Page 35 of Salvaged Heart
“What?”
“Laurel has all these plans. I’m just along for the ride. I hitched my wagon to hers because it was easier to do so. I let her dreams become mine because I couldn’t come up with any of my own. But it’s only a matter of time before she realizes I’m not what she needs. That all those aspirations she has don’t require me.”
“So what? You’d throw away six years of your life over a kiss and a decent orgasm.”
“Try amazing.” His brief chuckle gave way to a wave of intensity crossing his face. “I didn’t come here this summer to help Laurel out. I came here to find myself and figure out what the next steps were for me now I don’t have baseball. And I think I have.”
“And that’s what, me?” It sounded foolish even as the words left my mouth.
He flashed me a wicked smile. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. That handy wasn’t that great.”
I rolled my eyes.
“But I have figured out that I can’t make someone else's dreams my own anymore, and that’s how it will always be with Laurel.”
18
BECKHAM
What in the actual hell had I been thinking? This looked so much easier in the YouTube video I had watched three times before deciding how hard could it possibly be to frost a cake.
Turns out, really fucking hard.
There wasn’t an inch of me that wasn’t covered in powdered sugar, butter, or whipped frosting. It coated my clothes, clung to my hair, and was smudged all over my face where I had stress-wiped it. I’m sure the point was to get more on the cake than myself, but every time I tried to spread the mixture, more came off it than went on.
Cake Boss made this look like child’s play.
False advertising.
I needed to quit while I was ahead. The problem was, I had been ahead about thirty minutes ago and hadn’t heeded the warning. Now, I was a whole lap behind, running in the opposite direction of everyone else. The monstrosity looked like someone had sat on it and then run over it to make sure it was dead. It didn’t look edible at all.
“What in the world?”
My head snapped up. Fuck, he wasn’t supposed to see this. Anders had been working in the library for hours, fussing over the old, dusty books. He’d announced a few days earlier that the haphazard system Aunt Millie had used to ‘organize’ her books had been the subject of many nightmares for him over the years. Now, he was jumping on the fact we’d taken them all down to clean and refinish the shelves to implement a new complex system of arranging them. A system I couldn’t wrap my head around no matter how hard I tried, so I had been banished before I could mess it up again.
I was learning that Anders was kind of a control freak. But I guess after feeling out of control for so many years, finally having autonomy again felt good.
“Did you lose a fight to Betty Crocker?”
I pointed my spatula at him. “This would look better if I had the right tools like—I don’t know—a fully assembled kitchen.” Instead, I had been forced to bake it in an oven older than my mother and frost it on top of a box containing the not-yet-installed cabinets.
“I’m not entirely sure I know what ‘this’ even is.” He waved his hand in the direction of the cake, looking way too smug for his own good.
“Why don’t you come a little closer and insult your cake one more time?” I cocked an eyebrow in challenge. If I could get him within arms reach, it was over.
“My cake? Why on earth would you be baking me a cake?”
I let out an exasperated sigh. “Well, it was supposed to be a surprise. Which you clearly are, so you’re welcome.”
He scooted around me, sticking to the room’s edges until he reached a roll of paper towel, ripped off a single sheet, and tossed it my way like that tiny scrap would make a dent in the sugar-coated chaos I’d created.
“And that explains why it looks like Keebler the Elf exploded in here…How?”
“Kara called. She said you’ll get your next chip today for reaching thirty days. I don’t know the correct protocol for celebrating something like that, but I figured you can’t go wrong with cake.”
“Well…” He gave the frosted nightmare between us a pointed look. “Obviously,youcan.”
That was it. I was in motion before he even registered I’d moved. Bowl of frosting in one hand, brandishing the coated spatula like a sword in the other. He was quick, but I was way faster and tackled him to the ground easily, smearing the spoon up his cheek and over his forehead before bopping him on the nose with it. I let the utensil clatter to the floor.
