Lily stepped back. “I went. I was there at the ceremony. Not for you specifically,” she said, swallowing down her nerves and trying for a new approach. “I saw you leave the medal.”

I smirked. “You were in the bathroom?”

She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. “No. It wasn’t like that.”

This was it, the only second chance I’d ever get. Lily still cared about me. She cared enough to wear my medal around her neck.

The medal and that ridiculous jar told me everything I needed to know.

It wasn’t over.

Chapter Forty-Nine

Lily

I was doing my best to devour the entire bag of bargain croissants when Josephine set down two cups of coffee on our kitchen table.

“Did you check with the nunnery in Sweden to see if they had any openings?” I asked, shoving more of the flaky pastry into my mouth before I’d finished my question.

She studied me over her coffee cup. “You aren’t religious.”

“I could be, Jo. After this afternoon, I’m willing to try anything.” I shook my head.

“It wasn’t that bad.”

HA.

I glared at her. “HE SAW THE JAR. He saw me wearing his medal like a freaking crazy person!”

“He didn’t technically see the medal, only the ribbon…”

I dropped my head so that my forehead rested against the edge of the table. “Jo. He ran out of this apartment so fast I thought there would be a Dean-shaped hole in the door.”

She grimaced. “I’m not going to sugarcoat it. It was bad—really bad—but you still have a trillion guys in the city to date. Just because Dean thinks you’re psycho doesn’t mean every guy will.”

“I don’t want to date any other guys.”

I don’t want to date any other guys.

It hurt worse every time I repeated it in my head.

I wanted Dean.

I wanted the one man who now definitely wanted me locked up in a mental institution.

Lovely.

…

In a normal situation, I’d go through the stages of breakup grief and move on like I had from every other man in my life.

Stage One: Eat a bag of croissants. Done.

Stage Two: Try to land the role of next season’s Bachelorette. The producers never emailed me back.

Stage Three: Consider, but don’t actually make, a major life change…like a belly button ring or a tattoo. In the end, I parted my hair slightly more to the left.

All three stages were complete, it’d been three weeks since Dean had walked—no, ran out of my apartment, and I still couldn’t stop thinking about him. I no longer wore his medal, but I did sleep with it under my pillow. I touched it every night before I went to sleep, just to confirm it was still there.

With a usual breakup, we’d part ways and stop seeing each other. With Dean, that wasn’t possible. He was still my boss and I still had to see his name pop up in my email every morning. His messages always pertained to work and they always made my heart sink. I’d hold my breath, read through them, and then spend half an hour constructing a single sentence that I thought came off as equal parts bitchy and aloof.

Seeing him in person was the real danger, something I’d tried my hardest to avoid but could no longer put off.

He’d scheduled a meeting for early Monday morning. Zoe, Julian, and I were sitting in his office in the back of Provisions, waiting for him to arrive, and I swore my lungs weren’t working.

“Is it hot in here to anyone else?” I asked, waving a hand in front of my face to get some airflow. Why was it so hard to breathe?

Zoe glanced over at me. “You’re being weird.”

“Am not.”

Julian fired off an email he’d been typing on his phone and angled his body toward me. “You good, Lil?”

I didn’t look him in the eye. I couldn’t. It’d be like looking my dad in the eye when I was on the brink of tears. The floodgates would open whether I wanted them to or not.

“Peachy.”

The A/C unit kicked on and I sighed with relief. At least I wouldn’t be sweating buckets when Dean arrived.

“Jo said you might still be feeling sick,” he offered.

We both knew sick was a euphemism and a poor one at that.

I shrugged. “I think I’ll be sick for a while.”

Zoe blanched. “What the hell do you have? Ebola?”

I laughed. “No.” I began to clarify, and then Dean’s office door opened so I paused.

He walked in…and I could hear my heart thumping in my ears…and I gripped the arm of my chair…and I inhaled his cologne. It’d been three weeks since I’d last smelled it and no department store sample could compare.

I knew I wouldn’t last another day working for him. Working with Dean had been a dream come true, but now it felt like living through a nightmare. His intensity would never dull. His dark eyes would never lighten. His sharp mouth would never cease to amaze me. It’d been a foolish fight from the very beginning.

“Lily,” he said.

I’d wanted so badly to fall in love with him. I’d wanted it so badly that I’d ignored the warning signs. I was the naive girl from Texas, swept up in a man who’d only ever thought of her as a stepping stone along the path to success.

“Lily,” Julian said, shaking my hand on my chair.

I blinked and glanced toward him.

“Dean’s trying to get your attention and you’re completely zoned out,” he said with a laugh. “Have we ruled Ebola out?”

I smiled halfheartedly and glanced at Dean, trying to guard my heart as best as I could. “Sorry about that.”

His dark gaze held mine as he leaned over his desk. His mouth was pulled into a thin line. He was a statue of a man, unyielding at his core. “I just need you to hang back after the meeting for a few minutes. Is that okay?”

I nodded, not because I relished the idea of having alone time with him, but because it would give me the perfect chance to put in my two weeks notice.

Chapter Fifty

Dean

Lily closed the door behind Julian and Zoe, but she didn’t turn to face me right away. We’d been there before, alone in my office. It was a recipe for disaster, and we both knew it. She rotated around to face me slowly, keeping hold of the doorknob behind her back like a lifeline. She rolled her lips together and I opened my mouth to speak first, but she beat me to the punch.

“I’d like to put in my two weeks notice.”

I took a deep breath, processing her request.

She wants to leave?

I shook my head, just once.

“No.”

Her eyes blazed with a new fury. “No?”

I glanced down and started to scroll through the calendar on my phone. I tried to focus on a specific date, but I kept scrolling through the months, right into the next year. “We need to plan a time to meet. The kitchen will be finished next week and I’m bringing Antonio out—”

“You’re not listening to me,” she argued, releasing the doorknob and stepping closer.

My gaze shot up to her and her eyes focused in, narrowing until I knew I had her undivided attention.

“Yes I am. I’m just ignoring you.” I glanced back down at my phone. “I don’t accept your resignation.”

“What the hell—”

“Now, what day can you meet for the menu sampling? Monday?”

She paused on the other side of my desk and put her hand over my phone, blocking next year’s calendar from my view.

“Dean. Let me go.”

“No.”

“Fire me.”

I shook my head and clenched my jaw to keep from saying something too soon.