“Look, Liz,” Davis began. He blew out a breath and knitted his brows together. He almost looked worried to tell her the news. “I came to tell you that Katie lost the business. We didn’t know what else to do. We had to close it. I know how much Honeycomb meant to you. I just tried to keep it going for your sake.” Deliberate or not, Davis’s voice cracked. “And since Katie and I broke things off, it’s made me realize how much I really missed you.”
“Don’t.” She cut him off, blinking rapidly through the tears. Her throat ached as she tried to make sense of his words.
Honeycomb was justgone? The bakery had been her dream. Her passion. Herlife. All those late nights, all those months of preparation and hiring. Setting up a social media account and pouring every last shred of her identity she had left into it. And it was gone.
Her hands trembled. The burning in her chest hurt worse than just grief—no, it wasfury. Fury that Davis had waited until now to tell her, once the doors were closed and it was all said and done with. Fury that he thought this performance would earn him any bit of sympathy from her. Fury that Davis had just admitted to her being an actual rebound.
Before she could stop herself, the words came rising out of her chest. “Do you honestly think that counts as an apology? I mean, do you really expect me to take you back after everything you put me through? You took the bakery from me and thenlost it. And then you show up here unannounced, and find a problem with the fact that I’m staying with someone else? I’msorry, but you’ve lost the right to hold me accountable for my decisions six months ago when you decided to step out onmefor another woman. You don’t get to rewrite any of the rules after you break them.” She shook her head, her entire body humming with anger. “But that’s just it. The rules were never for you, were they?”
“Oh wow, there it is.” His expression went cold and unrecognizable. “You just love playing the victim when it’s convenient. Like you didn’t make choices too. You were always away and busy. If it weren’t for that, you might not have pushed me away.”
“I was helping take care of my dying grandmother!” Eliza yelled. She felt her rage climbing higher and higher. She just wished he wouldleave.
He scoffed, like her grief was an excuse he was tired of hearing. “I’m not saying she wasn’t sick, but I’m saying you left me. You always made me feel like I was last on your list. So what was I supposed to do, wait around while you had your life everywhere else but with me?”
Davis took a step forward, snow crunching on the doormat. “So don’t stand there acting all righteous. I came here to fix this, and you’re the one having random men over just to hurt me.”
Lachlan’s arm instinctively reached out, blocking Davis’s path from stepping any further inside. Puffcake arched his back and hissed steam out from his nostrils.
“Easy, Puffcake,” Lachlan said.
Davis looked down at Lachlan’s hand. He ground his teeth as he slowly said, “Get your hand off me.”
All around them, the cottage gave a deep, low rumble.
“Careful,” Eliza warned. “The house might retaliate.”
Davis scoffed. “Thehouse? Are you hearing yourself?” He let out a humorless laugh. “You have officially lost it, Liz. Maybeyou and your new boytoy can bake up a nice batch of delusion together, if you haven’t already.”
He whirled around toward the baker’s rack, and snatched up a snow globe. Inside, little gingerbread men danced around a tree, glitter raining down from the sky. Davis held it up in his hand. “You think this place has magic or something? Let’s test that theory.”
Before anyone could stop him, he hurled the snowglobe at the sugar-spun window. Shards of sugar and ice shattered in a thousand fragments. The temperature dropped instantly. Outside, the wind howled.
Then, the floorboards began to quake beneath them. A gust of magical wind tore through the open doorway, yanking Davis backward so violently that his heels skidded—then he slipped clean out of his shoes. The abandoned footwear hit the floor with two dull thuds as he was pinwheeled through the air into the vortex of snow. His eyes were wide with terror.
A heartbeat later, the shoes shot after him, launched by some unseen force. They tumbled end over end in the snow after him. Lachlan braced a hand against the harsh weather, “Hey, mate! Don’t forget your shoes.”
But Davis couldn’t hear anything over the wind and his own voice as he shouted, “This isn’t over, Liz!” It was high and shrill, sounding too much like a screeching wicked witch in her failed attempt at revenge.
Eliza stood at the threshold. Her hair and the tassels on the end of her scarf whipped wildly all around. She lifted a shaky hand, trying to bat the stray pieces away. Her pulse thundered in her ears, her adrenaline causing what seemed like every part of her body to tremble. This time, she was no longer scared of him, just free. Truly free—and quite amused.
“Oh, I think it’s been over for a long time now!” she yelled back.
The door slammed shut for her, and the lock clicked into place, but not before Puffcake blew a huge, defiant raspberry at Davis as he floundered in the snow. The silence that followed was almost palpable.
Eliza’s knees buckled from beneath her. She buried her head in her hands. Tears came quicker than she would’ve liked to admit.
“Hey, hey, hey.” Lachlan rushed over, his voice featherlight. “You’re okay. He’s gone.”
“That was so humiliating,” she sobbed. “I can’t believe I dated that foul toad. I didn’t even know he could find me here. He must’ve saved the address’s location from before. He just—showed up.”
“You don’t have to apologize.” Lachlan brushed a tear away from her cheek with his thumb. “You didn’t do anything wrong.” His upper lip hitched a crooked smile. “Besides, I think he’s the one who got humiliated. Poor bloke’ll have a hard time trudging back home in all this snow if he doesn’t find his shoes.”
Eliza couldn’t help but smile at the humor of it all. At last, she blew out a breath. “I just hate you had to get all wrapped up in this.”
“Wrapped up?” Lachlan repeated gently. He bumped her shoulder, trying to coax a smile. “What’s Christmas without a little chaos?”
That earned a small laugh.
