Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
LEXI
To: Heights Bites Management
From: Wilder Amante
Is there any update on my trial period? It’s up in less than a month, and I’d love to know if management or the owners have a feel for whether there will be a permanent place for me as Head Chef at Heights Bites.
From my end, things seem to be going great. Guests are happy, we’re hitting our numbers, keeping costs in range, and back of the house is flowing like hot bacon grease.
I got another opportunity that takes place after the summer, and I didn’t want to respond to them without knowing where things stand with the café.
Thanks for your time,
Wilder Amante
Executive Chef
Heights Bites
To: Wilder Amante
From: Heights Bites Management
Wilder,
The future of the diner is uncertain.
A transition period is near, and I can’t offer you permanent placement at this time.
If you got a better opportunity, you should take it.
We appreciate all you’ve done for the place.
Best of luck.
Management
Heights Bites
Alone in my office upstairs, where I’ve spent most of my time in the restaurant lately, I review the email thread with Wilder from last week like the depressed loser I’ve become.
A better offer.
It’s so perfectly my luck that I finally start to let someone in, catch something that feels uncomfortably similar to feelings, and they get a better offer.
Of course he’s going to leave.
Why would he stay?
And I can’t even ask him to, now that I’m going to lose the restaurant.
We’ve spent two more nights together since these emails, neither of us commenting on it to the other, but both quietly desperate in our need for one another. He’s the rock I can anchor myself to, the punching bag I can take it all out on. It helps, at least while I’m with him.
And for once, it won’t be me that scares him away. It’s not the fact that I’m too much, or more than he can handle. For the first time, I’m with a man who’s more than fine with every single shred of my harsh personality that’s sent others running.
It’s the fact that I can’t do more for him that’s going to drive him away.
Because I lost the grant.
Can’t keep paying the loans back for overhead, cover the cost of inventory, and make payroll without the grant funding. Even the money Dad lent me isn’t enough to cover the cost of keeping a place like this running.
I haven’t had the will to show my face downstairs.
Now that Billie is here, between her, Wanda, Tracy, and Violet, the floor is always covered. Wilder keeps the back of the house going, and I can stay up here and do executive tasks like mope.
It’s why they pay me the big bucks.
For another couple weeks, at least, by Rory’s estimate.
Once the funding gets pulled, I’m out of a job, and will have to tuck my tail and head back to the grocery store, pie on my ass and all.
Should be just in time for the grand opening of downtown, so that’s festive.
I can’t bear to think that my fuck-up could cost Billie, Wanda, Charlie, Samuel, and everyone else here their jobs.
Will someone swoop in and save the diner before the doors close?
Will another bank foreclose on it, like they did last time?
Or is there some way Rory can save it that I haven’t thought of?
I know there’s nothing I can do at this point, other than ride out the rest of the storm.
My monitor blinks off—I guess I haven’t touched the mouse in fifteen minutes—and the black of the screen reflects the face of a woman who didn’t care enough to tame her hair, put on makeup, or even try to hide how broken she is inside.
There is no fire in her eyes, no will to prove that she can do this.
She can’t.
She failed.
And now it’s the embarrassing part where she limps along until someone else takes the problem off her hands.
All because I didn’t disclose where my funding came from.
Like the universe knows all I want to do is hide away, my phone buzzes on the desk and my face pulls, remembering the way Wilder used this desk like his canvas, the way he took me on it our first time.
Snatching the phone off of the surface, like it could sully the memory, I glance at the messages and see a string of unanswered texts.
Rory Grady
I hope you know I’m doing everything I can to help you out of this.
Lex
We’re sisters, bitch. In this together.
For better or worse.
That’s wedding vows, but it seems like a mixup you’d make, so I think it counts.
You’ll have to answer me eventually.
You can’t avoid me forever.
Our family plots are next to each other.
And, finally, the newest one.
I hope you’re still coming to the bonfire.
Sighing, I thumb the chat, finger drifting over the keyboard, backspacing every time I think I figured out what to say. Eventually, I clack out a message and hit send.
Me
Not really in the mood.
I don’t even blink before there’s an answer.
I’m counting on you to bring the catering.
So we’re guilt tripping, I see.
I’m not sure s’mores skewers count as catering, but sure.
Is that all you need from me?
No. I miss you.
Come on, just one night.
Everyone’s gonna be there. Your niece, Gracie, Ronnie, the whole gang. You can bring Wilder.
As your husband should know, my car’s in the shop and I’m not squeezing onto Wilder’s bike
Borrow my SUV. It’s in the west lot, Wyatt can pick me up.
Then you can fit whatever extra food is left from the restaurant and bring us a feast.
Out of ways to say no, I stop answering her, putting my phone in the top drawer of my desk so it stops staring at me.
A knock on the door forces me to perk up, try to pretend like the world isn’t crumbling around me, and go see who needs me.
“Yeah?” I say, pulling the door in toward me.
Billie, a woman nearing sixty, sleek gray bob and fine bones like her daughter, is on the other side.
“I’m taking off for the day,” she says, eyes kinder than I’d expect for someone who’s been through what she has.
The fact that I might destroy this new chance at happiness she’s just found eats at my insides.
I hope this place gets new owners and they keep her on.
“Have a good weekend,” I tell her. I might not have put myself together today, but at least I remember today is Saturday. That means she has tomorrow off for family dinner, and we’re closed Monday.
“Take care,” she says, in that motherly way that says she knows more is going on but won’t press.
My mom would’ve pressed.
Shuffling down the stairs, I putz around the dining room, doing side work, cleaning up, and counting the till as the slow afternoon ticks by.
Every day lately has been slow, but these periods in between the lunch and dinner rushes are extra brutal. When lots is happening, I can disappear, falling into the hectic busy-ness that drowns out the voice in my head that shouts I’m a failure.
Tonight’s a night I’d rather lose myself in Wilder’s massive form, his dark energy that likes to come out and play when it’s just the two of us.
He does the same thing for me—pushes my mind to that place where everything goes quiet, where all I can focus on is the present, the past not pulling me under.
A place that grief can’t reach.
If that’s what drugs are like, I think I get the appeal.
To not be reminded of what you’ve fucked up, what you lost, and what you’ll never have. To feel good in the here and now, without worrying about the consequences.
I need that escape right now.
Heading back into the kitchen, Charlie’s laughter squeezes something inside of me and I tune him out.
My eyes find Wilder’s, and with one look, he knows.
“Take over for me, Charlie,” he calls over to him, and he does a turnover in just a few words, before stepping away to the back door behind the dish station, where I’m waiting for him.
“You gonna tell me what’s going on with you?”
I glare him down, arms crossed over my overalls. “You first.”
“I’m not the one who’s acting like Chicken Little,” he says, dark eyes narrowing on me.
“We’re supposed to go to this thing tonight,” I deflect.
“Yeah, the guys told me. I’ve got everything ready,” he says, pointing to the wall next to us that hides the walk-ins.
“I don’t think I can face her,” I admit to him. “I’m not ready.”
I haven’t told him more than she and I are fighting, but he doesn’t press for more. Hand to his jaw, he nods, watching me as he thinks it over.
The back door opens, an obnoxious streak of sunlight interrupting us, and when I look over, Wyatt is there. He makes eye contact with Wilder and tosses him a key fob with a quick nod, and he’s gone.
“Stay here,” Wilder tells me, hands gripping my shoulders in a way that would’ve made me want to claw his eyes out a month ago. Now, strangely, it settles something inside me.
He makes several trips, carrying silver hotel pans, platters, and an assortment that looks like a lot more than just ingredients for s’mores.
On the last one, he opens the door to the alley wide and holds out a hand for me. In my weakened state, I take it, allowing him to help me into the front seat of my sister’s SUV as he gets in the driver’s seat and starts driving.
Except the direction he’s going isn’t toward her house, or the Grady property.
Unbuttoning his chef jacket with one hand, he manages to take it off while driving, until he’s in just a white undershirt, and all that delicious ink is free for my eyes to roam.
It makes for a decent distraction, I’ll admit.
Once he tosses the jacket in the backseat, he reaches over, dropping a hand to my thigh and clutching it tightly as he drives one-handed, winding through the back roads he’s come to know on his bike.
I don’t have it in me to tear his hand off of me. For some reason, I think I want it there. To feel possessed by him. Like I’m his to take care of.
After minutes of silence, I give in and break it.
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere private,” he says, eyes not leaving the road.
“Care to tell me more?” Some of my trademark sharp tongue makes a reappearance.
He smirks, noticing. “I’m thinking I might be able to fuck some answers out of you, little liar.”
This prescription will do just fine for me.