Page 92 of You Cake My Breath Away

Breaths coming in short bursts, I search my brain for any memory of Archer saying he’s leaving and find none.

“Where’s he going?”

She clamps down on her lips and blows out a breath through her nose. “He didn’t tell you?”

“We’re not really on speaking terms right now.” I sigh. “Tell me what?”

“He got the job in Tennessee.”

My shoulders slouch with the rest of my body. “Oh.”

She flicks on her blinker, pulling slowly into the parking lot. Archer’s green truck is here, and immediately the appetite I worked up by perusing the aisles of Buy Buy Baby, vanishes. Shantel puts the car in park and turns to me.

“They called him on Saturday morning.”

The day after my entire world exploded.

Swallowing shards of glass, I paste on a smile. “That’s great news.”

My chest aches, stomach writhing as I try to work through this new revelation. Just last week I thought me and Archer were solid. We had finally abolished the line we drew between ourselves and come to a place where I thought we could move forward in a relationship, but within three days everything came crashing down. It’s almost like the universe was conspiring against us from the start.

After reading his letters to Sebastian, realizing how much weight he’s had on his shoulders since his brother passed, I know this job is the break he needs. He shouldn’t have to give up anything when he’s given so much already.

At first I was angry, devastated to learn that Archer had mentioned the bakery to Jessie, offering up the place he wanted to open another hardware store, to make my dream come true. That there were moments in my life that were made special because of Archer, despite how much he tried to make it seem like I didn’t matter. Everything he’s done for the past five years seems like it’s been to show me love without me knowing it, but I don’t know how to reconcile that with feeling like my agency was stolen away—that I’m living a parallel life to the one I could’ve had if I knew all the information.

“Let’s go eat.” I open the door and get out.

Shantel catches up to me after locking the car. “Are you going to say something to him?”

“No.” I shake my head. “He’s free to leave whenever he wants.”

“But what about you guys? Are you going to do long-distance?”

I release the hair tie holding my bun in place and run my fingers through the tangles before swiping them behind my ear. If I let her see I’m upset about how things turned out with Archer, she’ll tell him not to leave, and I can’t bear the weight of him trying to come up with an excuse for why hehasto leave. I always knew it would happen, knew I’d fall for him and then he’d be taken from me. I guess I didn’t expect it to happen so soon.

“No. We had a moment, and now it’s out of our system.”

A throat clears behind us, and I spin on my heels and take in the outline of Archer’s tall, broad frame, a bouquet of flowers at his side. Nora comes up behind him and waves like they both didn’t hear me downplay what happened between me and Archer.

His green eyes land on me, searing my skin with a single glance. My chest tightens as I give him a weak smile and embrace Nora. Less than three months ago I couldn’t bear to be touched, but Archer refused to let me fall deeper into the depression and forced me to come back to the land of the living. I can only thank him by letting him finally live his dream, even if it means I’m not part of it.

“Ready to eat?” she asks.

I nod, not trusting my voice to speak. Archer holds the door open for us, and his presence is a block of heat behind me as we walk to the table. He hasn’t said hello yet, and the now crinkled bouquet of flowers laying on the table makes me think he absolutely heard what I said. Not that itmatters. Even though he ghosted me after apparently being in love with me for years, I still want to see him finally do something for himself.

“Congrats on the job.” I unroll the napkin and lay it across my lap.

He coughs and reaches for his water, eyes narrowing at Shantel. “Thanks, I was going to call you tomorrow.”

I want to say ‘don’t bother’ but my tongue won’t form the words. He’s already seen, already dug too deep into my wounds, and he apparently saw I wasn’t good enough, or I was too broken for him to put back together, and decided to leave before he had to let his walls down and show me he wasn’t perfect either.

“How’s the bakery coming along?” Nora asks, oblivious to the tension at the table.

Did he not tell her what happened? Archer looks to me, green eyes filled with something I can’t place. Remorse? Exhaustion? My gut tells me to make it clear there’s nothing else keeping him here, that he’s free to go and that I’ll be fine without him. The thought leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

“It’s going great. The freezer was delivered this morning and I have another carpenter coming to finish some last-minute things.”

“That was quick.” Archer clamps down on his lips like he didn’t mean to say that.

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