Sweet Deception

Chapter6-A Call From California

The call came on a Tuesday, right in the middle of the lunch rush, my phone buzzing insistently in my apron pocket while I had both hands buried in sourdough.

"You should get that," Jace said, nodding toward my pocket. "Could be important."

It was my business partner in San Francisco. I stepped into the back room, flour-dusted hands fumbling the phone, and listened to Priya deliver news I'd been half-expecting and fully dreading since the moment I'd boarded a plane to Harborne.

"The Castro Street lease is up for renewal," she said, straight to the point, the way she always was. "Landlord wants an answer by the end of the month. Mila, I love you, but I can't keep running this place solo indefinitely. I need to know if you're actually coming back, or if I need to start looking for a new partner."

I stood there in the back room of my father's bakery, surrounded by decades of flour dust and old photographs I still hadn't worked up the courage to look through, and realized I didn't have an answer ready. Not one that felt true, anyway.

"I need a few more days," I said instead, which wasn't really an answer at all.

"Mila." Priya's voice softened, the way it did when she was about to say something I didn't want to hear. "I saw the post about the Harborne festival. The one with you and some guy named Jace, covered in flour, looking very cozy for 'just business partners.' You sure there isn't something else going on over there you should be telling me about?"

Heat crawled up my neck. "It's complicated."

"It's always complicated with you. Just—don't let complicated turn into an excuse to blow up a business you built from nothing, okay? I need an answer by the end of the month."

She hung up before I could figure out how to respond to any of it.

I didn't tell Jace about the call. Not that day, not the next, though I caught him watching me more than once with the particular quiet concern of someone who'd noticed something shift without knowing exactly what.

"You've been somewhere else all week," he said Thursday evening, after we'd closed up, the two of us sitting on the back steps with mugs of tea neither of us had touched, our new evening ritual settling into something I was beginning to depend on more than I wanted to admit.

"Just thinking about the festival," I lied.

"Mila." He said my name carefully, like he was handling something fragile. "I've known you since we were six years old fighting over the same cookie display. I know what it looks like when you're hiding something."

I stared out at the dark harbor, the lights of the fishing boats bobbing gently in the distance, and felt the careful walls I'd been maintaining all week finally start to c***k.

"My partner in San Francisco needs an answer about renewing our lease," I said quietly. "By the end of the month. Which means I need to decide whether I'm actually staying here for this partnership, or whether I'm going back to the life I actually built for myself."

Something shifted in Jace's expression—not quite hurt, but close enough to make my chest ache. "And what are you leaning toward?"

"I don't know." The admission cost me something, raw and honest in a way I hadn't let myself be all week. "Six months ago, the answer would have been obvious. California, the bakery I built from nothing, the life that was entirely mine." I finally looked at him, searching his face for something I wasn't sure I had the right to want. "Now I don't know anymore. And that terrifies me more than almost anything has in years."

Jace was quiet for a long moment, his jaw working like he was choosing his next words with enormous care.

"I'm not going to ask you to stay," he said finally, voice rough. "That's not fair to either of us, and I think we've both spent enough of our lives making choices out of fear of losing each other instead of actually choosing what we want." He reached over, lacing his fingers through mine, steady despite the vulnerability in his voice. "But I will say this. Whatever you decide, I'd rather have had this summer with you than spend one more year pretending fifteen years ago didn't happen at all."

Tears stung unexpectedly behind my eyes. "Even if I leave again?"

"Even then." His voice cracked slightly on the admission, raw and honest in a way that undid me more than any grand declaration could have. "I'd rather risk that than keep living small and safe just to protect myself from losing you a second time."

I leaned into him, resting my head against his shoulder, the harbor stretching out dark and quiet before us, an impossible decision sitting heavy between two people who'd only just found their way back to each other.

"I have until the end of the month," I whispered.

"Then let's not waste a single day of it being afraid," he murmured against my hair, and for once, I let myself believe that might actually be possible.