Chapter 31 Sugar and Salt
Sugar and Salt
Max
The sky has tipped into honey-gold, streaked with the last light of day, softening everything it touches. Smoke from the grill drifts in from the deck.
Eli stands at the grill, hair pulled back, body moving with that controlled ease that makes every motion feel intentional.
His muscles flex as he works, precise without being showy.
His brow is furrowed the way it always is when he’s focused, like whatever he’s tending matters.
Like, in this moment, the world could be held together by nothing more than heat and his hands.
He looks like something out of a painting.
A man carved from mountain and fire. Rugged.
Safe. But a little untouchable, too. And Lord, he’s wearing a turtleneck, which should honestly be illegal.
It clings in all the right places, turning his arms into a personal attack and doing dangerously sexy things to his back.
I’ve never been a back girl, but the way he stands there—tall, masculine, framed by firelight, completely unaware of the effect he’s having on me—does something feral to my brain.
He’s a mountain I’d happily climb again and again.
Meanwhile, I’m in his kitchen, barefoot, hair a mess, chopping cucumbers and cherry tomatoes into a bowl. Could this be my life? In this quiet house tucked in the mountains, making dinner with a man who takes me apart and breaks me down with a look.
I try to focus on the chopping, the persistent rhythm of the knife hitting the cutting board, but my brain won’t shut up. It’s a full-blown riot in there. A loop of every moment from this insane week playing on repeat.
I blame those stupid romance novels for this.
For the way I started romanticizing Eli the moment I laid eyes on him.
The brooding, flannel-wrapped lumberjack rescuing me from a ditch like a hero straight off a book cover.
The insta-attraction. The slow-burn tension.
It all felt like a setup for a fairy tale I never asked for but quietly dreamed of.
Eli is everything I imagined he’d be when I laid eyes on him in the magazine and I’m still having a hard time believing any of this is real.
As he comes back inside from checking on the meat, we continue to work side by side in the kitchen, the quiet between us doesn’t itch or demand attention.
It feels like we’re both turning the week over in our heads, letting it settle where it needs to without forcing conversation into the gaps.
Which is wild, considering how loud I can be.
How quick I am to speak first, joke first, strike first.
But Eli changes things. His calm is a terrifying intrusion, seeping into me, settling deep in my chest.
And now, in this quiet mountain house with this quiet mountain man, I’m starting to wonder what it would feel like to not have to be strong all the time. To be held instead of holding. To lean instead of lead.
Eli goes back outside and it baffles me how used to the cold this Black man is. I run to the living room to grab a throw from his sofa and wrap it around me before grabbing the wine I poured for us.
I step out onto the deck, two wine glasses in hand, and pass one to Eli.
“Thanks,” he says softly, taking a sip.
“No problem. You’re making dinner—the least I can do is replenish your beverage, kind sir,” I tease with a smile.
“Kind,” he echoes with a mock grimace, like the word physically offends him.
“Don’t worry, Bear. I’ll keep your secret,” I say, clinking my glass gently against his.
I glance out over the land, and it takes my breath away all over again. Rolling hills. Pines that sway gently like they’re slow dancing. And behind the house, tucked just far enough away to feel like a secret, is the lake. It glints in the low light like it’s been waiting for me to see it.
And maybe it’s the silence, or the wine, but I want to ask the question that’s been poking at me since the boutique.
“So, are your brother and Vanessa serious? Because, based on how he was looking at me, getting into my space, it didn’t seem like they were that serious.”
Eli’s back stiffens. His grip on the spatula tightens and his voice comes out clipped. “My brother isn’t serious about anything. He’s always been the fun one. The class clown. The only one who could get my mother to laugh or smile when she was having a bad day.”
I pause, taking another slow sip of my wine. “I see.”
They look so much alike—Eli and his brother. But everything else about them is night and day. Where Elliott is sugar, Eli is salt.
It’s obvious Eli didn’t just become this version of himself by accident.
He became it by necessity. With a brother who shrugged off responsibility and a mother who leaned too hard on her dependable son to fill the cracks, Eli had no choice but to become the one who held everything together.
Sometimes that meant cleaning up Elliott’s messes.
Sometimes it meant swallowing his own needs whole.
It’s scary how much I understand what he must be going through.
And I start to wonder—how many times has Eli been the one overlooked for the shinier option?
The easier one. The charming one. How many times has he been passed over because he wasn’t built for show, but for the long haul? And what has that cost him?
“At the risk of sounding childish or immature,” I begin, “can I ask you something?”
Eli glances at me with that crooked smirk that always teeters between teasing and protective. “It’s never stopped you before.”
“Fair point,” I say, grinning. “Why do you put everyone else’s needs before your own so much?”
He frowns, confused. “I don’t understand what you mean.”
“Yes, you do,” I insist softly. “You're excellent at recognizing how I put others first, yet you seem willfully blind to the fact that you do the exact same thing. I see how you prioritize everyone: your mom, the women you bring into your den of desire.”
That makes him smile.
“Even your work—the way you manage your staff, the way you take care of me—it’s the same pattern. You have no problem putting yourself last on every list that matters.”
“I’m a leader, Max,” he says, his tone flat and matter-of-fact. “And besides, it’s different for men.”
I tilt my head, narrowing my eyes. “Different how?”
“It just is. It’s how I was raised. If your people need you—if the people you care about need you—you show up. You do whatever it takes. Period.”
“And it has nothing to do with your own need to be needed?”
His jaw ticks. “The fuck are you getting at, Max?”
I shift closer. I’m not trying to provoke him.
I just want him to actually hear me. The double-edged sword of being someone who is always “on” for everyone else is that you recognize the symptoms in others.
You see the remedy they’re starving for long before you have the courage to name it for yourself.
Boundaries.
Safety.
Release.
“I see you, Bear,” I say quietly. “I see the weight you carry, too. And while I could guess a million reasons why you’re wired this way, I don’t really care about the why right now. I just want to show you something different. Let me rework your algorithm, just a little bit.”
“It’s not about letting someone take care of me or show me something different,” he says, eyes steady on mine.
“And it’s not that plenty of women haven’t offered.
It’s about surrendering to it. Allowing it in.
” A pause. Honest. Final. “And that’s not something I’m willing to do at this point in my life. At least not beyond a certain point.”
I whisper, “Why not?”
His answer is swift.
“Because this has to end. That’s the agreement. I made it with myself long before I promised you a week.”
“Eli—”
“Look, Max, I’m not being vague for the hell of it. I’ve just spent a long time learning how to survive the exit. I don’t do slow fades or messy entanglements. I do the clean break. So while I know it’s disappointing, I can’t let you in beyond a certain point.”
I nod slowly. “Too messy. Self-preservation.”
He nods. “You’ll leave. And if I let this become hope for more than a week,” he says, his voice dropping, “then it isn’t just a beautiful memory anymore.
It becomes something I have to lose. And I’d rather walk away while I’m still the one holding the door than wait for the moment you decide you’ve had enough of the view. ”
Shit.
And now he has my complete attention.
“Bear…Eli… I—”
Ding. Dong.
The sound slices through the moment like an axe.
I blink, thrown by the timing, by the weight of what I was about to say.
I want to tell him I’m not in a rush to leave.
That I could work from anywhere. That my whole life is in the cloud and I don’t need to be tethered to Atlanta, or to the plan I thought I had before I met him.
I want to say, I haven’t even left yet...and I already miss you.
But I can’t.
The doorbell already answered for me.
Eli pulls the steaks off the grill, the smell trailing behind us as Eli and I step off the deck toward the front of the house. We’re still wrapped in the heavy silence of his last words— you’ll leave—when we see the van outside.
It’s white. Clean. Corporate. The logo on the side reads Excelsior Rentals in sharp blue print, like it’s here on official business.
“Expecting someone?” I ask, raising an eyebrow.
“Not at all,” Eli replies, brow furrowed.
A man steps out of the van with a clipboard in one hand and a suitcase in the other.
My suitcase.
“Miss Palmer?” he calls.
“That’s me,” I say, stepping forward with cautious curiosity.
“Looks like this got left in the back of your rental after the accident,” he says, holding it out.
“Oh my God—I didn’t even realize I was missing a bag!” I exclaim, genuinely surprised. I’ve been so wrapped up in Eli, his world, and whatever this is between us, I didn’t even notice part of mine was gone.
It’s also the near empty bag I kept to bring books home from the conference so I didn’t really miss anything that was in it.
The man chuckles. “Most women would’ve been calling us nonstop over a missing bag—makeup, outfits, all that.”
I look at Eli then offer a sheepish grin. “I guess I’ve been a little…distracted.”
He flips a page on the clipboard. “Also, your flight itinerary’s been updated. Looks like you’re now set to leave Tuesday morning?”
I nod slowly. “Yeah…that’s correct.”
And the clock starts ticking again. Loud and unforgiving. The reminder I’ve been trying to outrun is now standing right in front of me in head-to-toe company khaki.
The pitch is this weekend. Just a few more nights under his roof.
“Thanks,” I manage, signing for the suitcase.
The man tips his cap and drives away, snow and mud kicking up from his tires as the van disappears down the path.
I glance at Eli.
He’s still. Like the quiet has hardened into something heavier now. His eyes are locked on the ice where the van had been parked, but he doesn’t say a word.
The silence stretches until his phone buzzes in his back pocket. He pulls it out, glances at the screen, and finally exhales through his nose.
“It’s Drake,” he says, eyes still on his phone.
“Everything okay?” I ask, folding my arms so I don’t reach for him. He looks like he could use me right now, and I don’t know if that’s something I’m allowed to offer or something he’d accept after this harsh reminder of our ending.
He nods, but it’s mechanical. “Yeah. Just reminding me to send Lara updates for my part of the presentation deck for the pitch.”
I arch a brow. “Drake and Lara working together?” I tease lightly. “Burning the midnight oil these days, huh?”
“Yeah,” he says, distracted. “I’ve never seen Drake this focused.”
I smile to myself, because I work quickly. The plan is unfolding exactly the way I’d hoped.
First, I set Lara up with a profile. Casual.
Low-pressure. Then I made sure Drake overheard us talking about it around the office.
After that, convincing him to sign up was easy once I described the kind of women who frequent the app.
Once he joined, I did what I do best. I let the custom algorithm I created keep showing him Lara’s profile.
I gave Lara a tip about simply viewing his profile a few times to make sure he sees she noticed him. It worked like a charm.
I honestly can’t wait to see how it plays out, mostly because it’s already working faster than I anticipated since the two are working so closely.
I smile to myself. Maxine Palmer. Canadian Cupid.