16. Cherry
My hips and butt swing side to side as I sing the lyrics to Cindy Lauper’s classic, ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’. The shop is always quiet between nine and ten on a Monday morning and I take the time to get my head on straight for the week ahead, and it will be a busy one. I have a thousand things to do here, as well as finish planning the baby shower for Lexi and fend off KLM from trying to steal the salon from my mom.
Monday mornings for most people are the beginning of a long week packed with stress, demands, and little fulfillment, but not for me. After Harvard ended so disastrously, I’d thrown myself into making this venture with Lexi work and it has. More than that, it’s thriving and I know a lot of that is because of the drive I have to prove to Jake that I could triumph despite him.
The thought of him sours my mood slightly, but I dance through it, twirling my arms above my head. After our little showdown in the middle of The Atlas, I’d been primed for him to become a thorn in my side but through some subtle probing, I’d found out Hunter had sent him to China to handle a deal there for him, so he could be with Lexi .
The knowledge should have left me feeling relieved, but I can’t deny the twinge of disappointment that came with that revelation. Which only annoyed me and made me hate him more. Doing one final hip wiggle as the song winds up, I spin again and scream as my heart tries to jump out of my chest in surprise and mortification.
Lounging against the antique writing desk that I still haven’t found the right home for is none other than the bane of my life, the devil himself, only he wears Brioni, not Prada. My gaze falls over him hungrily, taking in every muscular inch of his body before finding the smirk on his face that makes me want to commit violence. I become instantly aware that this is the first time I’ve seen him alone since the day he told me he loved me. Since the day he made me believe in something that was all a fairytale, and I don’t mean the ones with hearts and flowers but the Brothers Grimm type with blood and heartbreak. Even on that last morning at Harvard when he dropped my coffee and breakfast to me, others had been around us, so now that was my lasting memory.
Crossing my arms over my chest, I jut my hip and raise a brow, not wanting to show him how much his presence affects me. “What the hell are you doing in my shop?”
Jake takes his time pushing off the desk and prowling toward me like some big jungle cat surveying his domain, but this is my jungle, not his and he doesn’t belong here in my safe place. Jake lets his eyes sweep over me, not hiding his hunger in the least as he lets his desire for me show. My nipples bead and I curse my body’s reaction to him.
I’d worn a cerise pink and white floral mini skirt, which shows off my legs, and a white sleeveless blouse which is cinched at my waist. Hot pink six-inch sandals finish my look as my hair falls around my shoulders. I’d likely pay for the heels later in life, but while I can wear them and feel sexy doing so, I’m going to do just that. My clothes are part of my armor and with Jake here, I need it more than ever.
“You greet all your customers like that, Blossom?”
I can feel my temper bristle at the name that holds so much pleasure and pain for me now. Reminding me of what a fool I’d been to fall for him. “You’re not a customer, you’re an irritant I could do without. So kindly show yourself out, I’m busy.”
Jake smiles at my words, walking closer until we’re breathing the same air, his exhale my inhale, but I don’t step back. I won’t show this man my weakness, even as he crowds me, forcing me to tip my head back to him. Being five feet tall you get used to looking up to people, but mentally he won’t break me. Not ever again.
“That’s why I’m here, Blossom.”
“To irritate me?” I snort because that, I believe.
Jake smiles and I hate that my stomach flips at the sight. “No, because you’re busy. Lexi asked me if I could help you for a few hours a day while she’s laid up resting and I’m happy to help.”
My gaze raked over his ten-thousand-dollar custom suit in disgust. “Lexi would never do that without talking to me first.”
“She said she’d text you.” Jake shrugs one of his big shoulders as if he doesn’t give a fuck either way. Turning from him, I let my hair fan out and brush his chest as I stomp over to my phone and check. Sure enough, there’s a text from Lexi.
Lexi: Hey, you. I’ve managed to sort some help for you in the shop this week. I can’t tell you how much this takes the pressure off me.
Any other time I would’ve told her off or told Jake to shove his help up his bitable ass, but knowing this eases my best friend’s stress after everything she’s been through, leaves me with nowhere to go. I already adore the baby she carries like he was my own, and I’d let Lexi down time and again. I won’t do a single thing to add to her stress.
“She send it?”
I tense as Jake comes up behind me, his breath on my neck, the warmth of his body making me want to lean into him even as I recognize the danger he poses to the life I’ve built here. Moving around the counter, I put distance between us and give him what I hope is a look of disinterest.
“For the record, I don’t need your help. I don’t need anything from you, ever. But if it eases my best friend’s mind, I’ll tolerate you being here but stay out of my way.”
“That’s your problem, you don’t need anybody. You never did. It’s why you’re so closed off.”
“Fuck you, Jake. I am not closed off, and not needing people isn’t a bad thing. It shows I can stand on my own two feet.”
“It shows you don’t trust people, that you’re still a broken doll deep down inside.”
How could this man gut me so quickly and with so few words? My chest aches and my belly feels hollow as he peels back my skin and exposes the raw wounds festering beneath. He spoke into existence the fear I live with. That I was broken, that somehow I’d lost something crucial to who I was when he betrayed me.
“And who’s fault is that?” I bite the words out in an angry whisper, pain making me shake inside.
“Mine. I fucked up and I own that, but it was never because I didn’t love you, Cherry Blossom. What we had was real.”
I hold up my hand to stop him, I don’t want to hear it. I deserve answers, I need answers but not here, not now, when once again the only man to make me cry is pushing my buttons.
“Don’t. Just don’t. You have no right to bring that up. You played your games and won whatever sick prize my destruction cost, so don’t try and make out it was more when it wasn’t.”
Jake slams his hands down on the counter and leans into me, his jaw clenching as he tries to hold on to his control. Anger, like a living breathing beast, consumes us both, but underneath it is that simmering attraction that has always been so natural between us. “You were never a game to me, Blossom.”
“Then what was I?”
I brace, waiting for him to admit I was just a fun distraction, a toy for him to play with and ultimately destroy, but what came next was so much worse.
“Everything. You were the oxygen in my lungs, the blood in my veins, and the only person who mattered to me.”
“No, you don’t get to say that after what you did.”
Jake shook his head, slowly. “I know I hurt you, Blossom, but I never meant to.”
“Then why?” I ask the question I’d spent so many nights torturing myself over.
Jake looks wrecked as he backs up and then blinks away his emotions as if they’d never existed. Any hope I’d had of an answer fell away into dust.
“It doesn’t matter. It was a long time ago and it’s in the past.”
Disappointment bleeds through me, tainting everything and making me feel tired to my bones. It might be in the past for him but it had defined my life, my relationships, and everything I had today is because of the path he’d put me on, both good and bad. I want to scream at him and yell, demand answers, and ask him why me. Why was I so disposable to him? But I couldn’t allow him that kind of power. I had too much to do, and too many people relying on me to fall apart.
“Forget it, Jake. It doesn’t matter anymore. Let’s just get through this for Lexi and Hunter’s sake.”
He looks like he might argue but then nods. “You got it.”
“Good, now the entire showroom needs a dust, so get to it.” I bend beneath the counter and pull out the dusters and polish we use to keep everything shining and shove them towards him. I thought he’d balk, that the billionaire would think this beneath him, but he takes them with a smile before removing his jacket and rolling up his sleeves, showcasing veiny, muscular forearms that make my mouth water. Ruthlessly, I push my attraction down and get on with my endless list of tasks.
All morning my concentration wavers between the man moving about my shop like it’ s his natural habitat and the letter I’m composing to KLM, rejecting another offer for my mother’s salon.
So far I’ve only had one visit from a representative of theirs and they’d been pushy but polite. I know they’ll be back though, and I want this nipped in the bud before my mom gets wind of it. My lawyer, Harvey, who much to my dismay looks nothing like the hot guy from Suits, is about as useless as a snooze button on a smoke alarm.
“What ya doing?”
I gasp as I jump and slam my laptop shut. “You need a fucking bell around your neck.”
“Not my fault you were daydreaming while I slave away.”
I turn to him and a bubble of laughter slips out at the dust covering his once pristine white shirt. “Aww poor little billionaire, did you break a nail doing manual labor?”
Jake gives me a withering glare and tosses the rags on the counter. “Physical labor has never been a problem for me, and you know it.”
“I know nothing.”
Jake doesn’t respond but grabs my laptop before I can stop him. He holds it above my head as I fight the desire to stomp my foot and demand it back.
“Don’t be a dick. Just give it back.”
“Tell me what has you so twisted up for half the morning and I will.”
“I’m not twisted up. I’m just concentrating on what I’m doing.”
Jake lifts his hand and skims his thumb over my bottom lip. “Bullshit, your lip is all pink and pouty from the abuse you’ve given it.”
I swear I see heat in his gaze before he blinks and I’m faced with the hardass again. Shrugging off his touch, I turn away, not wanting him to see the lie. “I’m just trying to organize some stuff for Lexi’s baby shower.” That isn’t a complete lie, the cake maker isn’t answering my messages and I still have to pick up the bunting and talk to the caterers about the food.
“Can I help? ”
“I’ve got it.”
“Come on, Blossom, let me help. Hunter is my best friend and I have a lot to do to gain his and Lexi’s forgiveness for the stunt I pulled.”
The snort leaves me before I can stop it. “You don’t deserve it from either of them.”
“Maybe not, but I did what I did to protect Hunter. He was hurting and I thought she’d fucked him over. You can’t say you wouldn’t have done the same thing.”
I want to. I want to tell him that I’m a bigger person than he is, but I would’ve done that and worse. My blood boils at the thought of all the terrible things I want to do to Dean. Never in my life have I wanted blood more than his. So yes, I can relate to Jake in that but that doesn’t mean I owe him my help.
“Please, Cherry. It guts me to know I made her pain worse. I might be the worst man on the planet in your eyes after what happened, but you know deep down I’d never hurt a woman for no reason.”
A part of me wanted to argue with him, to tell him he’d do exactly that, he’d done it to me, after all, but I heard through Lexi how much it gutted Hunter to be at odds with his best friend and I want them to find peace and happiness through all this even if I have to suck it up and help Jake do it.
“Fine, you can help but I’m doing this for Lexi and Hunter, not you.”
“Absolutely.”
“Now give me my laptop back.”
I thought I’d need to argue more but he hands it over just as my belly rumbles.
“You want me to go grab lunch?”
“Yes, that sounds good. Let me grab my purse.” Anything to get him out of the shop for half an hour and give me some space to get my hormones wrangled back under control.
“I got it, Blossom. ”
“No, Jake, I pay for my own lunch. And stop calling me Blossom.”
Jake bends close to me and my heart beats faster. “Nope and nope. Seems like you’ve forgotten how things are between us, Blossom. We eat, I pay. We travel, I drive or ride. And you’ll always be Blossom.”
My mind skitters to being on the back of his bike and I close my eyes. It’s been an age since I’d ridden. His bike was the last because I just couldn’t face being with anyone else after him.
“There isn’t anything between us, Jake, and I don’t ride.”
Jake frowns. “Why not? You love bikes.”
I don’t want to tell him that all the joy had been stolen from me because of him, that because of him every time I so much as looked at a bike now it just reminds me of what it feels like to be cuddled up to his back with the wind in my hair and his warm, hard body protecting me.
“Grew up, I guess.”
“Hmm.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing. I’ll grab lunch and be back.”
Turning, he strides for the door, just as a client walking in distracts me from the tension that always seems to be in the air when he’s close.
Everything between us feels unfinished, like we’re hurtling toward something that could blow up our lives and I want so much to put the brakes on, but Jake is like a runaway train.
He isn’t the boy I’d loved so hard I’d lost all sense of danger and perspective. He’s a man who wields power now, who controls everything and everyone around him like they’re all carefully maneuvered chess pieces. A part of me mourns the boy I’d loved, the boy I thought loved me. He’d made me feel safe, adored, like I could be myself, that I could let my true self shine, but it was all a lie.
A bigger part of me is glad that Jake has hardened, that he’s different because I can never forget what he’s done. Not even for Lexi.