Sweet Deception

Chapter 3-Old Habits

Three days in, and I'd already caught Jace rearranging my display case twice.

"You moved my lemon tarts again," I said, standing over the case with my hands on my hips, watching him very deliberately not meet my eyes.

"The light hits the chocolate croissants better on that side. Purely about presentation." He kept arranging pastries with infuriating calm. "Nothing personal, Hart."

"It's always personal with you." I nudged him aside and started rearranging everything back, muscle memory from a hundred childhood festivals kicking in without my permission. "You did this exact thing when we were twelve. Moved my display right before judging so the sun glared off my case instead of yours."

"I have no idea what you're talking about." But the corner of his mouth was twitching, the old competitive gleam flickering back to life despite himself. "Though if memory serves, you retaliated by hiding my good piping bags the morning of finals."

"You deserved it."

"I did," he admitted, surprising me. "Probably deserved worse, honestly, given how insufferable I was about winning that year."

Something about the admission caught me off guard—not quite an apology, but close enough to disarm the easy rhythm of our bickering. I studied him for a moment, flour-dusted and unfairly handsome in the morning light, and felt that same unsettling c***k from day one widen just slightly further.

"Why'd you stay?" I asked, before I could stop myself. "In Harborne. Your whole life. Didn't you ever want to leave, see what else was out there?"

Jace's hands stilled on the pastry case. For a moment I thought he wouldn't answer at all.

"I almost did," he said finally, quietly. "Had a culinary program lined up in New York, right after you left, actually. Packed bags and everything."

"What happened?"

"My dad had a heart attack three weeks before I was supposed to go." His voice had gone rougher, something old and tired bleeding through the usual confidence. "Bakery would've closed without someone running it. So I stayed. Kept staying, one year at a time, until staying just became what my life was."

I hadn't expected that—hadn't let myself imagine that Jace Monroe, infuriatingly confident and permanently rooted in this town, had ever wanted anything different for himself.

"I'm sorry," I said, and meant it. "I didn't know."

"Why would you? You were building an empire in California. I wasn't exactly keeping you updated." Something bitter crept into his voice, old hurt surfacing beneath the deflection. "You didn't call once, you know. Fifteen years, and not once."

"Neither did you."

"I didn't think you wanted me to." He finally looked at me directly, something raw and unguarded in his expression that I'd never seen from him, not even as kids. "You made it pretty clear the day you left that you were done with this town. Done with your father. Done with—" He stopped himself, jaw tightening.

"Done with what, Jace?"

"Nothing." He turned back to the pastry case, closing the moment as abruptly as he'd opened it. "Forget it. We've got a rush coming in ten minutes."

But the air between us had shifted, something unspoken hanging heavy in the space where his sentence had stopped, and I found myself wondering—for the first time in fifteen years—whether the boy I'd spent my whole childhood competing against had actually wanted something entirely different from me the whole time.

The morning rush came and went in its usual chaos, but I caught Jace watching me twice across the kitchen when he thought I wasn't looking—not the competitive, assessing look I remembered from childhood, but something softer, more searching, like he was trying to solve a puzzle he hadn't let himself examine in fifteen years.

Old habits, I reminded myself sternly, rearranging the lemon tarts back exactly where he'd moved them.

Old habits died hard. But apparently, so did old feelings neither of us had ever properly buried.