Chapter 24 #2
He’d hoped she’d eventually respond to his texts, even though he’d fallen into the rhythm of accepting that she wouldn’t.
There was a perverse pleasure he’d started to glean from it — a joy that would have likely been better without Manon’s interference, but she had prevented inappropriate photographs from happening, so that was for the best — in telling her about his days and not expecting anything in return.
He wasn’t always the most selfless person. There’d been some catharsis to it.
But somehow, it hadn’t crossed his mind how badly they both needed this.
Anyone looking in from the outside would have a good argument for why Candace needed it more, in fact, but the future Laurin envisioned for her negated that.
He knew she didn’t share that vision with him, though, so in her mind, she absolutely needed that money.
Would Candace throw the competition anyway? Is that what she’d meant? Laurin’s stomach went queasy at the thought. He didn’t want that. He wanted a challenge. And he wanted Candace to be proud of whatever she made.
Her grim expression now made him second-guess that. As much as it pained him to think it, Candace would be happy if she were preparing to sacrifice herself. No, she thought she needed to win but was going to lose because her confidence was already shot.
Because he’d shaken her. Because he’d been more selfish than he’d ever been in his life and had been so hot in pursuit of her that he hadn’t thought about how his personal quest would shake her professionally.
She was going to lose because of him, and that was unacceptable.
He had to win. His home and his family depended on it.
She had to win, too. For reasons every bit as important.
Shit.
A place that means a lot to you.
There needed to be at least three types of edible decorations, three types of icing, and three types of baked goods.
Candace didn’t have a problem with any of that.
Gingerbread, of course, with a cake for the structure to stand on and a cookie of some sort for decoration.
She’d need royal icing to glue it together, fudge to ice the ground or a meringue if she wanted snow, and a buttercream for details.
Edible decorations would come to her as she planned it, no stress there.
Except she didn’t know what it was.
Historically, these personal challenges always felt like her biggest handicap.
She didn’t think her weak grasp on the meaning behind her pieces actually hindered her in the judging, but nothing made her more stressed and her exchanges with the judges more awkward than required personal elements. And this time?
Her bakery was gone. The idea of rebuilding it out of gingerbread made her nauseous.
She lived in a crappy apartment, a place she’d moved into expecting to be in a better spot by the end of the lease, but now she was about to sign it a third time.
Her childhood home would have been an impressive build, but she’d have to lie through her teeth about any happy memories there.
Her college had some nice buildings, but how lame would that have been?
She wasn’t going to win. She wasn’t going to have a good story.
But she could do something for herself, something she could be proud of. Something that had a river running through it, because why not? It had nothing to do with gingerbread, but that was okay.
A waterfall. Going over a little cabin. It didn’t need to be a real place, after all, not if she wasn’t hoping to win. It didn’t need to be a place she’d ever been. It could be an idea of what would have meant a lot to her.
She sketched a ramshackle cabin atop a hill of cake layers, a trifle moat at the base, a lake behind the cabin so a waterfall could run off the roof. Tall trees surrounding it.
They could be made of pretzel.
And a tuft of cotton candy for smoke rising from the chimney.
She’d lose a ton of points for going light on gingerbread, but it would be pretty.
She smiled and laughed softly as she added a squirrel on the roof.
She didn’t even know what she’d make it out of, but that was okay.
She probably wouldn’t even finish the stupid thing.
Her eyes strayed from her sketch as she chuckled, only to find Laurin staring right back at her.
He was already done with his sketch, waiting for Candace and Patty to signal they were done as well.
He opened his mouth to say something, hesitated, and looked back down at his paper with a scowl deeply drawn on his face.
A second later, he looked back up and mouthed, “You got this.”
She shook her head, but she smiled as she did so. Her sketch looked okay only because the elements were rugged and natural. Her hand shook the entire time, and as soon as he was talking again, she was sure her heart would be pounding in her ears.
Eating bonbons. What had that meant? Uggh. She was honest with herself. A part of her wanted to curl up in a ball on Laurin’s lap and promise she’d never run away again if only he promised not to let her go, but promises weren’t forever. The only forever Candace had was herself.
She was going to lose the challenge, but she’d gotten decent prize money for making it this far, and she’d proved she could keep herself under control.
Only she hadn’t. Despite everything that was bad about today, she’d at least been optimistic about the future.
But as she set up her work station and made a full outline of what she needed to do here — hers was just the baking and the icing for now, since she hadn’t finalized the rest of the design — it hit her that she already figured she was on some sort of probation for what had happened on Summer Bakes.
And despite Laurin’s texts about how bad it looked on camera, she had to assume that Food2Love thought it had been a consensual thing.
As Laurin had also astutely pointed out, it was clear from the previous episodes that the two of them had a relationship that was not purely platonic.
It looked like she’d done it all over again.
Her hands were shaking harder than ever as she put her mixer together. She could barely separate her eggs and had to scoop the yolks out when just shifting them from one half of the shell to the other led to three popped yolks in a row. She nearly used powdered sugar instead of flour.
She wasn’t going to come back.
She wasn’t going to win, and she wasn’t going to come back.
This was the end of her.
Despite what Mike had said, there was a clock on the wall that had a countdown with a sign taped to it reading UNTIL brEAK. Two hours, thirty-nine minutes. They’d just started twenty minutes ago, and her heart was cutting off her oxygen.
She needed walnuts. She was making a carrot cake, and she’d forgotten walnuts. Carrot cakes had to have walnuts.
In her rush to the pantry, she tripped and nearly fell on nothing at all, but she corrected and made it there unscathed.
For the first time ever, she was glad they always put the nuts on the bottom shelf.
She squatted down and clutched her knees, using the number of containers as an excuse to hold that pose a little longer, even though walnuts were front and center.
She just needed to be a ball for a moment longer, that was all.
“Hey, hey, bonbon—”
Candace gasped in alarm at Laurin’s sudden voice above her and wobbled back.
He reached for her, she was sure reflexively, but all these pantries looked the same.
This wasn’t the first time she’d used missing ingredients as an excuse to hide in a pantry while she got herself back together.
The last time she’d done this, the man who’d reached for her was Lucas.
She screeched and fell straight back on her ass, her hands going up to block herself instead of mitigating the fall, so she smacked the back of her head on a shelf as well.
Laurin cursed softly, nearly reached for her again, and then held his hands up in surrender. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “I promise, I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
Of course he did. He was a good man. He was ruining her, but he was a good man.
A bad man could have done the exact same thing to her just to make her fully dependent on him, this absolutely could be the scam she’d suspected from the beginning, but no.
That wasn’t Laurin’s flaw. His only flaw was not understanding that everything he did wrecked her further.
“I’m fine,” she grumbled as she lowered her hands and righted her skirt, doing what she could to get herself back together. “I overreacted.”
“No, you reacted exactly how you should have. How I should have expected you to. I didn’t think this through, but I needed to say something.”
Candace grabbed the walnuts as she lumbered up to her feet. “This isn’t really a good time.”
“It’s the only time.” He raked his fingers through his hair, destroying the hairdresser’s work, but he looked all the better for the mussing. “I messed up, bonbon. Candace. I didn’t mean to freak you out or anything, I promise.”
She sighed. “I know you didn’t. It’s okay. It’s not you, it’s me. I’m a mess, that’s all. I shouldn’t have come back.”
His eyes narrowed as his fingers twitched. He looked as though he wanted to reach out but was keeping his hands firmly at his side. “You’re so mad at me you would have just not shown up? Sweet Christ, Candace, the network could have sued you for breach—”
“Shh!” she hissed. “That’s not what I meant.
I shouldn’t have been in this competition any more than Summer Bakes.
I wasn’t ready.” She shook her head. She’d left Laurin to prevent him from leaving her, yes, but she’d also left to avoid more painful conversations.
It was one thing to explain how awful other people had been to her over the years, but it was a far worse thing to explain how weak she’d been in the face of it all.
But she didn’t want Laurin to think he was the one to blame here when it was really her own hang-ups ruining everything.
“I went to Summer Bakes to run away from my life falling apart, and it ended up making everything worse. A smart person would have cut their losses there, admitted that they weren’t ready to do it again.
But I was so desperate to prove that I could still compete, that I could still win, that I threw myself right back into it like I wasn’t still a wreck from last time. ”
“Candace.” That was all he said for a long, hard moment. He grabbed the shelves on either side of him, opening his arms to her, inviting her to hug him if she wanted to. It was so tempting, but this was the one way she could be strong.
She smiled. She knew it was a sad one, but at least it was honest. She got up on her tiptoes, placed a hand on his cheek, feeling the faint scrape of stubble vehemently protesting the recent shave, and kissed him lightly.
A friendly kiss, nothing more, and she could tell from his damp eyes and downturned lips that he knew.
“I’m going to lose, Laurin. I don’t have it in me to win this. ”
“You’re going to win,” he blurted out, finally caving and throwing his arms around her and pulling her in tight. “You have to win. You deserve it. And you’re so talented. You’ve already got a good idea, so—”
“My idea is ridiculous.”
“Ridiculously clever. So don’t say you’re going to lose, because you’re not. You’re going to tweak your plan to get your elements better incorporated, and you’re going to win.”
“So you’re going to throw the competition?” she said skeptically as she wiggled free. “Laurin, I don’t want you to—”
“Good, because I’m not going to. I’m going to fight tooth and nail to win, and you are going to fight back, and you are going to win. I’m not hearing any more of this bullshit about not having it in you. Of course you have it in you. Stop being a baby, and fight me!”
“Well, that was uncalled f—oof!” she squeaked as Laurin’s arm suddenly went around her again for a brisk, lip-bruising, makeup-wrecking kiss. His free hand squeezed her ass for good measure, and then he was bolting out of the pantry with the stupidest grin on his face.
Backpedaling to say, “I have a present for you. I’m not giving it to you now, but when I give it to you, remember I already had it now.”
“What on earth,” Candace mumbled to herself, but she clutched the walnuts to her body to anchor herself as she followed him out a moment later.
And plotted.
She wasn’t going to win, but she wasn’t going to give up, either.