Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
RACHEL
I have an hour reprieve between unexpectedly seeing Nick at the bakery and Jae showing up, guns blazing.
She pushes open the double doors to the back area like she’s a gunslinger ready for a showdown at high noon. At this point, I’m sure Hailey didn’t even bother trying to stop her.
“Why does Nick think you’re still in love with Kyle?” Jae demands, the doors barely shut behind her. Please let there not be any customers out there.
I gape at her, aware of Sydney’s identical shocked face across the way.
I’m still too stunned to respond when Sydney says, “Is that why it was so weird earlier with Nick? More than your usual weirdness, I mean.”
I set down the rag I’m scrubbing the workstation with and rub my temples, a headache already forming. “I don’t want to talk about Nick,” I mumble through clenched teeth.
“Yeah, well, I do,” Jae declares, making herself comfortable on a stool. “Because you like him.”
My fingers twitch against the countertop. “Just because we kissed—”
“You kissed?!” Jae and Sydney scream in unison, loud enough that Hailey half-opens the door and peeks her head back here.
“Who kissed?” she asks, and I shoo her away.
I point at Hailey. “You get back to the register.” I point next at Sydney.
“You keep working on the graduation cake for the Richardson twins.” Last, I grab Jae’s arm.
“You, come with me.” I pull her into the office, the small space even more cramped with two of us in here, and shut the door behind us for minimal eavesdropping.
Throwing my hands up, I search for some kind of explanation, but all I can say is, “It’s complicated.”
Jae rolls her eyes. “No, it’s not. Now give me all the details.”
I sigh, knowing this was bound to happen at some point. It was a matter of when , not if .
I tell her about the first accidental kiss on Wednesday during the prank, then the real kiss on Thursday.
“It’s Saturday ,” Jae says with accusation in her voice. “Why am I only hearing about this now?”
I pick at my nails, not looking at her. “Because I don’t feel the need to broadcast every second of my life to everyone?”
“Nice try. Now tell me why Nick is under the impression you’re into Kyle.”
Okay, that I don’t understand. “I never said that.”
“So, what did you say? Because I just ran into him at the grocery store and he seemed pretty sure about it.”
I shut my eyes, thinking back to that awful moment on the couch, lust still coursing through me even as an irrational certainty filled me that Nick was going to do the same as Kyle.
“I… I told him I couldn’t do this.” I gesture toward my mouth.
“The kissing. That I wasn’t ready for anything with anyone. ”
“Why?”
It’s the same thing Nick had asked, and even after ruminating on it for days, I don’t have a different answer.
“You know what happened with Kyle. I trusted him and he—” I swallow hard, shaking my head. “I can’t go through that again.”
Jae’s gaze is full of sympathy. “Kyle isn’t half the man Nick is.”
I huff out a breath of laughter. “You barely know either of them. And I obviously didn’t know Kyle as well as I thought I did.”
“Okay, everything I do know about them says I’m right. I’ve seen how Nick looks at you and let me tell you—Kyle was never that guy.”
I press my lips together, looking down. “I can’t trust myself,” I whisper.
“You can’t let Kyle ruin all men for you forever.”
She’s right. I know she’s right. But when I remember how small Kyle made me feel, leaving me for another woman… “What if I get hurt again?”
“That’s a risk everyone has to take. What if Josh did that to me? If I did it to Josh?”
Okay, that’s crazy. The two of them would never—
I pause at her knowing smirk. “Point taken.”
“I’m not saying you have to dive in headfirst. But maybe give him a chance? You deserve something good.”
I want to believe she’s right. That it’s time to stop letting fear be the loudest voice in my head.
She moves to hug me, and I let her, her arms encircling my back, rocking me side to side. As usual, I feel better almost immediately after one of her hugs.
Damn it.
We talk a little while longer, and when she leaves, I cautiously head back into the bakery, finding Sydney on a stool, focused on the cake she’s carefully working on.
She looks over at me, one eyebrow raised.
As Jae would say, she wants me to tell her the hot goss .
It suddenly feels unfair that I’m expected to spill all my secrets when no one else is sharing any of their own.
“How’s your love life?” I ask her, relishing the surprised widening of her eyes. It’s fun catching her off guard on the rare occasions I can.
She quickly recovers, though. “What kind of love life can I have when we’re working six days a week while Mom and Dad are gone? And half the time coming in on my day off for emergencies?”
“I never said—” we both say in unison, and I frown at her smirk. She set me up for that, knowing exactly how I’d respond. I never said you had to come in.
“I’m kidding,” she says, attention back on her piping. “And my love life is non-existent. All the guys in town suck.”
Not all the guys. But I don’t think she’s into tall firefighters with tattoos that kiss like—
Okay, wrong time to be thinking about that. “Maybe someone new will move here.”
She snorts. “Who in their right mind would move to Aurora? It’s population boring here.”
I hold my smile at bay. “Jae and Josh moved here.”
“For you. All my friends already live here.”
“They just reopened the bar in town. Maybe you’ll meet someone there.”
She looks up from her work with a quizzical expression. “Who reopened it? How do you know this stuff?”
“If you came to the small business association meetings, you’d—”
“Okay, stop deflecting and tell me what’s going on with you and Nick.”
I was wondering when she’d call me out on that.
I sigh, picking up a fresh rag and our cleaning spray to disinfect the workstation I used this morning. “I don’t know, to be honest.”
“You don’t kiss guys you’re not sure about,” she says, so confidently, I almost believe her.
Isn’t that what happened with Kyle, though?
We hadn’t interacted much back in high school.
He was part of the popular clique, and while I hadn’t been unpopular, I definitely wasn’t in the upper echelon of the social rankings.
When I moved back to Aurora, I ran into him and he’d asked me out.
It seemed surreal that someone like him was noticing me, so I’d say yes.
Little did I realize then he’d peaked in high school.
And everything after that… I’d just gone along with.
Things had been rough getting the bakery’s finances back in order, taking all my focus, so when it came to anything else in my life, I didn’t put up a fight, not having the energy for it.
It was easy to let Kyle determine the pace of our relationship, to follow his lead and do what he wanted.
To accept being his girlfriend when he asked and make space in my house when he eventually wanted to move in.
But when I think about it, it almost seems like those choices weren’t mine.
It was taking the path of least resistance.
To do those things because they were expected of me.
A lot of my life has been like that. As the eldest sister, taking care of my younger ones growing up because my parents expected it of me. Coming back to Aurora to work at the bakery because it was expected of me.
Where are my choices? What in my life is something I’ve definitively decided on?
God, even this thing with Nick was something I was pushed into. Jae signed me up to help with the pancake breakfast, which led to getting involved with the fundraiser.
But Nick… Nick has always given me a choice. Asking if I wanted his help and accepting it if I said no. I was the one who kissed him that first time. And the second time, I was the one who said please, practically begging him to kiss me, then invited him inside to continue.
And when I’d stopped things, he hadn’t given me a hard time. He’d been his kind, genuine self today, telling me to take care, even after all the back and forth I’ve put him through. How could he not hold it against me? If I’d told Kyle no… I shudder to think.
And doesn’t that hammer home the point? Nick and Kyle aren’t the same. I need to remember that.
“I think I might have fucked things up with Nick,” I finally tell Sydney.
“Because you’re still in love with Kyle?” she asks sarcastically.
I shake my head. “I have to talk to Nick about that.” I owe him that much.
“Well, whatever you did, I’m sure he’ll hear you out.”
How can she be so sure? “Why?”
She looks at me like I’m a simpleton. “Don’t you see the way he looks at you?”
Jae already said something similar. And the way he looked at me when I thought we were acting… The way he kissed me… It was like I was as necessary as air.
“Did Kyle look at me like that?” I ask without thinking, and cringe at the half-guarded, half-pitying glance Sydney gives me. That’s enough of an answer there.
“Kyle was interested in Kyle,” is all she says, which doesn’t really answer my question, and also explains everything.
We sit in silence as I think some more about what to do until Sydney asks, “Do you actually go to small business association meetings?”
“Yeah.”
She shakes her head in disgust. “God, you’re boring. You’re lucky anyone likes you.”
I’d punch her arm, but I don’t want to mess up the cake she’s working on. “Just remember who does the schedule. Someone might not get weekends off in a long time.”
She rolls her eyes, even as she grins. “Like that was going to happen, anyway.” She shifts, leaning away from the cake, but doesn’t look at me. “But maybe I could go with you to one of those meetings sometime?”
Well, this is a new development.
I keep my expression as neutral as I can, not wanting to scare her off. “Yeah, sure. Why, um, the sudden change of heart?”
She shrugs, then goes back to decorating. “I don’t know. I was thinking about the advertising thing. I guess I should be more involved, especially with Mom and Dad gone. They probably dumped a lot on your plate, huh?”
“Honestly, I was doing most of it, anyway.” And in some ways, it’s easier without them here. I don’t have to pretend like I’m asking permission for something we all know is in the best interest of the bakery.
“Oh. That doesn’t seem fair.”
“You know I get paid more, right? Because of all the extra stuff I do?”
She pauses. “I didn’t know that. I guess it makes sense, though. Since you have a degree and all.”
Sydney had no interest in going to college after high school, preferring to go full-time at the bakery instead. Hailey is still working on her degree, going part-time online.
“But we’re doing okay?” she continues. “The bakery, I mean?”
“Yeah, we’re fine.” Now. It was a different story two years ago. Did Sydney ever even know?
She seems relieved. “Good. I got worried for a minute since you were advertising.”
“No, advertising is a good thing. It means we have enough to invest in our business to grow it. And you saw the response. People want our products.” Normally, I wouldn’t talk to her about this.
But since she asked to be included… “I’ve actually been thinking we should hire someone else for the bakery.
” It’s either that or close one or two days a week, and no one wants that.
She frowns. “We already did that. Desiree is working the counter on the weekends.”
“I’m not talking about a high schooler who can work a cash register. I mean a baker. Then we can actually take two days off a week again. And maybe cut back to eight-hour days again, too.”
“That’d be amazing. Would they stay on after Mom and Dad get back?”
I bite my thumbnail. “I don’t know. That’s the part I haven’t figured out yet. Ideally yes, though.”
I haven’t talked to Mom and Dad about the idea yet. To be fair, I tried during our last conversation before Mom derailed everything.
She nods, considering it. “Well, keep me posted. I… I’d like a say in who we hire.”
I nudge her shoulder. “Look at you being all professional.”
She rolls her eyes. “All right. Enough of that.”
Heading back to the office with a grin on my face, I plop down in the desk chair, my smile slowly slipping. What I need is to figure out what to do about Nick.
Before it’s too late.