Emma showed Zach her design and set him to work on turning out miniature dolphins while she made the turtles. “What’s your favorite cake?” she asked him as he carefully pressed out the mold.
He shrugged. “Cake.”
“Come on.” She nudged him with her hip. “Chocolate, vanilla, red velvet…. You must have a favorite.”
Zach focused on the chocolate he was modeling, fine lines reappearing down his forehead. “Any cake is good for me.”
She huffed. “What was your favorite birthday cake?”
“Last birthday cake I had was nearly twenty years ago. I think it had a racetrack on it.”
The bleak expression was back in Zach’s eyes, as well as the closed-down look on his face. His shoulders were tight as he turned slightly away, focusing on his work. Everything about him warned her off. He didn’t want to talk about this, and she could feel the line she was about to step over as if it was right there in front of her.
It would be easy to retreat. So easy to step back and talk about cake, or the bakery, or the beach. But then she would never really know him and that wasn’t good enough.
She wanted to kiss him again, to touch him, and to spend time with him. She wanted to take the chance that there could be something real between them one day. And retreating when things got hard had never been her way.
She put down the turtle she’d been working on and turned to face him properly. “I remember that cake, Zach. You were eleven and we went go-karting for your birthday.”
Zach shrugged, but he didn’t look at her as he carried on working.
Emma hesitated, working to overrule a lifetime of habit. Then she put her hand on his arm, forcing him to stop what he was doing and turn to look at her. “Why didn’t you have any more birthday cakes, Zach?”
He leaned back against the counter, folding his arms over his chest. His frown deepened. “Of course…. You don’t know.”
Emma stepped closer, right into his space. “Know what?”
“My mother died soon after yours. She had cancer. I don’t think you’d even been gone for a year by then. And then my sister followed her—she had a seizure—two years later.”
He said it so calmly. So easily. Like he was talking about someone else. Someone else’s loss. But she knew the boy he’d been, and she was starting to understand the man he’d become. This was the origin of that deep well of pain inside Zach. This was the grief that he hid away. James and his betrayal—what had happened to Kay—had reopened all these wounds. Or perhaps they had never quite healed. She had seen the fierceness of his loyalty and, underlying it, his deep-seated need to keep his people safe. The fear that they might be hurt and he could lose them.
This was why he’d lied to her. He’d been trying to protect his friends… and himself. And this was why he disappeared from her life all those years ago.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked quietly. “We wrote to each other. Maybe I could have helped.”
He shrugged, not quite meeting her eyes. “I didn’t know how. How do you write something like that? And the longer I left it, the harder it got. Then when Laura died, I didn’t want to remember anymore. I just wanted to move on.”
Her heart hurt for him. She knew what it was to lose a mother. The deep hollow that could never be filled. And then to lose his sister too. God. There was nothing she could say, no words that would help, but she could ease that look in his eye, just a little.
She stepped in front of him, positioning herself between his legs, not caring about the sugar on her hands or the cake abandoned beside her. She didn’t think about whether she should touch him or not. She didn’t try to force his arms to open, she simply wrapped herself around him, his still-folded arms pressed between them. She tucked her head under his chin and rested her ear against his chest. “I’m so sorry that they’re gone. And I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you needed me.”
Zach’s breath hitched and she wondered if he would push her away. It wouldn’t have surprised her—in some ways he kept himself as distanced from other people as she had—but he didn’t. He rested his cheek against her hair and took in a long slow breath, then let it out equally slowly.
His rigid muscles slowly relaxed. He took another breath, and then he shifted his arms out from between them. Before she could step back, he wrapped them around her and held her close against his chest.
They stood, holding each other for long minutes while the world slowly continued around them. Someone laughed on the street outside. A child shouted in the distance. Seagulls called raucously, their cries echoing in through the small window.
Eventually, they pulled apart and went back to their work. But they stood even closer than they had before.
They finished assembling the cake and poured in the “sea” to set, and Emma couldn’t help her happy smile. It was going to look exactly as awesome as she’d planned. This was what she loved. Creating something magical.
“Beautiful,” Zach said softly, and she looked up from the cake to see that he was looking right at her. Her grin widened, and he ran his thumb down her cheek to the corner of her mouth, as if he needed to feel her smile for himself.
“Can I try something?” he asked, his voice rough as he watched her, his hand still resting on her face.
“Yes.” It came out as a whisper.
“Close your eyes.”
