Page 60 of Crack the Ice

A soft giggle has me looking up from the island where my hands were mindlessly forming Palmeras, and right in the center of it all is him. The realization that he’s here after all this time makes my knees weak.

I’ve wasted so much time waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for the universe to remind me that yet again, good things don’t happen for Cecilia Samuels. But what if they did?

What if the bakery wasn’t the only thing that changed the tides, but these two kids and the man who’s doing everything he can to make sure they have what they need? The life vibrating through the walls of my parents’ house gives me a bit of perspective I’ve yet to see.

I don’t know where this is going. I don’t know if this road ends with us together or not. I don’t even know if I’m ready for this massive life change they’re building together, but one thing’s for sure. I’m done standing on the sidelines of my own life.

“Cecy,” Cade’s worried voice pulls me from the memory.

I shake my head, smiling gently as I have him wash his hands before coming back to the island. No, I’m not going back there. Only forward, I tell myself. “Since I’ve already made the dough, we need to fold these into a kind of heart shape.”

I show him how by folding the left side into the center before doing the same thing on the right.

“Why are they grainy?” He asks as he tries to fold it the same way.

“They’ve been rolled in sugar already. We’ll do it again and glaze them in chocolate in a bit.”

“They look like elephant ears,” he says as he unfolds and tries it again.

My hands continue their efforts, folding one after the next at a much slower pace than normal. “Yeah, they are, just the version we used to eat back home in Spain.”

“Do you ever want to go back?” he asks, moving on to the next one.

I hum softly. “I did go back for a little more than a year before I met you guys. I needed some time and space to deal with some things in my life that I couldn’t fully deal with here. I’d love to go visit, and I probably will. But I don’t think I could live there again. My life is here.”

“What kind of things?”

This could be a moment for both of us, one that helps bridge the gap between pain and healing. So instead of giving him a blanket answer, I give him partial truth. “I went through a lot in a really short amount of time, and I needed to get away from some of the things that were making it worse.”

He nods to let me know he’s listening, but doesn’t look up from his folding. His tongue sticks out of the side of his mouth as he concentrates. It’s adorable.

“Sometimes I get an idea, and if things play out differently than I imagined, I kinda feel like I’ve failed. And I have a really hard time asking for help, so when I do, and it goes unanswered, I shut down and start shutting people out.”

“Is that why Mav says you guys “used to be” best friends?”

His question catches me off guard, and my eyes snap to the couch in front of us. Mav’s arm is slung across the back of it as he watches my parents sneak off into a corner at a party where Markus and I are terribly singing karaoke to dance quietly. The look on their faces is one I see in my brother and Kait. One I want to see on Mav’s face when he looks at me.

I let out a breath. God, he’s perceptive. “There was a lot of hurt that built over time. We’re both to blame here, don’t get me wrong. I left without having the hard conversation we needed to have, and he let me. But, losing him was like losing a piece of me”

“What happens if you can’t fix it? Will you take back staying with us?”

I shake my head vehemently. “No. No, our business is separate from you and Lily. We’re mature enough to make sure we can be friends and take care of you guys, even if the kind of relationship we want with each other isn’t obtainable. And sometimes they aren’t, but that isn’t on you or your sister. We’ve had our fair share of problems long before the two of you came along.”

As if he could sense the topic of conversation, Mav looks over the back of the couch. His eyes soften when he takes in the two of us. Cade is carefully shaping the dough, me with my hands covered in sugar, but my eyes trained on him. His tongue peeks out, running slowly against the seam of his lips.

A smile lingers on my face when I realize there’s no desire to bolt or to shy away from his attention. The oven beeps, and I quickly look away, my cheeks heating as I realize my dad was watching our staring contest, too.

After we’ve finished all the Palmeras, I put them in the oven, and the two of us walk over to the couch to join the rest of the crew.

My mom’s eyes bounce between me and Mav, who’s sitting on my left, a slow smile creeping over her lips as her eyes move from Mav’s face, to his arm that’s now slung over the couch behind me, landing on the small circles his fingers are slowly making on my shoulder and settling with the intensity of a detective on the way I’m slightly angled toward him.

“I think you owe me a vacation, Teo,” my mom says, pointing between the two of us before leaning back on the couch, looking all sorts of smug.

I blink rapidly. “Wait, what? Why?”

My dad smiles, that slow, lazy smile that tells me he’s seen way more than I’ve let on. “Your mom and I made bets when you left for Spain on whether or not it was because you were in love with Maverick and didn’t think you could have him because of your brother.”

“QUÉ?” I yell, louder than necessary.