Zara blinked at me. “Only a little.”
“Yeah.” I nodded once. “She made it the exact same way.”
For a second, we were little kids again. Sitting at her family’s kitchen table during one of the times we visited them in Oregon. Our moms chiding us for “eating like wolves.” Zara kicking me under the table for taking the last piece of bread.
My chest tightened. There was no place in my memories Zara hadn’t touched.
She smiled, softer now. “You always liked it.”
“Still do.”
Silence settled between us, but it wasn’t heavy. Not at first. Just the quiet of forks against ceramic and the hum of the fridge behind her.
I shouldn’t have accepted her invitation tonight.
I shouldn’t have been sitting at her table, eating her food, laughing like we hadn’t detonated our friendship years ago—like I hadn’t spent half my life wanting something I couldn’t have.
I knew what this was doing to me.
Every minute across from her was a step backward. A reminder of what it felt like to belong in her orbit. To be the one who made her laugh. The one she confided in. The one she looked at like that.
I told myself I could handle it. I was grown now. I could sit across from Zara and not fall straight into the same hopeless place I’d been at sixteen and eighteen and twenty.
But the truth was, my feelings for her weren’t any smaller. They hadn’t faded. If anything, they’d sharpened with time. Cutting away the dreaminess of childhood until all that was left was the crux. The blunt reality of desire and wanting. Of a friendship that would always be more…but only for one of us.
She tucked her hair behind her ear, unaware of the war happening across from her. “You’re being quiet.”
“Just eating.”
“You’re thinking,” she corrected.
I huffed a breath. “I’m always thinking.”
“I should hope so, but that’s not what I meant.”
Of course it wasn’t.
Her gaze swept over me, curious and open. There was none of the heaviness I carried, and I was glad for that. I would hate for Zara to feel the way I did.
But I wasn’t going to dive into any of this. Not now. Not ever. Quite frankly, thinking about it over and over andoverwas exhausting.
“Are you going to talk to the PI?”
She put her fork down and wiped her mouth with her napkin. “I don’t know. I don’t want him to come here. Sugar Brush is mine. I’d hate anything having to do with Jackson to touch it. Maybe talking to him on the phone will keep him away.”
“Do you have any information to share with him?”
“I can tell him what I told you, but I don’t know how helpful that will be. As soon as I discovered what was going on, Jackson removed my access to every company account. I have a few things saved on my laptop, but nothing damning as far as I can tell.”
I nodded. “If you do decide to speak to him, let me know. I’d like to be there when it happens.”
Her brow crinkled. “Why?”
“This isn’t something you should have to deal with on your own. If you were back home in Oregon, I really doubt your dad or brother would allow that.”
“You’re right. If my dad knew a PI was calling me, he’d flip, so chances are, I wouldn’t tell him.”
I let out a curt laugh. “Luckily, you don’t have to decide whether to tell me. I was here, and I’m all in.”