“I’d figure something else out,” I say honestly.
She folds her arms waiting for me to go on.
“I have a stack of resumes in my office from different pastry chefs who submitted inquiries, and I’d have to step in in the interim period if you don’t want it, but I wasn’t going to not build it just because I didn’t know what you’d say.”
Taylor paces across the tile, hands resting on her hips but her eyes never stray from my face. She narrows her gaze, searching. “Why?”
God, how do I even answer that question?
Because I miss you.
Because nothing has felt right since we left LA.
Because I’ve been building this place and thinking about where you would stand, what you would do, how you would fit into this place like you were always supposed to be here.
A lump forms in my throat, and I swallow hard against it as my thoughts try and fail, to transform into coherent words.
Instead, I take a step closer.
“Because you’re too special not to have something of your own,” I say quietly. “And I knew if I waited, you’d go find that space somewhere else, without me. And I don’t want a version of this that doesn’t have you in it.”
Her breath hitches, tilting up to hold my gaze.
“I’m not asking you to give anything up. I won’t do that because I know you’ve created something you love back in Cambria—” I stop myself and steal a breath. “I’m offering you a place here. If you want it.”
She looks around the space again, and I can see it happening. The realization that this is what she told me she’d do if she won the competition.
“You built my dream,” she says softly, bringing a gentle hand to my chest. I look down at her chipped yellow nail polish and smile—there’s a little bit of that quirky chaos I love.
“Yeah.”
Her eyes find mine again briefly before she closes the distance between us. And thank God she does because I don’t know how much longer I could hold back.
Her hands find my shirt, gripping lightly as she pulls me down toward her.
And then she kisses me.
It’s everything we didn’t let ourselves do the second she walked through the door.
I kiss her back immediately, one hand coming up to cup the back of her head, the other wrapping around her waist and pulling her flush against me.
She tastes like that watermelon lip gloss I can’t get enough of and hope and happiness and everything that’s good in this world.
She makes a soft sound against my mouth, and I lose whatever restraint I had left.
I dip her without thinking, one arm supporting her back as the other tangles in her hair, loosening the careful style she showed up in.
She laughs into the kiss, breathless and bright, and when I pull back just enough to meet her eyes, I can’t help but smile.
“There’s one condition,” I murmur, lips brushing hers.
Her eyes flicker with amusement. “Oh yeah?”
“You can never smooth your hair out like this again,” I say, tugging lightly on one of the loosened strands. “I love your curls, they are part of what make you… you.”
She laughs, full and unguarded in a way I haven’t heard in months.
“Deal,” she says, breathless.
