“Sylvie.” Yesterday, she’d clutched his face on a busy street, in front of God knew how many watching eyes, and kissed him as if he were the only person on the planet. And today she’d walked in here as if she’d disappeared into a world of her own, and wherever she was right now, it was dark and lonely. Something in her eyes was deeply, bitterly alone, and a fist closed around his heart in a tight grip. “Sweetheart, what’s happened?”
The first time he’d ever used that endearment in his life, but he barely noticed. Her fingers tightened, her eyes darkening with tumultuous emotion.
“I . . .” Her face crumpled again, and he stroked his hands down her shoulders, back up to her cheeks.
He’d been told repeatedly throughout his life that he was a difficult person to read, that he was unapproachable, intimidating, closed off. He could see why his reserve sometimes frustrated the people who cared about him—because the woman he fucking adored was drowning right in front of him, and even as she stood in his arms, she was pulling away.
“I can’t—” Sylvie’s voice cracked. She was starting to shake again, and he made a rough sound in his throat. “I don’t—”
Very slowly, she put her palms against his chest and turned her head to touch her cheek to his heart. It was a butterfly-soft movement; he could barely feel her weight against him.
Foreboding was a cold trickle through his veins. His heartbeat was a fast, painful thud.
When he lifted his hand to stroke her hair, he realized his own fingers weren’t entirely steady.
Sylvie’s hand closed into a fist in his shirt, then, holding the fabric so tightly that her knuckles blanched.
Somebody knocked on the door and it opened before either of them could react. Mariana stuck her head in, biting her lip. “Sorry to interrupt,” she murmured, her eyes softening on Sylvie’s averted face. “I did try next door first.”
She’d also noticed Sylvie’s preoccupation during the shoot. She was far more accomplished at offering comfort than he was, but Sylvie had withdrawn from all friendly overtures.
Mariana held up his phone. “You left this in the greenroom and it’s been going off repeatedly. I wasn’t intentionally nosy for once, but you’ve got a cluster of messages on the screen about an urgent situation at the bakery.”
Without letting go of Sylvie, he reached out a hand and Mariana gave him the phone. “Thank you,” he said, and she nodded.
With another glance at Sylvie and a brief pat on her back, she left them. Dominic grimaced. Five messages from Liam; the team was fulfilling a major order today and the primary oven had broken down. It had happened once before, an annoying quirk in the wiring that he’d managed to repair last time.
Sylvie reached up and tipped the screen to see, then pushed away from him. Reflexively, he reached for her again, and she shook her head. Strands of brown, lavender, and pink hair had come loose from her plait. She shoved them behind her ear. Her body was still racked with quiet shivering.
“Your staff need you,” she said in a low voice.
“You need me.” The response emerged strongly, from the very heart of him. Her eyes jumped back to his. There was a sudden hard knot in his throat. “And I need you.”
Her lips parted. Drawing in another long, quivering breath, she reached up and touched her palm to his cheek, gently cradling his face. She ran her thumb along his bottom lip, tugging it slightly before her hand fell away.
“How can I feel this much so fast?” she whispered. “I can’t even remember looking at you and not feeling like this. And when I try to imagine my life without you now—”
Her hands fisted again.
That almost anguished whisper had hit him directly in the gut. And the heart.
It had also ended on a fairly alarming note.
“Sylvie—”
“You have to go,” she said, backing away. Looking around with something suddenly close to panic, she grabbed her bag and coat.
He caught her hand, and she turned and looked at him.
He recognized what was in her eyes, then, and his grip tightened.
“Please.” Sylvie looked down at his fingers and brought his hand to her mouth. As she had once before, she kissed his thumb, and his jaw flexed. “I just—I need to think.”
He let her go. A year ago, while drinking at a bar with Liam after his sous-chef’s latest breakup, he’d drunkenly referred to Sylvie as a fairy, to his friend’s endless delight and recurrent teasing. She slipped lightly away now, in that moment somehow as ephemeral as the magical lore she loved.
With her hazel eyes deep and dark with fear.
Sugar Fair
Where the Dark Forest welcomes all those in need.
Most likely, you already know, deep down, what you want. What you need. And what’s right.
Beneath these branches, may it always become clear in the dark of night.
And may Jay retire his poetry pen as soon as possible.
Sylvie had once looked at Dominic and seen a man without feeling. Cold, hard, impenetrable.
That felt like a different life. When she looked at him now—when she woke in the night and lay next to the warmth of his skin, tracing the lines of his face and body with eyes and lips and fingertips—she felt so much that it overwhelmed her.
It terrified her.
The moment the door had closed behind Jay yesterday . . . She’d forgotten how it really felt when the ground suddenly dropped out beneath her and she was left reeling in the cold and dark, alone.
How badly it hurt sometimes to love so fiercely—and to have it torn away.
And she’d walked into the studio this morning and seen Dominic. Dominic, who was rapidly becoming the center point of her life. Dominic, whom she was giving—unexpectedly, without plan or any prescience at all—the power to rip the remains of her heart to shreds.
She’d been scared to her bones, in that moment, how much he could hurt her as well.
Instead, she’d hurt him.
Notting Hill was busy and congested as usual, and the studio car had dropped her a block from the bakery. She’d walked blindly up the street toward Sugar Fair, and now just stood outside.
Her haven, her safe place, today seemed woefully inadequate; she wanted strong arms and that deep, cynical voice saying things that filled her heart and made her cry. The arms she’d pushed away. The voice that had cracked, because she’d made him afraid, too.
Her eyes stung.
Before she went inside, she braced herself and checked her phone. No new messages. She hadn’t really expected Jay to return her texts, but the blank screen was another cold ache. Everything between them, years of friendship and loyalty and love, altered completely—irrevocably?—in a matter of seconds.
So fucking quickly, life could take away everything that mattered.
He was meant to be working on-site today while she was at the final. Whether he had done so remained to be seen.
She pushed open the door, letting the warmth and sugary scents wash over her. Mabel was at her table, shaping a series of little candy people. She had full autonomy to go wherever her creative mind took her with the sugar craft and had randomly embarked on a Shakespeare kick. So far, she’d made the complete casts of Othello and Hamlet. Sylvie could see a small cauldron with two witches crouched beside it and a third taking shape in Mabel’s fingers. She was working her way through the tragedies.