Recipe for a Broken Heart

Chapter.5

Chapter 4 — Monday Morning

Camille got the call on Friday morning, standing in her kitchen with a mug of coffee going cold in her hand while her mother pretended not to hover by the doorway.

"Miss Bennett? Étienne Rousseau." The same accent, the same unhurried cadence, though something in his voice sounded almost warmer over the phone than it had across a desk. "I would like to offer you the position."

Camille set the mug down slowly, carefully, the way you set something down when your hands have suddenly decided they can't be trusted. "Thank you. I — thank you. I accept."

"Good. I thought you might." She could hear the faint suggestion of amusement in it, and had to resist the urge to ask him what exactly that meant. "Monday morning, eight o'clock. Bring nothing but yourself. We are still short several desks."

"I can work around a missing desk."

"I suspected you could." A brief pause, the kind that in a normal phone call might have meant nothing, but somehow felt like it meant something. "Welcome to Rousseau Industries, Camille."

She stood there a moment longer after the call ended, phone still warm in her hand, replaying the sound of her own voice saying I accept like she needed to hear it a second time to believe it had actually happened. Two years of feeling like she was treading water, and suddenly, without warning, solid ground.

She hung up and turned to find her mother already crying, one hand pressed to her mouth, the other reaching for Camille before the phone had even made it back into her pocket. "I told you," her mother said into her shoulder, half laughing, half sobbing in that specific way mothers had perfected over generations. "I told you, I told you."

"You did tell me."

"Say it again. Louder. I want the neighbors to hear." Her mother wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, still holding onto Camille's arm like she might float away if she let go. "This is it, Camille. This is the thing. I always knew it was coming, I just didn't know when."

"It's one job, Ma. It's not a fairy tale."

"Everything starts as one job." Her mother squeezed her arm once more before finally releasing her, moving toward the stove out of habit, needing something to do with her hands. "Your father's whole career started with one job he almost didn't take. Sometimes the small doors lead to the big rooms."

Camille laughed, and for one clean, uncomplicated moment, there was nothing in her chest but relief — no math, no exhaustion, no careful bracing against disappointment. Just good news, landing exactly where it was supposed to.

The moment didn't last as long as she wanted it to. By Sunday night, packing her bag for Monday, laying out the same navy blazer for the second time in a week, the relief had curdled into something closer to dread. Because somewhere between the job offer and now, she'd had time to actually think about what she'd agreed to — working under a man who had read her like an open book in the space of forty minutes, who noticed things she hadn't meant to show anyone, who had this unsettling way of making silence feel like it was doing something to her.

"You're doing the thing again," Marcus said, appearing in her doorway with a bag of chips he definitely hadn't asked permission to eat. "The staring-into-space thing. Denise said you do it at the diner too."

"Denise talks too much."

"Denise is right, though, historically." He flopped onto the end of her bed, uninvited, the way he'd been doing since they were kids and she used to let him hide in her room during thunderstorms. "You nervous about the new job?"

"A little."

"Just a little? You've re-ironed that blazer twice since I got home."

Camille glanced down at the blazer in question, hanging innocently on the back of her door, and had no good defense. "It's a new environment. New people. I want to make a good impression."

"Is it the job that's got you weird, or is it the boss?" Marcus asked it too casually, chewing his chips with the deliberate nonchalance of someone who already suspected the answer and was enjoying watching her squirm.

"There's nothing about the boss."

"You've mentioned the boss four times since Thursday."

"I have not."

"Three of those times you called him 'intense.' Once you called him 'observant,' which, may I say, is a very specific word to use about someone you supposedly have no thoughts about." He grinned around a mouthful of chips, thoroughly pleased with himself, and Camille threw a pillow at his head with more force than the moment strictly required, mostly because he wasn't wrong and she hated when he wasn't wrong.

"Go be annoying somewhere else."

"Love you too. Good luck tomorrow." He paused at the door, chip bag rustling. "For what it's worth, whatever's going on in your head about this guy — you're allowed to like someone again, you know. It's been two years. David doesn't get to keep haunting every good thing that happens to you."

Camille opened her mouth to argue, some automatic defense already rising, and then closed it again, because there wasn't actually a good comeback for that, and they both knew it.

He left, taking the chips with him, and Camille sat alone in her room for a long moment, staring at the blazer, trying to untangle exactly what she was nervous about. It was something quieter and harder to name than the work itself — a low hum of awareness that had nothing to do with competence and everything to do with the way Étienne Rousseau had looked at her like she was a puzzle worth solving.

Monday came anyway, the way Mondays always did, indifferent to nerves.

A woman with a clipboard intercepted her almost immediately. "You must be Camille. I'm Priya, HR." She handed over a badge and a laptop. "Your desk is over there, second row. Mr. Rousseau wanted you close to operations."

Camille followed her gaze toward the desk, and found it sat, with what felt like suspicious precision, directly in view of Étienne's office door.

"Is that intentional?"

"Everything Mr. Rousseau does is intentional." Priya smiled, unreadable, and walked off.

By ten o'clock, Camille had already fielded a minor crisis between two vendors who despised each other on principle. Étienne crossed the floor once, midmorning, without so much as a glance her way, and she told herself the flicker of disappointment she felt at that was ridiculous, unearned, entirely beside the point.

She almost believed it.