Page 14 of For Butter or for Worse
His counter-attack stings, but he has a point. “I’m not going to run. Not until the bakery is thriving, anyway.”
“And then what?”
I shrug, though I know he won’t like me not having a solid plan beyond the immediate. “Then I figure out what to do from there. Maybe I’ll find someone who can manage the place well enough so I can move on and use the profits to build my own thing. No matter what, I’ll keep the place, so you don’t have to worry about it disappearing.”
He clenches his jaw but seems to accept that answer, nodding a little as he settles back on the stool. “So I’ll stop by in the mornings,” he says, returning to the original topic.
I sigh and start returning dishes to the cupboards so I don’t have to look at him during this part. “I can bring you baked goods in the afternoons.”
“If anyone asks, and they will, we recently reconnected.”
“Which is true.”
“Unfortunately.”
I roll my eyes. “Are you going to be this grumpy all the time? Since when did you become a crotchety old man?”
“Since my girlfriend ran away without any word of explanation and disappeared.” His gaze is cold when I look at him, but I can see the pain behind the ice. “Since she came back afterten yearsand pretended we didn’t need to talk about it.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.”
I shouldn’t be relieved, but I am. I know it’s something weshouldtalk about, but I am too good at avoiding confrontation to have any idea how that conversation might go. I’m not sure I would know what to say in the first place. Sometimes, when I look back at that day, I think I understand why I left the way I did, and other times I wish I could go back to that moment and really take my time understanding why the only emotion inside me when he dropped to one knee was terror.
Back then, it felt so much easier to think he would understand. He knew I wanted to start my own bakery someday, and I knew he wanted to stay close to his uncle, and I figured he would connect the dots and agree that it wasn’t a good idea to get married.
Looking at him now, I don’t think he connected anything. And I don’t think Bill ever told King any of the stuff I told him over the years.
“King.”
“No,” he repeats. “Not now.”
I check on the second round of biscuits in the oven and am grateful for the distraction as I take them out and turn the oven off. I know getting married is the simplest way we can both have the lives we want, but clearly it isn’t going tobe easy, no matter what either of us have said. And there’s one important thing we haven’t talked about when it comes to this union.
“Where am I going to live?” I ask as calmly as I can.
King grunts. “Wherever you want.”
“If we’re married…”
Clenching his jaw, he glances around his house as if it might have a solution that isn’t the two of us living together. “Right. Logically, you would live here with me.”
“I can take a guest room.”
“No, you can’t.”
“It’s not like anyone is going to be coming over to see where I sleep.”
“Maybe not, but…” He rubs the back of his neck, looking a little sheepish. “I don’t have a guest room.”
I frown. “Then what are those two other rooms down the hall?” I noticed them when I went searching for the bathroom, which was the first door I came across, and it took all of my self-discipline to not go snooping through King’s house while he was passed out on the bed. Maybe Ishouldhave snooped.
He coughs, folding his arms. “At the moment? They’re construction zones. I’ve been remodeling, but they haven’t been a priority lately.”
Well that complicates things. I am for sure not sharing a bed with King, married or not. We can be adults about things, but I can’t let proximity muddy the waters of this sham marriage. As a chronic sleep-walker with a lifelong tendency to cuddle anything nearby, I am not about to put myself anywhere near the man who hates me. He’d likely push me off the bed if I got too close.
“I guess I can sleep on the couch…” I say it with a casualness I don’t feel. Maybe when I was twenty I could have done it, but over the last couple of years I’ve gotten used to sleeping on a mattress that cost more than three months’ rent.
