Page 64 of Cooking Up My Comeback

“There is no us,” she says quietly. “We’re business partners.”

“Right. Business partners who finish each other’s sentences and know how each other takes their coffee and can work together for hours without saying a word because we don’t need to.”

“That’s just... familiarity. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“It means everything. And the fact that you’re trying to convince yourself otherwise because your ex-husband made you feel guilty about it just proves my point.”

She stares at me for a long moment, measuring tape forgotten in her hands.

“What do you want me to say, Brett?”

“I want you to stop letting him decide what’s safe for you. I want you to stop apologizing for building something amazing. And I want you to stop pretending that what’s happening between us is just business.”

“And what if it doesn’t work out? What if we try, and it ruins everything we’ve built here?”

“What if we don’t try and spend the rest of our lives wondering what might have been?”

It’s the same argument we had yesterday, but it feels different now. More urgent. Like Chad’s visit forced us to realize we’re running out of time to decide what this partnership really means.

“I need to think about it,” she says finally.

“How much thinking do you need to do? Either you trust me or you don’t. Either this matters to you or it doesn’t.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It is that simple. You’re just making it complicated because someone convinced you that wanting something means you’re going to lose it.”

She sets down the measuring tape and looks around our restaurant, at the space we’ve created together, the dream we’re making real through stubbornness and hard work and something that seems like more than just business.

“I’m scared,” she admits.

“Of me?”

“Of caring too much and getting it wrong again, and Chad being right about me making decisions with my heart instead of my head.”

“What if your heart’s smarter than he is?”

“But it might not be.”

I move closer, not close enough to touch but close enough that she has to look at me instead of the measuring tape.

“Then we figure it out. Together. Like partners do.”

“Professional partners.”

“All kinds of partners.”

She’s quiet for a long moment, and I can see her wrestling with the decision. The part of her that wants to play it safe versus the part that’s tired of settling for less than she deserves.

“Okay,” she says finally.

“Okay?”

“Okay, let’s see what we’re building together. But carefully. And if Chad’s right about any of this?—”

“He’s not.”

“But if he is, we protect the restaurant first. Always.”