Aggie points her cigarette over her shoulder. “Still inside talking to Davis.”
“Okay.” I hold out two fingers, and she passes the smoke over without a word. I take a drag and hand it back.
“Bad week,” Aggie exhales.
“Bad year.” I shove Jake’s jersey into my tote as I stare into Cece’s battered bar. The place she hoped to build her empire. I push open the front door and find everything’s dark. Silent in a way it’s never felt before. Like it knows it’s been betrayed. Cece and Davis are standing by the back booths. They’re inches apart, but that’s not a good thing. They’re clearly mid-argument.
“You need a proper operations manager, Cee,” Davis snarls. “You can’t run everything on the fly depending on how you feel that day. That’s not a system.”
“I don’t need a manager,” Cece snaps. “I need apriest to break this fucking curse.”
I want to jump in. Hug her or tell Davis to turn down his condescending tone, but Cece’s hair’s pulled into one of those overtight buns that screams ‘meltdown mode,’ and I’ve never seen Davis so pissed. Me getting involved might make everything worse. I step back into the shadows, praying Cece can set this straight on her own.
“You’re not listening to me,” Davis says. “Getting worked up about all of this isn’t going to fix anything. You need to?—”
“I need a fuckingbreak.”
Her voice is shredded, fraying at every edge. I bite the inside of my cheek. Cece hardly ever talks to people like this, but she’s been softened and polished into sympathetic politeness for too long, and now she’s about to blow.
Davis doesn’t see the warning signs. He can’t, or he wouldn’t still be talking.
“You can’t afford to be emotional about this,” he tells Cece. “If the inspectors come back and it’s still a mess, they could fine you. Or close you for good. Or both.”
I cover my mouth to stop myself from telling him to back off. Despite the shit I give him, I’ve always liked Davis. I’ve been rooting for him and Cece. But right now I can’t believe what a patronising dick he’s being.
“Do you think I don’tknowthat?” Cece shouts.
“I’m just trying to help?—”
“No, you’re trying to takecontrol. Like I’m falling apart, and I need a man to step in and make the big decisions for me.”
“That’s not what this is!”
“Isn’t it? Because you keep talking like I don’t know my own bar. Like, I haven’t been carrying this place for the last year, breathing and sweating and not-sleeping for it. I hired you, Davis. No, you kind ofmade mehire you. And now you run the door and stand around looking pissed off, and giving me advice, and sometimes that’s sweet, but at the moment it’s justcondescending.”
“I care about this place, Cee. You know that.”
“I do know that, but?—”
“And not just because I work here. I care aboutyou.”
I push my hand even harder to my mouth, but this time it’s to keep from groaning. Of all the moments to declare his feelings, Davis just picked the worst one.
Cece lets out a breath that’s almost a sob. “Yeah, and that’s the problem. You care about me, and I care about you, but I’m your boss, Davis. I’m not your girlfriend. It’s really confusing when you treat me like I’m one and not the other.”
Silence. A full beat where I pray he’s going to apologise. Maybe even tear up.
Instead, he lets out a bitter laugh. “Don’t worry. You made it real clear where I stand, Cee. You ever think maybe the reason you’re not my girlfriend is because you don’t actually want a boyfriend? Just someone to clean up your messes?”
Cece flinches, and my anger blazes in my chest. Still, I force myself to stay put. It’s Cece’s moment to burn, and I keep my rage in check as I silently watch her land the final blow.
“Actually, Davis,” she says in a quivering voice. “You’re not my boyfriend because when I decide I want one, I’ll be looking for a partner who doesn’t treat me like a project.”
Her words land like a mortar shell. Davis looks at her for a second, then turns on his heel and stalks to the kitchen. I hear him leave through the back door, slamming it behind him like punctuation.
I allow a tiny moan to escape. He had a real shot with her, but he overplayed it. Tried to do too much, too soon. And with Will Sharpe hanging around, that door might’ve just slammed shut as hard as the kitchen one.
Cece folds herself into a booth and cries, her shoulders shaking with every sob. I exhale and head toward her, approaching slowly.
