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Dread seeps into my gut. “What do you mean?”

“I told you, you can’t work for Vance Industries anymore. Which means you need to quit Velvet, and quit Crave, too.”

“But your family doesn’t own this bakery. Justin does.”

Harlan makes a disgusted sound. “I don’t know what he’s been telling you, Quinn, but clearly he hasn’t told you the news. As of three days ago, your lover boy sold this bakery. To me.”

Chapter 9

Quinn

Islide into my dress and zip up the back, getting ready for my final date with Justin in the staff washroom of the bakery. It’s a cotton candy color, a fun, strapless bouffant with a poofy chiffon skirt. I got it for a party years ago, and pull it out sometimes when I need a mood lifter.

I swipe on a matching pink lipstick.

I’m definitely in a mood right now.

Outwardly, I’m calm and collected, which I need to be for this conversation. My plan is to respectfully tell Justin, over dinner, that our relationship… situationship? Whatever the hell it’s really been between us… is over.

Which is more than he did for me.

Instead, he let our connection—and the promises he made to me—fade into oblivion, without telling me.

I doubt I’ll even ask him about chocolate girl. But I do want answers. I need to confront him about what Harlan told me.

That Harlan and his family now own Crave bakery. That the transaction was finalized days ago.

Meanwhile, Justin never even mentioned to me that he was thinking about selling it.

I’m angry, because I’m hurt. Justin knows how important my job at Crave is to me; how essential it is to my own cake design business, Quinn’s Cakes. He’d even talked about promoting me to management. Did he even consider how selling the bakery might impact me?

He owned it, so it was his to sell. But he could’ve at least given me the respect and compassion of a heads up.

Didn’t I deserve that much from all the times I kissed him, shared a bed with him, encouraged and supported him in his business? I was decent to him, even if I wasn’t his dream girl.

Fuck. I just need to keep calm.

I can’t let this turn ugly. I can’t afford to burn any bridges with the man who employed me for the last eight months. I might need him for the glowing reference I surely deserve after the work I’ve done for him.

But inside, I’m crushed. Because all my carefully laid plans of the last few years are threatening to unravel. All the shit jobs, working my way up to ones that at least pay better, and afford me the slightest chance to actually achieve my dream of owning my own bakery one day.

I couldn’t bring myself to explain my whole situation to Harlan, beg for my job here, because why bother? I can’t work here anymore. He made that clear.

Because his family thinks I fucked him.

The whole thing is humiliating.

If I actually had slept with him, maybe there would’ve been some kind of twisted silver lining in all of this, at least.

As it is, the whole mess just feels like a disaster of my own making.

Maybe Harlan screwed me over, without meaning to, when he dragged me into his personal shit, but I’m the one who made the mistake of counting on Justin when I shouldn’t have.

Ultimately, I screwed myself.

I leave the staff washroom at Crave for the last time, and walk through the bakery, past the table where Harlan and I talked just half an hour ago. I wonder how we looked, drawn together across the table like a couple of magnets. Our attraction seems undeniable at this point, but futile.

A cruel joke.