Lindsay turned her head to look at him and found he’d moved his arm away from his face and was looking at her now. She took a deep breath. “Well, if I’m honest, in the time we were apart, I put a lot of energy into convincing myself that I hated you. We probably could have run into each other sooner than we did if I weren’t trying so hard to avoid you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I… Well, I canceled going to a few events because I thought you might be there. I kept tabs on your career in part so I wouldn’t accidentally eat in one of your restaurants.”
A smile played on Brad’s lips, which was nice to see considering how unhappy he’d looked for most of this conversation. “That does seem in character for you.”
“Don’t you see how insane that is? My friends all teased me about it. Evan accused me more than once of being obsessed with you. I of course denied it, but… You don’t put that much effort into avoiding someone unless you’re worried about what will happen if you see them again.”
“And what were you worried would happen?”
It had taken some work for Lindsay to get over herself and her own carefully constructed walls to recognize the truth. She had to open herself up and let him in and put her soul in his hands and trust him to take care of that. She wanted to take a real risk, to show that she could put it all on the line, but only for one very special person. She’d never done that before. She wanted to now. “I worried I’d take one look at you and forget why I hated you and fall in love with you all over again.”
He nodded. “I mean, I knew that’s what would happen.”
“What did you imagine?”
“That I’d know the exact right thing to say and charm your socks off and you’d forgive me for everything.”
Lindsay laughed. “Uh-huh. I’m sure that would have worked.”
Brad laughed with her. “Yes. That was the fantasy version. I knew that in real life there’d be a fight. Because I knowyou. I know how you operate.” He sighed. “Pretty sure we were meant to be together, Linds.”
“I know. It’s so stupid.”
He barked out a surprised laugh. “Well, yeah, it is that. And if all that’s true, I can’t get over that we wasted five years apart.”
“Well, maybe you could see those five years as the time I needed to get over myself.”
He put an arm around her and she thought they might have reached an understanding, but something he’d said still nagged at her. “What is it that you want to hear?”
“What?”
“Before, you said me trusting you should have been the thing you wanted to hear, but it wasn’t.”
***
What did Brad want to hear? Well, he wanted her to tell him she loved him. But he wanted her to get there on her own. He never wanted to feel like she was anything but completely, enthusiastically with him.
He held her now and enjoyed the press of her naked body against his in her pink and purple apartment. Since the last time he’d been here, she’d replaced her duvet with a crisp white one with a swirly black floral pattern on it—not any less feminine, but it felt more adult and less teenage girl. He wasn’t sure why he cared, except that he was surprised that Lindsay would decorate her apartment like the inside of Barbie’s Dreamhouse.
But that was beside the point.
“I don’t know what I want,” he said after what he knew had been an unacceptably long silence.
“I don’t think you have to know right this minute,” said Lindsay.
“Sure, but… Don’t you think about what our future will be?”
Lindsay rolled slightly and Brad copied her movement so that they both lay facing each other. Lindsay said, “So you pictured our reunion as a fight, huh?”
“I always figured it would be, well, not very different from what happened, actually. I figured you’d still be mad but I could charm you into falling in love with me again.” He grinned.
But the truth was, he’d never imagined it would be this hard. He knew he’d have to persuade Lindsay to give him another chance, that he’d have to explain what had happened all those years ago that made her leave. He’d thought Lindsay would be quicker to forgive him. He hadn’t realized that the core of their issue was trust. She said she trusted him now and he believed her, mostly. But the longer this reunion, if that’s what it was, dragged on, the less faith he had that everything would work out.
Lindsay stared at him for a long moment. “So, okay, where do you see us in the future?”
He closed his eyes and thought for a moment. “Well, you and I will live together in an apartment with a big kitchen. I don’t want to bake cat treats forever, so I figure I’ll get a new job once I’ve got the assistants fully trained. I’ll probably still bake the cat treats myself, though. We’re not selling enough that I need to have a big production machine going or anything, and I think people like the novelty of small batches anyway. I could make them and then work out some kind of arrangement with the cat café where I get a cut of the profits. But I’m rambling.” He sighed. “I don’t know. What is my dream job? I don’t think running a bakery because there’s no real challenge in making cupcakes all day, but doing patisserie at a high-end restaurant could be really fun.”
