9. Vivienne #2
“She said she was sorry,” he continues like I haven’t even spoken.
His eyes are distant now, like he’s seeing it all over again.
“She said she didn’t mean for it to happen and that she’d tried to make it work with me, but it wasn’t enough.
I wasn’t enough. And then she left. Just walked out and left me standing there with the books open and the restaurant drowning and no idea how to fix any of it. ”
The silence that follows is suffocating.
I can’t breathe. The air is too thick. My chest is tight. My ribs are constricting around my heart.
“Did you —” My voice comes out hoarse. “Did you go to the police? Press charges?”
He lets out a bitter laugh. “I tried. I talked to a lawyer. But she was smart about it. She was on all the accounts. Legitimate business partner, co-owner, and fiancée. Technically, she had legal access to the money. And she’d been moving it to a joint account we’d opened together, then transferring it out from there.
The lawyer said we could try to sue, but it would be expensive and would probably take years.
And there was no guarantee we’d win or that she’d even have any money left to take. ”
He drags a hand through his hair again, the familiar motion causing my eyes to tear up.
“I couldn’t afford a legal battle. I could barely afford to keep the doors open. So I had to let it go and just accept that the money was gone and figure out how to survive without it.”
God. That’s even worse. She got away with it.
“I had to tell everyone,” he says quietly.
“My dad. My brothers. The staff. The investors who’d believed in me from the beginning — they were furious.
They almost pulled out completely. I had to beg them to stay, and in the end, I had to bring on a few new investors just to cover what she took and keep the doors open.
More money meant more debt, more people to answer to, more promises I had to keep.
I had to explain to all of them that the woman I was supposed to marry had stolen from me and disappeared.
I had to admit that I didn’t see it coming and that I’d been so focused on the restaurant, I missed all the signs. ”
He laughs, but it’s hollow and empty.
“I promised them all I’d work day and night and do whatever it took.
And I have. For two years, I’ve been doing whatever it takes.
But the debt —” He shakes his head. “It’s so much.
The loan payments are killing us. Almost every dollar we make goes straight to paying it back, and there’s never enough. ”
I feel like I’m going to be sick. My stomach is churning, acid rising in my throat.
“I don’t think I loved her. But I did trust her,” he says, and his voice cracks slightly. “But it doesn’t matter. She still took everything. Not just the money. But that trust and the dream. The belief that I could build something good with someone. She took all of it.”
He looks at me finally, and his eyes are so tired.
“And I’ve spent years trying to convince myself that I’m better off alone. That trusting people, letting them in and building something with them — it’s not worth it. Because they’ll just leave. They’ll take what they want and leave me with the mess.”
The implication hangs between us.
Like you did.
I can’t breathe.
My chest is tight, my hands are trembling, and I feel like I’m drowning. Like the ocean outside has somehow gotten in here and is pulling me under.
He was engaged. He built this whole life, this whole future, with someone who destroyed him and made him feel like he wasn’t enough.
And I didn’t know.
While I was thinking about him every day. Comparing every person I met to him, every kitchen I worked in to the ones we shared in Paris, every cup of coffee to the ones we drank at 3 a.m. while studying for exams, he had moved on. He’d found someone. He’d proposed. He’d built a life.
The jealousy hits me like a gut punch.
It’s completely unfair, and I hate myself for feeling it. I have no right. I left. I disappeared. I gave up any claim to his life and his heart.
His future.
But God, it hurts.
It hurts to know he was that lonely. While I was running from my own demons, he was fighting so hard to hold something together that he proposed to a woman he wasn’t even sure he loved. He was reaching for stability with both hands and calling it a future.
And then there’s the guilt.
The crushing, suffocating guilt that sits on me like a boulder.
She left him. Betrayed him. Took his money and his trust and walked away without looking back.
And I did the same thing.
Not with money. But with trust and friendship and everything we’d built together.
I disappeared. I left him wondering what he’d done wrong and whether he mattered to me at all.
I’m no better than she is.
Worse, maybe. Because Sarah was honest about leaving. She told him to his face. She at least gave him an explanation, even if it was a terrible one.
I just vanished.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, and my voice sounds so broken. “Callum, I’m so sorry.”
He’s watching me, his expression guarded.
“For what?” he asks quietly.
“For —” I gesture helplessly, my hands moving uselessly in the air between us. “For all of it. For what she did to you. For —”
I want to say it. I want to say For what I did to you. For leaving and making you feel like you weren’t enough when you were everything.
But the words stick in my throat.
“Yeah,” he says after a moment. “Well. Now you know why the debt exists. We’re drowning even though the restaurant should be fine.”
I nod, not trusting my voice.
“And now you know why I’m not exactly thrilled about trusting people.” He says it lightly, but there’s an edge underneath. “Especially people who’ve already left me once.”
I flinch back in my chair like I’ve been physically hit.
I deserve that. I know I deserve that.
But his words still hurt. There is a pain radiating through my chest, spreading like cracks in ice.
We sit in silence. The coffee is definitely cold now. I can feel the chill of it through the ceramic when I pick up my mug again, just to have something to hold. The kitchen is so quiet I can hear the clock on the wall ticking. Each second ticking loudly in the silence.
I should say something. Anything. I should try to explain and apologize. I should tell him the truth.
But I don’t know how.
Instead, without thinking, I lean forward and put my hand on his knee.
Just a light touch. A tiny gesture to try to make him see how sad I am about the situation we are in. I lay my palm flat against his leg, feeling the warmth of him through the fabric of his pants.
I’m here. I’m sorry. I wish I could fix this.
His whole body goes still before he looks down at my hand like it’s a foreign object. He stares at it intently, and I can see his chest stop moving, like he’s holding his breath.
And then, slowly, deliberately, he shifts in his chair and pulls his leg back.
My hand falls to my lap and meets empty air where his warmth was.
The rejection is small, but it strikes way deeper than I have any right to feel hurt by. My fingers curl into my palm, trying to hold onto the ghost of the contact.
“Your turn.”
My breathing stutters to a stop. “What?”
“Why did you stop cooking?” He’s looking directly at me now, and I can see all the questions that are threatening to explode out of him. “Why did you leave and become a consultant instead of a chef? Why did you give up the thing you were better at than anyone I’ve ever met?”
I open my mouth. My jaw works, but no sound comes out.
“And why —” His voice hardens, trying to hide the hurt underneath all that anger. “Why did you give up on me?”
The kitchen is too small and too bright all of a sudden. The walls are closing in. I can feel them pressing against my shoulders.
“Please don’t.” I whisper so quietly I wonder if he even hears it.
“I just told you everything.” He leans forward, elbows on his knees, and his eyes are intense and cold. “I told you about Sarah. And the engagement. I told you how she stole from me and left me with nothing. I told you things I haven’t told anyone outside my family.”
He’s right. He opened himself up completely and laid everything bare.
And now he’s asking me to do the same.
But I can’t.
I can’t do it.
“So tell me.” There’s a quiet desperation in his voice that goes straight through me. “Tell me why you left. Why did you disappear? Why did you cut me out of your life like I didn’t matter.”
“You did matter,” I say quickly, my voice cracking with the threat of unshed tears. “You — Cal, you mattered so much. You were —”
Everything. He was everything.
But I can’t say that.