun. “You?”
“Red velvet with cream cheese.”
“Oh, that’s a good one too. Maybe that will be our third cake.” She chuckles.
I love the way she says our as if I’m on this adventure with her.
Her finger runs over the screen of my phone. “We have to get the butter soft and the eggs at room temperature.”
I take out the butter. “How much do we need?”
She looks up online the fastest way to get butter and eggs to room temperature without waiting hours, and fifteen minutes later, we’re blending the butter and sugar together.
“Do you mind if I inquire about today?” I ask while I measure the dry ingredients, and she takes care of the wet.
Eloise doesn’t look away from the bowl. “It wasn’t as terrible as I thought it would be. Weird, but refreshing in some ways. I’m still processing how I didn’t see that I could never be happy long term with Tristan. For example, we were going to stay at the house the night of the wedding, instead of a hotel. I envisioned this whole thing of him carrying me through the front door and rose petals leading up to our new bedroom.”
I grip the measuring cup more firmly, thinking about her in Tristan’s arms.
“But there wasn’t even a bottle of champagne in the fridge. Maybe I’m being presumptuous to think a guy would think of something like that. Maybe my expectations are out of line.”
She turns on the mixer again, leaving me no time to tell her that a guy who loved her would have wanted to do something like that for her and wouldn’t have to be told. That she just picked the wrong guy. But it’s best I keep those thoughts to myself. She turns off the mixer, and I sift the dry ingredients into a bowl.
It felt as though I needed a million little things to make this cake, and of course I didn’t have most of them at my place. Thankfully, the woman at the gourmet shop put together all the supplies. She thought it was cute when I told her I wanted to bake a cake from scratch, but there was a little disbelief in her expression when she wished me good luck.
“When we left, it felt good to have the weight of it off my shoulders, but it’s embarrassing at the same time. Makes me second-guess all my choices.”
“You probably got caught up in the whole wedding thing. It happens.” I shrug. “My mom and Kyleigh have seen it a bunch of times.”
She shakes her head with what looks like disappointment. “Kyleigh probably knew. Last fall, I stared at myself in this dress she picked out for me, and I froze. I knew then but didn’t want to admit it to myself.”
“You’re being way too hard on yourself.” I head over to her with the bowl of dry ingredients. “You ready for me?”
Her gaze lifts, and our eyes lock.
Damn, there’s that chemistry between us again. If she was mine, I’d say fuck the cake and pick her up by her hips, prop her up on the counter, and strip her down. I’d lick the sugar right off her skin, and it’d only be sweeter as a result.
She clears her throat. “Not yet, I have to add the vanilla.” Turning away from me, she snatches the bottle off the counter.
Eloise measures and adds the vanilla before flipping the switch on the mixer. Again, we’re quiet. She’s watching the mixing bowl, and I’m taking not-so-sly glances at her.
She’s so beautiful—inside and out. I can’t believe Tristan didn’t fight for her. That he just went on their honeymoon, probably with that jackass of a best man. I’d chase her to the ends of Earth to win her back if I were him.
“Okay, we’re ready. We’re supposed to add it slowly. You take control. Just a little bit at first and a little more and a little more. Well, you get the point.”
Our eyes meet, and I smile. “I can do slow.”
“Really? I figured you for fast and quick.” She laughs.
“Quick?” I cover my heart with my free hand. “I’m insulted.”
She turns on the mixer again, and I dump in a little bit of the dry mix, both of us watching it being incorporated into the wet ingredients. I add a little more and a little more. We’re so close, I can smell her shampoo and what I think is her natural scent.
After it’s all mixed, we pour the batter into two round cake pans I picked up and put them in the oven. She sets her timer on her phone. We clean up the mess together, her putting away the ingredients and me washing the dishes we used. I’ve never been like this with a woman besides Kyleigh, and I kind of don’t mind it. Maybe domestication isn’t as terrible as I assumed.
When we’re done cleaning up, she slides onto the stool. “Can we talk rent now?”
I chuckle and shake my head. “Let’s do one thing at a time.”
“Conor, don’t baby me. I’m not some charity case. It’s nice enough that you got all this stuff to bake a cake, but I’d like to pay you back.”
It’s not that I want to baby her. This is just in my nature.
“I don’t know if you know, but I’m a helluva hockey goalie and signed a great contract last year.” I wink at her, but she stares at me hard and long. Is that her mad face? I guess my attempt at humor didn’t work.
“I have a trust fund, Conor, I’m not destitute.”
“I didn’t think you were.”
“Are you sure? Because I feel as if you think I’m some woman who ran away from her rich fiancé and now has nothing.” She leans back in the chair and crosses her legs.
“Trust fund kid, huh?”
She shrugs. “Kind of.”
“You said you stopped working because Tristan wanted you to. What will you do now?”
Her mouth twists, and her cheeks turn a light apricot color. It’s cute. She’s embarrassed for some reason.
“I don’t know.” She holds up her hand before I can comment. “It’s not what you think though.”
“Who said I’m making assumptions?” I grab two waters out of the fridge, twist the cap off hers, and slide it over to her.
“Thanks.” She takes a sip and screws the cap back on. “It’s not that I don’t want to work, don’t want something for myself. I’m not content to just live off my trust fund, but I don’t know what I want to do. I told you about my parents never being married. You met Sam, who is my stepdad. I didn’t grow up like Tristan and his friends. My dad was still very absent most of my life. When he died, he left me what was more or less his trust fund. My dad was the guy who couldn’t fall in line with what his father wanted. He never took over the family business but traveled and acted like a playboy most of his life.”
“You don’t have to explain this all to me. I think it’s great if you don’t have to work and can live off that money. It’s a dream most people would probably want.”
“Except that it’s unfulfilling. After Tristan proposed, we discussed how I’d stay at home. His mom insisted that I would go with her to charity events and sit on boards until we had kids. My entire future was planned out for me.” She points at me. “You’re judging.”
I hold up my hands and back off, leaning my back against the counter behind me. “I just can’t imagine not playing hockey. Not doing what I love. But everyone is different. It’s your life to live.”
“I used to work in marketing for a large corporation, but on the side, I had this social media thing where I posted what I was wearing, where to get it, and stuff like that, but Tristan thought it was a dumb hobby and didn’t like how it took my attention away from him so he pressured me into giving it up.” She drops her head into her hands. “I sound pathetic.”
“You sound like someone who got caught up in a life she didn’t want and didn’t know how to escape. And that’s okay.”
I round the island and put my arm around her shoulders. She turns to me, wrapping her arms around my chest. I rest my chin on her head, holding her close and wishing I could take away all her sadness.
“I think you’re still processing everything, but maybe you need to stop dissecting everything from the past and start living for the now. I know it’s only been a couple days but focus on who you are now and who you want to be.”
She nods into my chest, and I squeeze her tighter.
The timer on her phone goes off, startling both of us. She turns it off, and we go to the oven, opening the door.
Eloise grabs the hot pads, and we both stare at the cake tin as she pulls it out because the cake hardly rose.
“Oh, boy, this is a disaster.” She takes them both out and puts them on the cooling rack, both of us glaring down at it.
“I’m not sure what we could’ve done wrong.” I scratch the back of my head.
She presses her thumb into one cake, and it bounces back as the recipe said it should, but it’s really thin. “We did something wrong.”
“We’ll try again.”
She sniffles.
I put my finger under her chin, bringing her face to mine. “Hey.”
“What if I’m just a failure now?”
I shake my head. “No. This was our first try. We’ll figure it out.”
Her face is full of doubt. I hate seeing that because at some point in her life, someone told her the world wasn’t hers for the taking. That mindset isn’t going to change just because she left Tristan. She’ll need a lot of support to change her view of herself.
“It will come,” I say. “You’re going to be okay. I promise.”
She sighs but doesn’t refute my promise. Although I still hope this roommate situation will grow into more, I have to set that agenda aside for now because Eloise needs to work on herself first. She needs to find self-confidence inside herself. Otherwise, we’d never make it anyway.