the same man she’d known for seven years. The same man she’d watched movies with, shared dinners with.
But he was. He was both of those men.
He was also the cold man standing before her, and she wasn’t sure how all of those facets of himself wove together. And she really wasn’t sure where she fit in. If she did at all.
She stepped into the office, watching his face for some sort of reaction. He had that sort of distant, implacable calm he’d had on his wedding day, standing and looking out the window as though nothing mattered to him. As though he had no deeper emotion at all.
She knew differently now. She saw it for what it was now. A facade. But she wasn’t certain there was a way through it, unless he wanted her to break through.
“I’m about to sign the final paperwork for the deal with Amudee. I wanted to thank you for your help.”
For her help. “Of course.”
They were talking like strangers now. They’d never been like strangers, not from the moment she’d met him. They’d had a connection from the first moment he’d walked into the bakery.
Now she couldn’t feel anything from him. Now that they’d been so intimate, she felt totally shut off from him.
“Once everything is finalized we can let everyone know that our engagement has been called off,” he said.
“Right,” she said, clenching her left hand into a fist.
“That’s all.” He looked back at his computer screen for a moment, then looked back up. “Are you busy tonight?”
Her heart stopped. Did he want sex? Again? After what he’d done last night?
“Um … why?”
“Because I thought I might come over and watch a movie.”
His words were so unexpected it took her brain a moment to digest them, as though she was translating them from a foreign language. “And?”
He shrugged. “Nothing.”
He was behaving as if … as if nothing had changed. As if they’d gone back in time a few weeks.
He was pretending, she was certain of it, because he certainly wasn’t acting normal, whatever he might think, but she was insulted that he was trying. After what he’d said to her last night. After the way he’d objectified her.
She wanted to yell at him. Maybe even hit him, and she’d never hit anyone in her life. But she wanted a reaction. She didn’t want his control.
“Are you going to pretend last night didn’t happen?” she asked, her voice low, unsteady.
Zack remained calm, his control, that control he claimed to have lost, the control she witnessed in tatters last night, firmly in place. “I think we both know that’s not working out. But you’re right. You’re my friend, and I didn’t treat you like a friend last night.”
“An understatement,” she spat. “You treated me like your whore.”
She saw something, an emotion, faint and brief, flicker in his eyes before being replaced by that maddening calm again. That same sort of dead expression he’d worn when he’d been jilted on his wedding day.
“I apologize,” he said. “I wasn’t myself.”
She curled her hands into fists, her fingernails digging into the tender skin on her palm, the pain the only thing keeping her from exploding. “Do you know what I think, Zack? I think you were yourself. This? This is the lie. This isn’t you. It’s you being a coward. You can’t face whatever it is that happened between us last night and now you’re hiding from it.”
“It isn’t working. That element of our relationship.” The only thing that betrayed his tension was the shifting of a muscle in his jaw. “But we’ve been friends for seven years. That works for us. We need to go back to that.”
“Are you … are you crazy?” she asked, the words exploding from her. “We can’t go back. I’ve been naked with you. You’ve been. We’ve made love. You can’t just go back from that like it never happened. I don’t care what we thought, we were wrong. That one night, that one night that’s turned into four, it changed everything. You can’t just experience something like that with someone and feel nothing.”
“I can.”
“Do you really think this is nothing? That we’re nothing?”
“We’re friends, Clara. You mean a lot to me. But it doesn’t mean I want to keep sleeping with you. It doesn’t mean I want this kind of drama. We need things back like they were so that the business can stay on track..”
“I’m leaving Roasted. You know that.”
He tightened his jaw. “I didn’t think you would really leave.”
“What? Now that we’ve slept together? You can’t have it both ways. Either it changed things or it didn’t.”
“I care about you,” he said, his tone intensifying.
“Not enough.” She shook her head, fighting tears. They weren’t sad tears. She was too angry for that. That would come later. “I am your sidekick, and that’s how you like it. As long as I give you company when you want it, eat dinner with you when you’re lonely, bake your wedding cake when you decide it’s time to have a cold, emotionless marriage, well then, you care about me. As long as I’m willing to pretend to be your fiancée so you can get your precious business deal. But it’s on your terms. And the minute it isn’t, when I start having power, that’s when you can’t handle it.”
He only looked at her, his expression neutral.
“I’m done with it, Zack,” she said, pulling the ring, the ring that wasn’t hers, from her finger. “All of it.”
She put the ring on his desk and backed away, her heart thundering, each beat causing it to splinter.
“We have a deal,” he bit out.
“You’ll figure it out. If that’s the only reason you don’t want me to go … if that’s all that’s supposed to keep me here. I can’t.”
Zack stood, his gray eyes suddenly fierce. “So, you’re just going to walk out, throw away our friendship over a meaningless fling?”
“No. It’s not the fling, Zack, it’s the fact that you think it’s meaningless. The fact that I’ve realized exactly where I rate as far as you’re concerned.”
“What do you want?” he exploded. “Why is what we have suddenly not good enough for you?”
“Because I realized how little I was accepting. That everything was about you. I’m just willing to take whatever you give me, whether it’s a spot in your bed or a job baking your wedding cake and it’s … sick. I can’t keep doing this to myself.” She turned to go and he rounded the desk, gripping her arm tightly.
“I’ll ask you again,”
