Chapter Fifteen
Kian didn’t start crying until he walked into the kitchen and saw the coffee mug Bastian had drunk out of just yesterday sitting in the sink.
It hit him then, like an inescapable blow to the head.
He’d never pour Bastian another cup of coffee and tease him about liking it dark as mud.
He’d never wake up tucked up next to him.
He’d never kiss him again. He’d never smile at him over some boring prep at the restaurant.
He’d never again set foot into the Terroir kitchen.
Because it wasn’t just one blow; it was a thousand, big and small and every size in between, and every single one fucking hurt. Kian stood there and felt each one as they hit him, hard.
Nobody was home, and there was nobody to see him cry. Xander would be at the Barrel House, Nate was probably at the winery, where he worked in the tasting room. He’d have hours and hours before anyone came home to bother him, and that seemed like both the best and the worst thing to happen to him.
He could go to Bastian’s house and get all the stuff he’d left there. He still had the code, and that way he’d avoid having to go over everything again with Bastian. But going to Bastian’s would be even worse than spotting his mug in the sink.
He’d been spinning fantasies in his mind, imagining someday moving into Bastian’s house and making it a real home, instead of the soulless box that Bastian had called it. He’d imagined a life they could share, where they gave and took in equal measures.
At the time, he’d wanted so desperately to believe that it was possible, but it wasn’t. He’d been blinding himself to the realities of their situation. They’d never been even remotely equal. The only equality that had existed between them were advantages that Bastian had willingly ceded to him.
There shouldn’t have been anything else but pain, but now there was the inevitable streak of humiliation winding its way through him. He’d been full of wishes and hope this whole time, but Bastian had only been pretending.
Kian stumbled into his bedroom, and lurched back, like he’d been burned by the lingering smell of Bastian in the air.
It had been almost forty-eight hours since he’d been in here, but it didn’t matter.
The whole room would need to be aired out, every inch of fabric washed, the walls scrubbed, the carpet cleaned.
Even then, he’d never be able to eradicate the memories—and Bastian had only spent a handful of nights here.
Hours before anyone would be home, so many useless hours spreading out in front of him. He needed to do something, keep busy. Keep himself from thinking; if he could keep his mind blank, he thought as he dried his eyes with the edge of his t-shirt, he might not break down.
He pulled off the sheets, stuffing them in the washing machine down the hall.
Next, he went to his closet to find the other set he vaguely remembered having.
Sorting through the random crap that accumulated, he accidentally nudged a cardboard box on one shelf, sending it careening to the floor, all its contents spilling out.
Kian groaned and righted the box. He didn’t have the energy to deal with this today.
Except one of the items that had fallen out was his old Institute apron. As he crumpled up the fabric, planning to shove it right back where it came from, he heard the crinkle of paper.
Shit.
It had been two years since he’d even considered any of the overseas job applications he’d sent, or the letters he’d received as a response.
He’d never even opened them, too blown away and excited by the possibility of working for Bastian Aquino at Terroir.
He hadn’t cared one way or the other if he’d been hired.
He’d shoved the responses away in a pocket of his apron and totally forgotten about them.
One by one, he pulled them out. Three in total.
Still sealed. For the first time, Kian really faced what his sudden change of heart had cost him.
He could be working and training in Europe right now, at restaurants far more prestigious than Terroir.
Restaurants with decades of brilliance stretching behind them.
He’d given all that up because Bastian had walked into his class, and he’d gotten an instant hard-on.
Why hadn’t anyone stopped him? Why hadn’t anyone pulled him aside and insisted that working for someone solely because you had a personal and professional crush was a terrible idea?
He hadn’t told his mom why he’d changed his mind on Europe because he’d been sure she’d be upset.
Later, he knew Xander and Wyatt had conspired to try to find him a job in LA, a misguided attempt to get him away from Bastian.
By then it had been too late, he’d fallen in love and he’d refused to even discuss leaving.
But at the beginning? There’d been room then, even in the first, full-body flush of his infatuation. He might have listened to reason. He might have changed his mind.
He might not have wasted the last two years.
Right now, they felt like a waste. Yeah, he’d become chef de cuisine, but he no longer believed that Bastian had promoted him because he deserved it. Mark, as galling as it was, had been fucking right. He’d gotten the chef de cuisine job because he was sucking Bastian’s cock.
What did it matter, Kian thought bitterly, if you lied to yourself because you knew better or because you hoped for better? It turned out the same in the end.
He should have taken one look at Luc and not been horribly, terribly envious; he should have taken one look at Luc and understood he was a cautionary tale. Bastian was like a hurricane. He swept into a life and then out of it and left no structures standing in his wake.
Kian fingered the wrinkled paper of the envelopes. There was a part of him that was dying to open them, dying to know what he’d chosen Bastian over. But there was another part of him that dreaded facing the truth, and that actively didn’t want to know what he’d given up without a thought.
A voice in his head called him a coward, and Kian flinched because it sounded too much like Bastian. But then, he’d been an excellent mentor. He’d taught him never to be afraid of the truth.
That was ironic, Kian thought, and ripped one envelope open, and then another, and then the last.
They were all job offers. They’d all wanted to hire him.
A sob escaped his throat, and then another. He sank to his knees, crying over everything he’d lost today, and two years ago—before he’d even known better.
Kian sat there for a very long time. He stopped crying, eventually, but he still didn’t move. The house grew dark and he stayed right where he was.
Eventually, he heard a car pull into the driveway, and assumed it would be Xander. It was late, but not quite late enough for Nate to come home.
Footsteps echoed down the hall, and before Kian could brace for it, the hall light turned on, leaving him flinching into the sudden brightness.
“What’s going on?” Xander asked, kneeling down and taking in the situation. The sheet-less bed. The letters spread out on the floor in front of Kian.
“The inevitable,” Kian said dully. He couldn’t look at Xander. “I quit, and I guess we broke up.”
“You guess?”
“At the beginning, we told ourselves that it would stay separate. Work at Terroir, personal at home. But it didn’t, it couldn’t. It was all tangled together, from the very beginning.” Kian had never felt so bleak, so hopeless before.
“You didn’t know any better, but the Bastard did,” Xander growled, and Kian knew just how angry he was.
He wanted to tell him that it wasn’t just Bastian’s fault; it was his own too.
After all, he’d just punched Mark in the face and then refused to give any explanation at all.
He’d lost control of the kitchen, and Bastian had been right to demote him.
But instead of explaining, Kian just shrugged. It hurt too much to try to explain, even if he knew what side Xander would inevitably be on.
“And all this?” Xander asked, pointing to the letters.
Kian glanced up, his eyes full of pain. “Did I ever tell you that at one point, I was going to Europe?”
Kian had been expecting the call all day, so it was easy enough to hit ignore half a dozen times.
When the unknown number started calling, Kian let it go to voicemail three times before he finally answered.
“Xander called you,” Kian said in an edgy, annoyed voice.
“How did you even know it was me?” Wyatt asked, mystified.
“Xander has a method,” Kian retorted. “He offered me another bottle of Nate’s wine last night. I’m not sure he has any other comforting methods in his repertoire. He’s run out, so he called you.”
Wyatt sighed on the other end of the line. “This is Xander we’re talking about. Not exactly the most comforting person in the world.”
“Right.” Kian knew he didn’t sound convinced, and he found he didn’t give a fuck. There was a huge number of things piling up that, in the last two days, he’d discovered that he didn’t give a fuck about.
Everyone had always thought he was sweet and na?ve and a little blind. The truth was, he’d just stupidly, optimistically, believed in the best in people, and in the world. And now he knew he’d been so fucking wrong, this whole damn time.
“Xander called me because he’s worried about you,” Wyatt soothed.
“I’ve got money saved, I’m good for my share of rent.
” Kian dipped his sponge back in the bucket of soapy water at his feet.
He’d already finished airing out and cleaning every inch of his bedroom, and he’d moved on to the living room because doing nothing wasn’t acceptable, and he didn’t have anything else to do.
If he stopped, he’d think, and thinking was so wretched Kian was determined never to do it again.
“I don’t think that was what he was worried about,” Wyatt said wryly.
“I’m fine,” Kian said, not giving a single shit that he didn’t sound fine. “In a week or so I’ll look for a new job.”