Page 80 of Frosting and Flames

Maybe if I tried harder I could, but that doesn’t seem as important right now. I’ll settle for what I still have left.

What I don’t want to settle for is losing this once in a lifetime chance with Rachel. To be part of something bigger than myself.

I haven’t had a family in a long time. No extended family, as both my parents were only children and my grandparents diedwhen I was a baby. Tanner’s the closest thing I have, and neither of us are thelet’s talk about our feelingstype, at least not with each other.

But with Rachel… I could see myself being that way with her. Opening up like she asked.

When I’d hung out at the bakery washing dishes, I’d been a guest peeking through the window of somewhere I didn’t belong listening to Rachel and her sisters bicker and laugh. Finishing each other’s sentences and tossing dish towels and bakery tools to each other like it was part of a choreographed dance I never learned the moves to.

There’s a steady, aching sort of yearning in my gut thinking about belonging to Rachel in that way. For her to understand me inside and out and… to stick around. Even though I know what it’s like to lose everything, I still want it.

More than I ever consciously realized.

A sudden terror runs through me that I might fuck this all up before it ever gets a proper chance. That because I want it so badly, it’ll disappear if I make one wrong move.

No, that won’t happen. Can’t happen. I won’t let it.

Even if I’m on a precipice—one side everything I’ve ever wanted with Rachel and the other…

Not an option.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

RACHEL

“Where’s Sydney?”

I glance up from the cake I’m working on to find Jae sauntering into the bakery’s workroom, an iced coffee in her hand. I might as well give her keys to the building at this point.

“It’s her day off.” I go back to decorating my cake. “Shouldn’t you be working, too?” It’s the middle of the day on a Wednesday.

“I’m taking a long lunch.”

Damn. I wish I got to work remotely.

“I needed to get out of the house. I’m going stir crazy now that I don’t have my bestie to hang out with anymore.” She pouts her lip dramatically, acting mock affronted. “Since she’s so busy with her man.”

I bite my lip to hide my smile. It had been bad luck that the two times she’d asked to get together this week, I’d already made plans with Nick. “Why don’t we do something Friday night?”

She eyes me, taking a long sip of her drink. “Nick works that day, doesn’t he?”

I already put Nick’s schedule into my phone’s calendar, because trying to figure out his twenty-four-hour on, forty-eight-hour off schedule in my head was too confusing. I don’t know how he does it.

My smile breaks free. “Maybe.”

She laughs, and I’m glad she’s not actually mad.

“Yes, I haven’t been as available this week as I usually am,” I concede, “but in my defense, you got used to having full access to me.” That’s what happens when you have no social life.

“I did, didn’t I?”

I point my spatula at her. “And you brought this on yourself pushing me and Nick together in the first place.”

She grins behind her coffee cup. “Yeah, I did that, too. So it’s going good, then?”

I bite my lip again. “It is.”

That’s an understatement. Though I’ve only seen him twice since our makeup date at his house, they were both great nights.

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