Chapter 15
Ariana
WHAT DEMON POSSESSED ME?
I’m not a professional baker.
I can see why people might assume that—especially since one of my brothers is a classically trained chef—but I’m fully self-taught.
Back in high school I worked at the coffee shop part-time, when it was still called Jitters and Miss Lydia owned the place.
She’s the one who taught me everything I know about coffee.
How to source beans, what certifications mean, different brewing methods, roasting practices—things most people don’t even realize go into a single cup.
At the time, she outsourced the bakery items from a shop in Badger Canyon and split the profits with them.
I never intended to make coffee my full-time career. Truthfully, I had no idea what I wanted to do.
My parents encouraged me to take a gap year after high school to figure things out. It was harder than I expected—Layla had moved away for school, and it was the first time we’d ever really been apart—but that year ended up changing everything for me.
I went from working part-time to full-time.
The first six months were great. I still hadn’t figured out my long-term plans, but it felt good to have a routine, to carve out something that was just mine.
Then, unexpectedly, Miss Lydia had a massive stroke.
Her daughter had never worked for the business, so most of the responsibility suddenly fell to me. At first I thought I would drown trying to keep everything running overnight, but the opposite happened. I found that I loved it even more.
Not having Miss Lydia around was incredibly sad, though. I was determined to keep things running smoothly so that when she came back, the shop would be exactly how she left it.
Except she never did come back.
She recovered from the stroke, but her mobility never fully returned. Eventually she offered to sell me the shop. At nineteen, I was just optimistic and na?ve enough to go to my parents and ask if they’d help me buy it.
I know how lucky that makes me. Not everyone has parents they can turn to like that, and I’ve never taken for granted the fact that mine believed in me enough to take the risk.
That’s how I ended up becoming a business owner before I was legally able to drink.
I was completely in over my head, but I refused to fail. I learned everything I could about running a business—taking online classes, enrolling in business courses, leaning on my dad’s expertise to better understand the financial side of things.
And little by little, I started changing things.
To keep costs down, I phased out the outsourced baked goods and started experimenting with recipes of my own. Customers were surprisingly into it, and before long every pastry in the case was made in-house.
It doubled my workload, but for the first time in my life I felt like I was doing exactly what I was meant to do. I didn’t have to stress about finding a career path anymore.
I’d already found it.
Miss Lydia passed away about a year after her stroke. But before that, she used to stop in whenever she could. She’d sit at the counter with a cup of coffee and watch the shop buzzing around her, always telling me how proud she was.
After she was gone, I decided it was time to make the place more me. I rebranded the shop to Novel, changed the décor, and combined my two biggest passions—coffee and books.
Every day I’m grateful this place somehow landed in my lap. And when it feels like nothing else in my life is under control, I come here and my nerves settle.
This place is my center.
But as much as I’m trying to get lost in baking, my mind keeps going back to everything that happened today. It gets especially worse when I move on to laminating the croissant dough.
I’m almost to the final fold on the dough when a knock at the front door nearly sends me into a panic.
I press a hand to my chest, waiting for my heart to relocate back to where it belongs. After a moment of calming myself down, I tiptoe out of the prep room and peer through the dark shop toward the glass door.
Cole is standing on the other side of it, illuminated by the streetlamp. His hands are in his jacket pockets, breath fogging in the cold air.
I should probably just let him stand there, let him think I’m not here.
He knocks again. “Doll, I know you’re in there. Your car is out front.”
I wince, exhaling a breath. Guess I didn’t think that one through.
His smug grin greets me as I unlock the door.
“What are you doing here? It’s midnight.”
“Twelve fourteen,” he says as he walks through.
When I stay silent, he clears his throat to fill the space.
“I couldn’t sleep. I was driving around and I saw your car and I—” He pauses, dragging a hand through his hair. “I wanted to apologize. For earlier. The way I acted with Wes—I was out of line and I know that.”
I cross my arms to shield against the cold bleeding in from the gust of air that snuck through with Cole. He looks like he means it, which is somehow more disarming than if he didn’t.
“You were out of line,” I say quietly. “It was embarrassing.”
“I know.”
“You don’t get to decide who I go out with, Cole.”
“I know that too.” His jaw tightens, not in anger—more like he’s holding something back.
“I’m not going to pretend I had some noble reason for doing it.
I didn’t. I just—I didn’t like the way he was looking at you.
Maybe I read the whole thing wrong, but from my perspective, he was looking at you like something to conquer, and I’d hate to see you go into a situation like that unprepared.
And honestly, I just don’t like the dude, and that’s the truth. ”
I take a step back, trying to process everything he just said. “I need to sit.”
He follows me further inside as I claim a seat on the plush green velvet sofa I rarely get a chance to sit in. He settles across from me on a leather chair.
For a while neither of us says anything. The shop is warm and quiet, the only sounds the buzz of the refrigerators and my own ragged, nervous breathing.
He kind of has a point. Maybe Wes is only trying to sleep with me—but I’d argue a lot of men are like that.
Either way, I’m not ready for casual sex.
I’m not even sure I’m ready for sex in a relationship.
I know almost nothing. Who’s going to have the patience for that?
And worse, who’s going to take advantage of it?
I’m completely out of my element. If I don’t make a change now, there’s no telling when I’ll ever let someone in like that. And maybe some part of me wants to prove the girls wrong—that I don’t need their help, that I can figure this out without setups or apps.
And for some reason…I think Cole could help me.
It’s now or never. If I don’t bring it up, the window won’t be reopening.
“I’ve been thinking,” I say finally. “About your proposition.”
Confusion clouds his eyes. He opens his mouth to speak but the words seem to get trapped.
“About the date you need for that wedding,” I continue. “About us pretending to be a couple.” I keep my gaze down, or else I might not make it through this. “I think I want to do it.”
“Okay,” he drawls out carefully. Like he thinks I’m not being serious.
There’s no possible way to explain what I want out of the deal without sounding pathetically desperate. But I have to do it anyway.
I fidget with the tassels on a throw pillow, still unable to look Cole in the eye. “The thing is, I want something in return…”
After a stretch of silence, I force myself to look at him.
The look on his face doesn’t give much away, but he nods, waiting for me to continue.
“Well, you remember hearing me and Layla talk. How I don’t have a ton of experience…”
Cole’s expression slowly morphs, going from confused to disbelief to shock before landing on something that looks suspiciously intrigued. “Are you asking”—he leans toward me as if someone might hear him even though we’re alone—”are you asking about sex?” he whispers.
He looks genuinely scandalized, and embarrassment climbs up my throat quicker than vomit. I never imagined I could feel so humiliated from my own doing.
I cover my face in my hands, elbows resting on my thighs. Now would be a lovely time to spontaneously combust. What demon possessed me to ask Cole to have sex with me? Because clearly, I’m possessed.
“Hey.” His voice is gentle, which is somehow worse than if he’d laughed. “Look at me.”
I shake my head, face still firmly planted in my palms.
“Ariana.”
“I’m going to need a minute.”
“You don’t need a minute. Look at me.”
Slowly, with the energy of a sloth, I lower my hands.
Cole is leaning forward in the chair, forearms on his knees, close enough that I can see his expression clearly. He’s not laughing at me. He’s not wearing the smug grin I was bracing for. He just looks—steady. Calm in a way that makes me want to crawl out of my own skin a little less.
“Say it again,” he says. “Without the hands this time.”
I stare at him, shaking my head. “I don’t think I can.”
He waits with all the patience in the world. Like he could wait here until the sun came up if he had to.
I pull in a long inhale through my nose.
“I want—I want you to help me figure out what I’m doing.
With all of it. Dating and…and the physical stuff.
I don’t want to go into whatever comes next clueless, and I especially don’t want to make a fool of myself if things eventually progress with Wes or someone else.
” I press my lips together. “That’s what I want in return. Lessons. That kind.”
It’s out in the open now, sitting between us, and way too big to ever take back.
Cole stares at me for a long moment. Something is moving behind his eyes—too many things at once for me to identify any single one of them. A muscle in his jaw pops, his attention briefly dropping to the floor before bringing it back up to meet my eyes.
“You’re really serious?” he asks.
“Yes, really serious.”
“This isn’t a joke? You actually want me to—” He stops and then starts again, more carefully. “You want me to teach you?”
“Yes.” I lift my chin slightly, because if I’m going to die of embarrassment I’m going to die with my spine straight. “That’s what I want.”
My heart drops down to my stomach, waiting for him to speak.
“And in exchange,” he says cautiously, “you’ll come to Whitney’s wedding with me? Pretend to be my girlfriend. Help me keep my mother off my back?”
“Yes. I’ll do all of that.”
“And you’re okay with the arrangement ending after the wedding.”
I nod. “That’s fine. Clean and simple.”
A hardness appears on his face at clean and simple, but it’s gone before I can read it.
“Okay,” he says.
I blink rapidly. “Okay?”
“Yeah.” He leans back in the chair, casually. “Okay. We can do that.”
I wait for the catch. For the smirk. For some version of Cole Benton to emerge and make this into something I’ll be reliving at three in the morning for the next decade.
But it never comes.
“That’s really all you’re going to say?”
He shrugs, looking entirely too relaxed. “What else do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know.” I gesture vaguely at the space between us. “You’re being very calm about this.”
“Would you prefer I make it weird?”
“No.” I groan. “No, calm is good. Calm is great.”
He tilts his head, studying me. The way his eyes travel over me makes me feel exposed, like he’s seeing something I’m not aware I’m showing. “So we have a deal.”
It isn’t a question. But I answer it anyway. “We have a deal.”
His gaze drifts over me again, his brows furrowing tightly.
He gulps down air like he might be changing his mind, realizing what a terrible idea this is, but it’s gone so quickly I almost convince myself I imagined it.
Then he pushes to his feet, reaching for his jacket off the arm of the chair.
“Get some sleep,” he says, moving toward the door. “We’ll figure out the rest later.”
“We didn’t establish any rules,” I call after him.
He glances back over his shoulder. “Later, doll.”
“What if I have questions?”
The corner of his mouth lifts. “Then I would imagine they’ll stay safe in your head until we find the time to discuss it all.”
He slips out into the cold, and I listen to the soft click of the lock behind him.
I sit on my velvet sofa in my empty shop long enough for the sun to rise, my fingers twisted tight in the tassels of a throw pillow. If the ghost of Cole’s cologne wasn’t still lingering in the air, I might be able to convince myself I imagined the whole thing.
But I didn’t.
I just made a deal with Cole Benton.