I had planned on approaching this with tact, but fuck that. I cross my arms, lifting my chin to meet his eyes. “I don’t think you should sell it at all. You—we—should stay.”
“You’re joking.”
“You weren’t,” I snap.
“This place isn’t mine to keep.”
“But it’s yours to sell?”
He breathes out through his nose. “I don’t belong here.”
“Do you even believe that anymore?” I told myself I wouldn’t get emotional, but I can’t help it. “Or is it just easier than admitting this really is where you—”
“What happened to working with your father? The Winfield Group?”
“I changed my mind.” I tilt my head to the side. “See how easy that is?”
“We’re behind.” He tries to go inside, but I hold the door shut. “Poppy, come on.”
“Why are you so scared of letting yourself be happy?”
“I never said I wasn’t happy.”
“It’s pretty clear that you aren’t.”
He glares at me, eyes half-golden in the sunlight. I stare back, heart thudding. The last time we were in this alleyway, we faced off just like this.
And sometime afterthat, everything changed.
I’ve let him get closer than any man has before. I’ve let myself be me, fully and utterly. I wonder if he’s meant anything he’s whispered to me in bed since the pop-up, or if they’re just flimsy wishes.
“We can’t stay out here,” he says eventually. “We have too much to do inside. We can’t have a repeat of the pop-up.”
“Jack, come on. Sal left this place to you for a reason. Don’t throw it away just because you’re scared.” I move in, cupping his jaw with both hands. “I want to do this with you.”
“What’s this?”
“The restaurant. All of it.” Another, deeper confession lingers in my throat, but I swallow it. Even pushing has its limits. “Why go back to someone else’s kitchen when you can keep your own?”
Slowly, he removes my hands from his face. “I left before the adoption hearing.”
“What adoption hearing?”
“Sal wanted to adopt me. As an adult, I mean. I was eighteen, but after three years of fostering...”
“I didn’t know that.”
He laughs once, shortly. “Yeah, well. He wanted me to stay in Florida for culinary school, too. And come back to the restaurant when I graduated.”
“To run it with him?”
“I didn’t trust it. I didn’t want to stay here.” His voice cracks. “We got into it so bad, he called me a coward. And I told him I never asked him to be my fucking dad. The end. I packed up my shit andleft the next day, after he took Ki to a horseback riding competition in Gainesville.”
My heart sinks. That must have been the argument Kiara overheard. I’d forgotten all about it in the chaos of the pop-up.
“I’m sure he didn’t mean it,” I say hesitantly. “We all say things we regret. I’m sure he loved—”
“Stop,” he says shortly.
