Page 108 of Frosted Fakes

"Uh huh." Jamie swerved around a pothole with the confidence of a man who'd clearly done worse. "And how's that working out for you?"

"Shut up and drive."

Elliott looked down at Jamie's phone, propped in the cupholder and streaming Gabby's show. On the small screen, Julia was standing next to her mother, looking simultaneously terrified and determined.

Elliott had never seen her look more beautiful.

Or more likely to do something spectacularly unwise.

"Keep watching," Jamie said. "I’ll bet it’s going to get better."

✽✽✽

"The thing is," Julia said, and her voice only shook a little, "I'm not actually a baker."

The audience murmured. Gabby's smile flickered like a faulty light bulb.

"I've never been a baker. I'm terrible at it, actually. Everything I touch in a kitchen either burns or explodes or somehow does both at the same time." Julia could hear how manic she sounded, but the words kept coming, like a dam had finally broken and there was no stopping the flood. "All those pastries and cakes everyone's been praising? They weren't mine. They were made by Elliott Sinclair. She's brilliant. An actual artist. Self-taught, works harder than anyone I've ever met, and I've been taking credit for her work for months."

The murmuring got louder. Someone in the front row gasped. A production assistant was making frantic gestures from the wings, but Julia couldn't stop now, even if she wanted to.

Gabby's expression had frozen somewhere between horror and fury, but she rallied with the grace of a true professional. "Darling, I think you're being modest. You've always had a gift…"

"No, Mum." Julia turned to face her directly. "I haven't. That's the whole point. You wanted me to have a gift, and I let you believe I did because I was too scared to disappoint you. But the truth is, I don't want to be a chef. I never have."

The silence was deafening. Julia could hear the soft whir of the cameras, the distant hum of the air conditioning. A hundred people holding their breath.

"I want to be a nurse," Julia said, and saying it out loud, finally, in front of all these people and cameras, felt like taking her first real breath in twenty-nine years. "I've wanted to be a nurse since I was twelve years old. I've been watching medical videos in secret, studying anatomy textbooks when no one was looking, and pretending I cared about reduction sauces when all I actually wanted was to help people. Real people, with real problems, not… not soufflés that won't rise."

Gabby looked like she'd been slapped. "Julia…"

"I'm sorry I lied to you. I'm sorry I was too afraid to tell you the truth. But I'm done pretending to be someone I'm not just because it's easier than having this conversation."

✽✽✽

Elliott had forgotten how to breathe.

On the tiny screen, Julia stood under the harsh studio lights, looking small next to her mother but somehow larger than she'd ever seemed before. She was telling the truth. All of it. Every secret, every fear, every lie she'd been carrying around like a boulder on her back.

In front of cameras. And an audience. And probably thousands of people watching at home.

Julia Richardson, chronic people-pleaser, pathological conflict-avoider, woman who Elliott had seen apologize to a door she'd bumped into, was standing up to her mother on live television.

Elliott's heart felt like it might burst.

"She's really doing it," she said, her voice strange and thick.

"Told you." Jamie took a roundabout at slightly illegal speed. "Keep watching. She's not done."

Pride swelled in Elliott's chest, fierce and bright and overwhelming. This was Julia, the real Julia, finally letting herself be seen. Not the perfect daughter. Not the people-pleaser. But the brave, brilliant, ridiculous woman who'd walked into Elliott's disaster of a life and refused to leave.

Even when Elliott had tried very hard to make her go.

✽✽✽

Julia wasn't finished.

She'd come this far. She'd burned every bridge and salted the earth behind her. She might as well torch whatever was left.