“An understatement,” she spat. “You treated me like your whore.”
She saw something, an emotion, faint and brief, flicker in his eyes before being replaced by that maddening calm again. That same sort of dead expression he’d worn when he’d been jilted on his wedding day.
“I apologize,” he said. “I wasn’t myself.”
She curled her hands into fists, her fingernails digging into the tender skin on her palm, the pain the only thing keeping her from exploding. “Do you know what I think, Zack? I think you were yourself. This? This is the lie. This isn’t you. It’s you being a coward. You can’t face whatever it is that happened between us last night and now you’re hiding from it.”
“It isn’t working. That element of our relationship.” The only thing that betrayed his tension was the shifting of a muscle in his jaw. “But we’ve been friends for seven years. That works for us. We need to go back to that.”
“Are you … are you crazy?” she asked, the words exploding from her. “We can’t go back. I’ve been naked with you. You’ve been. We’ve made love. You can’t just go back from that like it never happened. I don’t care what we thought, we were wrong. That one night, that one night that’s turned into four, it changed everything. You can’t just experience something like that with someone and feel nothing.”
“I can.”
“Do you really think this is nothing? That we’re nothing?”
“We’re friends, Clara. You mean a lot to me. But it doesn’t mean I want to keep sleeping with you. It doesn’t mean I want this kind of drama. We need things back like they were so that the business can stay on track..”
“I’m leaving Roasted. You know that.”
He tightened his jaw. “I didn’t think you would really leave.”
“What? Now that we’ve slept together? You can’t have it both ways. Either it changed things or it didn’t.”
“I care about you,” he said, his tone intensifying.
“Not enough.” She shook her head, fighting tears. They weren’t sad tears. She was too angry for that. That would come later. “I am your sidekick, and that’s how you like it. As long as I give you company when you want it, eat dinner with you when you’re lonely, bake your wedding cake when you decide it’s time to have a cold, emotionless marriage, well then, you care about me. As long as I’m willing to pretend to be your fiancée so you can get your precious business deal. But it’s on your terms. And the minute it isn’t, when I start having power, that’s when you can’t handle it.”
He only looked at her, his expression neutral.
“I’m done with it, Zack,” she said, pulling the ring, the ring that wasn’t hers, from her finger. “All of it.”
She put the ring on his desk and backed away, her heart thundering, each beat causing it to splinter.
“We have a deal,” he bit out.
“You’ll figure it out. If that’s the only reason you don’t want me to go … if that’s all that’s supposed to keep me here. I can’t.”
Zack stood, his gray eyes suddenly fierce. “So, you’re just going to walk out, throw away our friendship over a meaningless fling?”
“No. It’s not the fling, Zack, it’s the fact that you think it’s meaningless. The fact that I’ve realized exactly where I rate as far as you’re concerned.”
“What do you want?” he exploded. “Why is what we have suddenly not good enough for you?”
“Because I realized how little I was accepting. That everything was about you. I’m just willing to take whatever you give me, whether it’s a spot in your bed or a job baking your wedding cake and it’s … sick. I can’t keep doing this to myself.” She turned to go and he rounded the desk, gripping her arm tightly.
“I’ll ask you again,” he said, his voice rough. “What do you want? I’ll give it to you. Don’t leave.”
“So I can wait around for you to decide you want to try a loveless marriage again? So I can bake you another cake? Maybe I’ll help the bride pick out her dress this time, because, hey, I’m always here to do whatever you need done, right?”
“Does it bother you? The thought of another woman marrying me? Then you marry me.” He reached behind him and took the ring off the desk, holding it out to her, his hand shaking. “Marry me. And stay.”
She recoiled, her stomach tight, like she’d just been punched. “For what purpose, Zack? So I can be the wife you don’t love? Your stand-in for Hannah, different woman, same ring. Doesn’t matter, right? You’re still doing it. You’re trying to keep me from leaving, trying to keep control. You’ll even marry me to keep it. That’s not what I want.”
He took her hand in his, opened it, tried to hand her the ring. She pulled back. “Don’t,” she said, her voice breaking. “Don’t. I’m going to clean my desk out now.”
“Clara.”
Zack watched as she turned away from him and walked out his office door, closing it sharply behind her. Everything was deathly silent without her there, his breath too loud in the enclosed space. The ring too heavy.
Had he truly done that? Offered her Hannah’s ring? Begged her to marry him just so she would stay?
He had. She had gone anyway and there had been nothing he could do to make her stay. All of his control, all of his planning, hadn’t fixed it. He had lost the one person in his life who had given things meaning.
He’d been pretending, from the moment he’d met Clara, that she was only his friend. Only one thing. Because he’d known she could very easily become everything. How had he not realized that she’d been everything from day one?
Pain crashed through him, a sense of loss so great it stole the breath from his lungs.
His chest pitched sharply, his body unable to take in air.
He dropped the ring and it fell to the floor, rolling underneath his desk. He left it. It didn’t matter.
He’d just broken the only thing in his life that did matter.
Control. She spoke of his control, how he tried to control her, keep her in his life on his terms. And she was right. Because he’d known instinctively that if he ever let go of that control she would take over.
She had. His control was shattered now, laying around his feet in a million broken pieces he would never be able to reclaim.
And if finding it again meant losing Clara, he didn’t want it, anyway.
He hadn’t chosen to lose his son, it had been a tragedy, one that had painted his life from that moment forward. He’d let Clara leave, because he’d been too afraid to give. Too afraid to let his barriers down.
Because he’d been certain he couldn’t live with the kind of pain love would bring, not again. But now he was certain he couldn’t live without it. Without Clara. He loved her so much his entire being ached with it.
And if he had to lay down every bit of pride, every last vestige of control and protection to have her back, he would.
CLARA had looked at nine buildings in the space of four hours. She’d hated them all. The idea of having her own bakery … it had been so great before. But she realized now that when she pictured it, when she saw the image of