Sylvie nodded once.
“The look on your face when you turned around. When you . . . left his arms.” Jay pressed his lips together. “It’s serious.”
“Jay.”
“I love you.” He said it so simply, as he’d said it a hundred times before, all these years.
And for the first time in all these years, she heard him.
The first tears slipped past her lashes.
Her usual response, as deeply and truly as she meant it, would be another sharp knife.
“I didn’t know.” She managed to speak, but it was barely more than a whisper. They looked at each other. His face was white. Another tear fell down her cheek. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
He closed his eyes, tilted his head back. Exhaled.
“How . . .” She trailed off.
Slowly, he looked back down at her. He slipped his hands into his pockets, the fabric of his trousers pulling taut across his long legs. “How long?” He shook his head slightly. “I don’t even know anymore. It crept up so gradually. For a while, I thought, Nah, you love her so much that you’re crossing wires that aren’t there. But no. And now I . . . I can’t remember a time when it wasn’t you.” A single crack of horrible self-deprecating laughter. “And for some reason, I was convinced that we’ve been moving closer to a point where it would be us.”
She didn’t question how he felt. She never would. Jay knew himself; he knew his feelings. She had no right to invalidate that to try to make this situation easier for herself.
They’d flatted together for a few years after Mallory’s death. Night after night, they’d curled up in the lounge, watching Mallory’s favorite classic films, and talking for hours and hours.
There had never been a time when Sylvie couldn’t talk to Jay, about anything.
She couldn’t think of one word to say now.
Nothing that wouldn’t make this even worse.
Even as she watched, his shoulders straightened, his face smoothing out, the professional suavity slipping over his features, the mask that had carried him through years of business negotiations.
He’d never used this version of himself with her.
It was as if he’d reached out and closed a physical door between them.
The pain was shocking.
“I have to leave now.” His every syllable was measured and too calm, but as their gazes met again and held, the façade cracked. “And for everything that we are, all that’s ever been between us that wasn’t in my head . . .” A slight note of bitterness, swiftly quashed. “I need you to let me do that.”
During that time back then, when Mallory had died, and her breath had been punched out of her chest and she’d felt she could never move again, she’d forced herself up and she’d thrown herself into work. Keeping her hands and mind busy until she was ready to face what had happened. Keeping herself intact until it was time to break.
She let him leave. Without a word. Her gaze averted. Her hands clenched into shaking fists.
When the door closed with finality behind him, the clock kept ticking in the silent room.
Chapter Eighteen
Saturday
Hartwell Studios
The Operation Cake final.
Life has a habit of throwing curveballs.
Sometimes things work out as expected and desired.
And sometimes they smack you in the face harder than a sponge-cake unicorn hoof.
Something was wrong with Sylvie.
With six different cameras ready to catch the slightest change in his expression and edit it into a fantasy narrative, Dominic tried to give them as little as possible. He kept his face turned toward the contestants’ stations, watching as the final three painstakingly decorated their final bakes of the competition.
Wedding cakes.
The universe loved a shot of irony.
No fear that Sylvie’s favorite contestants would make a sneak grab for the Albany contract. Adam had gone with a theme aimed at love-struck bookworms, a stack of antique books with their titles painted on the spines in gold curlicue. Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Iseult, and Bride and Groom, an insert-the-names-of-the-happy-couple-here proposition.
Nothing said “marital role models” and “everlasting happiness” like Shakespeare’s melodramatic, hormone-driven teens and the doomed, bespelled adulterers of yore.
However, the choice of titles was less of an issue than the ill-placed dowels. The bottom two tiers had already collapsed into each other, the gold paint of the text blurring and running. As of two minutes ago, the spines now read Juliet and Iseult in just-legible writing.
Likely a more interesting story, but a disaster of a cake.
Emma had opted for a wishing well cake, with small biscuits crafted into realistic gold coins for the theoretical bride and groom to toss into the depths of the fondant stone structure, making a wish before they closed their hands around the nuptial knife.
And plunged it into their own chests to avoid having to put a crumb of that cake in their mouths.
Dominic had tasted a spare cutting during his contractual stalk around the studio. He did not fancy having to repeat that experience for the approaching judging.
Two major errors—and this time, neither of them could be blamed on Libby. The producers had set a ridiculously difficult time frame for the final round. If Libby had intended more mischief, she’d been far too busy at her own station to carry it out.
All three contestants had crumbled in their own ways under the intense pressure.
Sweating and racing against the clock, Libby had let the sweetness-and-light act slip several times. She’d snapped at crew members and dissolved into tears over a broken bottle of milk.
Unfortunately, unlike the other two, she hadn’t let it affect her work—and when tested under fire, she managed to produce the best bake of the entire series.
She’d gone the classic route—four tiers, white icing, fondant flowers, sugar lace—which was risky. If a contestant chose to play it safe with the design and forfeit the ingenuity points, the stronger-weighted execution had to be flawless.
Visually, at least, this was.
It was also, he suspected, aimed at appealing directly to his own tastes.
He had absolutely zero respect or liking for Libby Hannigan, and if he weren’t fully focused on the frozen misery of the woman at his side, he’d be extremely irritated that she’d succeeded in her ploy.
As Adam watched another piece of his cake break off and splatter to the countertop while he uttered a mild “Oh dear!” of consternation, Dominic couldn’t keep his eyes from jerking back toward Sylvie.
She was staring fixedly at the unfolding action, but beneath the professional gloss of makeup, her face was set in harsh lines of tension. Her hands were continually curling into and out of fists at her sides.
He touched her restless fingers—and she jerked away from him. Her hand pulled away, lightning fast, and lifted to clutch at the fabric of her shirt, over her heart.
Obviously, even if a person had unexpectedly toppled headfirst and deeply in love, they weren’t going to be superglued to their partner. He designed cakes for besotted lovers on a regular basis, and they rarely sat through the meetings entwined like octopi. He was currently the happiest he’d ever been because of Sylvie, and he got a ridiculous amount of pleasure from even her most casual touches. But he still needed space, and so did she. Earlier in the week, she’d been tired, getting over the food poisoning, and when he’d reached for her on the couch, she’d mustered the energy to open one eye and nudge his hand away with her foot. He’d left her alone. End of story.