Chapter 51
James
"I couldn't keep lying to myself. I couldn’t keep telling myself that you didn’t matter." I draw in a breath. "Because you do, Ember. More than anything."
The words are out.
I finally spoke my mind. I set aside my need for control long enough to tell her how I feel.
The confession hangs there. Messy. Uncontrolled. Everything my OCD can't tolerate.
But some things matter more than managing anxiety. She matters more.
Her cheeks flush. She seems surprised.
I deserve the wariness in her eyes. I deserve her being unsure about my motives.
I leveraged that video to get her to marry me. I kept her at arm’s length. I challenged her to prove herself as a chef. I put her in far more tricky situations in the kitchen than I have any of my previous sous chefs. And she came through with flying colors.
She’s smart. Hardworking. And is learning very quickly how to lead the team in the restaurant. Not to mention, she’s gorgeous, beautiful, and I’m in a constant state of arousal in her presence.
She’s my muse. My inspiration.
And I've given her every reason to hate me.
I've spent weeks building walls between us, using the kitchen as my excuse, the contract as my shield.
I told myself I was testing her competence, but the truth is: I was punishing her for making me feel something I'd locked away since I was a little boy.
She doesn't trust me. Why would she?
I've been a tyrant in the restaurant kitchen, a manipulator outside, a man who used her desperation and called it a marriage. I've been everything except the one thing she actually needs: honest.
“Why do you call me Ember?” She finally asks.
“Because that’s what you are to me. My ember. The light that pushes back the darkness in me. You’re life. Everything good. Everything strong. Everything real. You’re the warmth I didn’t know I was missing until you came into my life.”
The words feel raw leaving my mouth. My heart trips over itself.
“I’m not asking you to forgive me. I’m asking you to let me try to deserve you.”
Her face stills.
Shock flickers across her features first. Then something softer. Something that blooms slowly and lights her from within. And beneath it all, a yearning so open, it hits me like a blow to the chest.
“Okay,” she whispers.
Relief moves through me so suddenly, I almost feel unsteady.
I lift my hand and brush my knuckle across her cheek, slow and careful.
“Thank you for trusting me. For giving me another chance.” My voice comes out rough.
She snuggles into the pillow, and when I begin to retrieve my hand, she twines her fingers through mine.
Pleasure pours through my veins. Warmth heats my blood. The rightness of having her in my bed, her hand in mine, her breath on the pillow next to mine, hits me squarely in my chest.
I’m still afraid of how vulnerable I feel since I opened up to her. But I can’t pretend that I don’t have feelings for her.
"Go to sleep.”
She half smiles, her eyes already closing.
It’s been three days since I confided in my wife about my past. Three days in which we seem to have fallen into a more intimate rhythm. One involving stolen looks at work, where I use every excuse to touch her. Where I no longer challenge her and test her but let her get on with her job.
And if I observe her too closely… That’s because I can’t stop appreciating her form.
She looks up from across the table in the prep area adjoining the main kitchen. It’s only the two of us here. The rest of the team has already moved into the main kitchen area.
Our gazes lock.
That charged awareness between us flares, sudden and electric.
The rest of the kitchen slips away. The shouting, the clatter of pans, knives striking boards, the hiss of burners. All of it recedes, until it’s little more than a distant hum.
There is only her.
Only the way she’s looking at me.
And the dangerous pull drawing us closer.
And—
“James, I need to talk with you.”
The spell breaks. I turn to find Angelina at my shoulder. It’s prep time, which is the only reason I’m tolerating someone other than my team in the kitchen.
And because it’s clear by the pinched expression on her face that she’s learned about my marriage.
She was a friend before we dated. And even though that was over months before Ember walked back into my life, it feels right to speak with her and clear the air.
Opposite me, Harper stiffens. She looks from Angelina to me, then back at her. Her forehead furrows. She tucks an imaginary strand of hair behind her ear. She does that sometimes when she forgets that she has her hair up and under the chef’s skull cap. It’s a sure sign that she’s stressed.
“Could we talk, privately?” Angelina’s voice is soft.
“You can say what you want in front of my wife.” I nod at Harper.
“Of course.” She firms her mouth. “I was surprised you got married. I… I didn’t know that you were serious about anyone.”
“I met my wife five years ago. I never forgot her.”
Angelina’s face registers surprise.
"I married her because she's the most remarkable, funny, brave woman I've ever met. She makes me laugh even when I don't want to. She brings color and chaos into my gray world."
Being so open about my feelings makes me feel vulnerable, but it also feels like it’s right for my wife to hear me say it.
Angelina looks at Harper, then back at me. “I never stood a chance, I take it?"
I shake my head.
She laughs in a self-deprecating fashion. Then squares her shoulders and turns to Harper.
“I wish you the very best for the future.”
She looks back at me over her shoulder.
“Bye, James.”
She pivots and heads out.
In the silence which follows, Harper raises her eyebrows. “You didn’t have to say those things. There was no one else here to hear us.”
But I needed to hear myself say it aloud. The thought is confusing.
I deflect from answering and nod toward the plate of meat in front of her. “You done trimming that?”
“What?” She looks down at the plate. “Oh, yes, I’m done.”
“Let’s get this to the kitchen.” I lift the dish of fish filets I was working on, then head toward the kitchen.
She falls in line with me. I slow my steps so we can walk side by side. My arm brushes hers. She shivers.
When I walk past her to my workstation, I make sure my upper arm catches her shoulder.
She gasps, looks at me with wide eyes. Then scans the kitchen to make sure no one saw us.
I don’t care if they did. Frankly, I needed her scent to get me through the rest of the service.
I set down the filets on the counter and give her the full benefit of my gaze. I don’t hold back how much I want her.
Her lips part. A pretty blush steals over her face. Then she lowers her chin, pretending to look at the fish in front of her and inches closer.
“Thanks for the nice things you said about me to Angelina. I know it was all fake but—”
“It was all true.”
She whips her head around and looks at me with her big green eyes. The ones I drown in. The ones which haunt my dreams. The ones which show me what my future holds.
“But… You…” She shakes her head. “You…mean—”
I nod toward the clock on the wall, allowing myself a small smile. “Time for dinner service.”
It’s like being back on a mission with the Marines. The kitchen is my war zone.
Orders fly from the ticket machine. Rit-rit-rit. It’s a relentless rhythm I've turned into muscle memory. Twelve tables firing. Four VIPs in the corner. A food critic seated at table seven.
"Fire two duck, one beef, three halibut." My voice cuts through the chaos like a blade. "Table nine, you’re four minutes behind. Tighten it up."
"Yes, Chef!"
The brigade moves as one organism. Pans hiss. Flames leap. The air is thick with the smell of rendered fat, woodsmoke, and that particular electricity of a kitchen running at full capacity.
Harper's at the meat station again tonight. I watch her work. Efficient, precise, no wasted movement. She flips a ribeye with the edge of her spatula, checks the color, and adjusts the heat without looking. She's that good.
My pulse kicks up, and it has nothing to do with the service.
I force my gaze back to the pass. Focus. There's no room for distraction when you're orchestrating seventy covers in a three-hour window.
"Sauce on the halibut is breaking," I bark toward the fish station. "Fix it. Now."
"Yes, Chef!"
The rhythm holds. The chaos is controlled. This is what I do. This is what I'm good at.
And then—
CRASH.
A sauté pan hits the tile. It’s not a gentle clatter, but a massive, metallic BANG that echoes off the stainless-steel walls like a gunshot. The sound detonates through the kitchen.
The world tilts.
My vision tunnels. The edges of the kitchen blur into static, gray and colorless. The smell of seared meat becomes the acrid scent of burning flesh. The heat from the line transforms into the suffocating, bone-dry scorch of the desert sun.
My hands are shaking.
Trembling. The kind of involuntary tremor I haven't felt since—
Sand. Blood. The weight of my teammate’s body, going slack in my arms.
"Chef?"
The voice is distant. Underwater. I can't place it.
My heart is a drumroll. My lungs won't expand. The oxygen refuses to cross the threshold of my teeth.
I fist my hands. My fingernails dig into the soft flesh of my palms, but the pain doesn't register.
Nothing registers, except the noise. That echoing, catastrophic bang that my brain has cataloged as threat—incoming, get down, move. Move.
"James."
Closer now. I feel a hand on my forearm. Light, testing.
I flinch.
"James, look at me."
I can't. My gaze is locked on the floor, on the dropped pan, on the chaos of the kitchen that suddenly feels like a battlefield I can't navigate.
"Chef, I've got the pass." Harper's voice. Steady. Low. Not a question. A statement of fact.
She steps into my line of sight. Not crowding me. Just…there. Her features are calm, her eyes tracking mine with the kind of focus I usually reserve for plating.