Page 169 of Never Let You Go

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.

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