49. Alexandra
forty-nine
When we get there, he’s sitting at a booth with Emma, and he’s looking at papers on the table. He sifts through them. Clenches his jaw. Sets them back on the table.
I’m worried for him. I hesitate for a beat. Is this a private, business moment? Should I wait?
Emma lifts her eyes to me and says something to Christopher. He doesn’t look up.
I close the distance between us. Emma is nervously glancing between Christopher and me. Christopher has his eyes set on the papers. He jerks his chin up. Clenches his jaw again.
“Hey, everything okay?” I ask. “D’you need a minute?” I’m standing, Sarah right behind me, and they’re both sitting.
Christopher squares his shoulders, and his lips flatten when he says, “Mind explaining this?”
His eyes are steely when he finally lifts them to me.
Emma pushes the papers my way.
I take the papers.
No. Oh no no no no no. No!
They’re on Red Barn Baking letterhead. I don’t need to read them to know what they are. I drop them on the table.
This is not how it was supposed to happen. I was going to tell Christopher, preface it with some history, and the assurance that I do love him, and that this is just a minor point in my background that I neglected to mention, but that won’t make any difference in the grand scheme of things.
Because when two people love each other, they do so without regard to their financial situation or family background. Right?
Meanwhile, Emma catches the papers with a thin smile, stacks them neatly, and puts them back in the file folder with her business logo on it.
The room tilts slightly around me. I want to scream. How dare she take that moment away from me? How dare she get between us?
But I don’t let my current anger at Emma take precedence. She’s not who’s important here.
Christopher will understand. He loves me. He said so just last night. And he knows I love him too. That, too, he said just last night. I understand he’s hurt that he didn’t hear that from me.
“I can explain, but if you don’t want to forgive me for not telling you sooner, I need you to know, I just won’t take the exam. I’ll forgo everything.”
His eyes darken. “Don’t,” he says.
Emma reaches her hand out and places it on his forearm, as if he needed calming down and she was the only one who could give him that.
My palms are sweaty, my heartbeat out of control. “You think this matters more to me than you? It doesn’t. I thought I could have it all. Well, I was wrong. I can’t. And I choose you.”
“Don’t jeopardize yourself, Alexandra. It’s useless.”
“Useless? I make it right, and you’re telling me it’s useless?” I can’t help the rise in my voice. This is so unfair.
My eyes cut to Emma. “We’ll continue this conversation without an audience.” Then I turn to Christopher. “I’ll be at the bakery.”
I get the ugly cry out of the way in my room, cursing Emma but mostly blaming myself.
When I hear the bakehouse door slam, I wash my face quickly and put some moisturizer on my lips. I take a deep breath and look around my room. I’m dreading our talk.
But the make up sex is going to be awesome.
I find him in the bakehouse, leaning against the farthest prep table in the back. I close the door softly behind me, and I lick my lips in search of something to say as I make my way slowly to him, the intensity of his glare like a fist around my heart. “So that’s it, huh?” he says, and his eyes say it. He means our relationship is over.
My stomach bottoms and my feet stop functioning. I’m frozen in place, another prep table between us like a wall. “No! What are you talking about?”
His fists clench around the edge of the table he’s leaning on. “Can’t believe you were going to leave me without even telling me this.”
I force my legs to take me to him. To close the gap between us. But I stop midway under the force of his scowl. “I’m not leaving you, Christopher, and of course I was going to tell you.”
“Of course?” he scoffs.
“I—I was waiting until after the competition.” He stares me down, and I swallow with difficulty. “I didn’t want you to lose your focus.”
“How long you been here?” he asks, a mock frown on his face.
Five months and ten days. And each time I thought of telling him, I knew this would happen. I knew he’d feel contempt, and betrayal. “I…”
“You were waiting until the end to tell me what you’re going back to, why you can’t be with me? A little heads up would’ve been nice.”
Holding onto the edge of the prep table for support, I take tentative steps toward him until I’m close enough to touch him. My breath catches. I need the physical contact. I place my hand on his forearm, but he stiffens under my touch. “I can be with you, Christopher. This doesn’t change anything between us.” Unless I was right, and he doesn’t want to have anything to do with the heiress of Red Barn Baking.
But that can’t be.
Not him.
“This changes everything, Alexandra.”
A thick lump forms in my throat, and tears rim my eyes. Of course it changes everything. It’s too much. Too big. Don’t sacrifice your happiness for Red Barn. Don’t be your grandmother. “I told you, I won’t take the exam if it means so much to you. Red Barn is nothing to me, and you are my everything.”
He hangs his head, chuckling sadly. “Relationships can’t be based on lies, Alexandra.”
“I didn’t really lie to you,” I whisper.
His head snaps up. “Don’t make it worse.”
“Please,” I say, squeezing his forearm, but he moves to the side, breaking our touch. The empty table stares at me mockingly. It’s where we had our first kiss. Where we got lost in each other. It’s where we began. Where he showed me love for the first time.
“You would have hated me,” I say, the words barely making it through my tight throat. “That first evening. Remember?” He clenches his jaw but says nothing. His words against Red Barn Baking had been so violent, no way in hell was I going to tell him then who I really was. He couldn’t even understand why I would work for them. “I wanted you to like me. Since that first day, I would have said anything, done anything for you to like me.”
“What about all the time since? Do you really think I would have hated you if you’d told me at some point later?”
I’m so tightly wound my stomach hurts when he looks me in the eye, demanding an answer I don’t know I can give him—but I have to give him. “I don’t know,” I whisper.
He exhales, “Really.”
My stomach bottoms. “Look where we are, now that you know.”
“I wanted you to tell me. I wanted you to trust me.” He pokes his finger at his chest, his eyes flaring with anger.
I take a shaking breath. “And I wanted you to love me for who I am.” The best part of living in Emerald Creek was that no one knew whose granddaughter I was. No one cared. People liked me for who I was. And it was so liberating.
“But this is who you are!”
Tears roll down my cheeks, and I don’t bother wiping them. “No. No, it’s not who I am. I’m not Red Barn Baking. I’m not some rich heiress.”
“So why did you take this apprenticeship, then?” he snarls.
I wipe my cheeks with the back of my hand, thinking about his question. Remembering who I was when I arrived in Emerald Creek. “I was hoping for the love of a dead person. Stupid, I know.” He has no idea how Rita’s lack of love affected me.
He frowns at me. “I feel like I don’t even know you,” he says, shaking his head.
The tears start again. “Please, Christopher, don’t say that,” I beg, knowing what he means by that. How could he love someone he doesn’t really know? The more I fell for him, the harder it became to come clean to him about Red Barn. But Red Barn doesn’t define me. And as I was falling in love with him, everything tied to my grandmother faded in the background.
“Remember when you told me to focus on the important things when there’s too many balls in the air? That’s what I did. I focused on you. You were the most important thing to me. You showed me true love. I barely ever thought about Red Barn after the first few weeks here.” For months, I’d been happy, truly happy. “I won’t take the exam, Christopher. It’s that simple. This way, we’ll be back to where we were.”
“Don’t you see?” he shouts. “You didn’t trust me! How am I supposed to be with someone who doesn’t trust me?”
Oh god.I’ve been so closed off, so used to protecting myself, I never knew how to trust people. Not even him. My eyes well up again, my bottom lip trembles, and I can’t come up with something to say to him that will make him change his mind.
If I couldn’t give him my trust, do I even deserve him?
But how am I going to live without him? My heart booms in my chest, then seems to stop. “Please. Don’t—Don’t do this to us.”
“There is no ‘us,’ Alexandra! I don’t know who you are.” He runs his hand through his hair. “Hell, I was going to… I was going to tell Skye about us. I was trying to convince you that you’d be happier living here and just being… with me. With us. But all along, I was only a stepladder for you.”
I don’t have the energy to wipe away my tears. All I can do is shake my head.
“You’ve blindsided me, Alexandra.” He shrugs, regaining his control. “You’ll do great. At least Rita taught you deception. That’ll come in handy. Nothing I taught you here will help you where you’re going.”
His words cut deep. “I’m not going anywhere. And you taught me… love, in many different forms.”
I wait for him to say something. To acknowledge what I just said. But he doesn’t answer, so I say it again, differently. “I love you, Christopher, and you’re the most important part of my life,” I whisper.
He pushes himself from the table and takes two steps back. “I need to go, and you should too. Get some rest before your exam. Lots riding on it.” His sarcasm slits me, even if I deserve it. I’ve hurt him.
“I love you, Christopher,” I repeat, forcing my voice beyond the sobs that threaten. “You’ll win the competition. I know it. And I’ll be here when you come back.”
His jaw clenches. I can see how wounded he is because I kept something from him, and strangely that makes me believe in us even more.
“When you told me you loved me,” I continue, “I believed you. And I believe you still do. And the reason I didn’t say it back last night—”
He raises his palms toward me. “Stop, Alexandra. Please give me this,” he says as he continues backing away from me.
“Okay,” I say softly. “But I’ll be here when you come back. I won’t take the exam. No going back for me.”
“Don’t,” he cuts in. “Don’t do that. It won’t help. I can’t trust someone who didn’t trust me.” Then he turns around and walks out of the bakehouse into the kitchen, his footsteps receding, until there’s nothing but the ticking of the clock.
I wait for him to turn around, change his mind.
I wait in vain.
It could feel like he walked out of my life, but I won’t let it be that. I have something worth fighting for, and I will. I’ll show him how much I love him.
Still, I don’t have the courage to sleep alone tonight, so close to him. So I grab the duffel bag that’s still unpacked in my room and minutes later, I’m in Sarah’s room at the inn.