“I know why you don’t want to do this, Sebastian, and it has nothing to do with board approval.”
I stiffened, but I kept my expression neutral even as my stomach lurched with dread.
She didn’t know. She couldn’t.
Maya planted her hands on the table and leaned forward, her eyes piercing mine.
“You’re scared,” she said. “This isn’t something you can breeze through without effort. For once in your life, you’ll have to actuallytry. You don’t know how things will turn out, and that scares the shit out of you. You’re so used to coasting that you’d rather stay in your comfort zone than face potential failure. Well, guess what? That’s what other people doevery single day. They try their best and hope it’s enough. If it’s not, they pick themselves up and try again because they don’t have the luxury of making excuses. So if you’re too much of a coward to step up when it matters, that’s fine. But I don’t work with cowards, Sebastian. If you walk away without even trying, you’re not the man I thought you were, and that’ll be the end of this relationship.”
She didn’t raise her voice, but her words slashed through me with the brutal efficiency of a knife.
Shame oozed out of the wounds until I sat there gutted and hollowed out, every ugly truth she’d thrown at me rattling around inside.
I could barely look at her because she was right.
Iwasscared, not only of how my actions would impact others but also of how they would impact me and my reputation.
I’d grown up with the certainty that if I wanted to succeed at something, I would. School and sports came as easily to me as breathing, and I never understood what it was like to fall on my face. Even when Maya bested me at something, I didn’t feel like I’d failed because she was the only person I admired enough to take a backseat to—at least temporarily. She pushed me to be better, and our rivalry was a lesson, not a setback.
But what happened three years ago was my first taste of true failure. It was so bitter it left me spiraling, and I wondered if I didn’t have the stomach for this. If my skin was too thin, if my sensibilities were too brittle, and if my love for cooking was a liability rather than an asset.
It hurt more when you failed at something you actually cared about. It was easier to play small and count the little guaranteed victories than to swing big and miss.
But I also couldn’t stand the way Maya was looking at me like she didn’t know me. In some respects, she didn’t, but even when she hated me, she treated me like someone worthy of her energy—not a lowlife who bailed when things got hard.
I swallowed past the painful knot in my throat.
“What’ll it be?” she asked. “Are you taking one for the team, or are you asking someone else to pinch-hit for you?”
Her eyes bore into me as I glanced at my phone.
I had a dozen chefs whom I could call as backup. They were nowhere near Derek’s level of fame, and the substitution would spark a bunch of whispers in the industry, but they’d do a good job. Who knew? This collaboration could launch one of them to stardom.
Unlike me, they had guts and experience. They were the best bet, Maya’s recriminations be damned.
I pocketed my phone and met her gaze. The weight of my decision closed in on me, but my voice was steady when I replied.
“If I’m going to take Derek’s place, we’d better get started,” I said. “We have a lot of work to do.”
CHAPTER 10
Sebastian
MAYA WAS RIGHT. THE EXEC BOARDS OF OUR COMPANIEShad no choice but to approve my new role in the project. They weren’t happy about it, but it was either that or push back the launch timeline. Both our fathers were too stubborn and afraid of competitors beating them to the punch to do that, so I was now officially the face of the Singh-Laurent collaboration.
Of course, there was a caveat. There always was.
“You’re not a big enough name to headline this,” my father said from behind his desk. We were in his home study overlooking Central Park, and I briefly contemplated jumping through the window and onto the pavement below. That would be preferable to the meeting we were having. “You’re not even a real chef, not in the strictest sense of the word, so this launch event needs to make a huge splash. None of that generic dinner-party bullshit. Give me something new.”
I bit back a sharp retort. “Meaning?”
“Meaning the event can’t blend in with the dozens of other events in the party pages. I want everyone to be talking about it, Sebastian. Full court press.”
“You wanta frozen foods launchto be the event of the season?” At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if he and Neal were deliberately setting us up to fail because there was no fucking way they expected me to run point on product development and event planning at the same time.
“Yes, and it’s up to you to make that happen,” my father said calmly. “Who knows? If you pull it off, we might even revisit what your future at this company looks like.”
My hands fisted. That seemed to be my default reaction to our conversations these days, but there was no chance in hell he’d change his mind about me becoming a professional chef. He just liked dangling the possibility to make me fall in line.
