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“Why didn’t you stop me?”
She shrugged. “Consider this a lesson in reading the recipe.” After a pause, she continued. “Plus, it’s not going to ruin the recipe, so I figured I’d let you figure it out on your own.”
Eventually, we got the meal all made. I under seasoned the sauce a little bit, but that was easily fixed with a bit of salt and a little longer on the stove to let the flavors marinade together as the pasta boiled on the stove.
“I’m glad we have a dishwasher available,” Laurel joked as she plated up the food for us. “This meal is horrible to hand clean dishes for. I had to do that in culinary school a few times to learn how to properly handwash dishes. It… wasn’t fun.”
Chapter seventeen
Laurel
The meal was wonderful, though I had hoped the prep work wouldn’t have been so emotionally charged. It wasn’t exactly Luke’s fault, nor was it mine. We simply had the same kind of expectations of the partners we would marry. To find that both had failed to meet those expectations brought up a lump in my throat that I had thought would have been easier to leave in Chicago. Now that I was here, it was not going away.
At least, not now that I had Mark on the brain.
I had truly believed that I was going to be spending the rest of my life with him. It hurt to think that that was no longer the case. I had left Chicago to leave this heartbreak behind.
I felt discomfort squirming in my stomach as my brain replayed all of the details I’d shared with Luke in the kitchen. I wished I hadn’t said anything.
Why would I have shared that much with my boss? He didn’t deserve to know why I’d left Chicago, especially after treating me so terribly for my first month here. I felt my face growing hot with embarrassment and regret.
“Laurel?”
Luke’s voice interrupted my thoughts. I looked up to find that he looked entirely confused.
“Were you even paying attention?”
“No.” I had no qualms answering that question, as my emotion rose in my throat. “No, I wasn’t, and it’s because now I have all my regrets on my brain!”
As the tears ran down my face, I tried to finish the last of my meal. It wasn’t easy, but I managed to choke down the last two bites before putting my dishes in the sink.
“I didn’t mean to cause you pain,” Luke said as I was putting my dishes away. “I’m sorry if I hit a nerve. I didn’t mean to pry. We can pretend we never had that conversation.”
“Sorry?” I turned to face Luke. “Sorry doesn’t fix it, Mark! It doesn’t fix anything. My life is a mess, and you dug right into it. Why? So you could gloat over how much of a mess I am? I have no reason to trust you with details about my life, and you had no right to ask!”
The moment the words came out, I pressed a hand to my mouth. The expression on Luke’s face was not one of hurt or betrayal, but of stony emotionlessness. As if I had just ruined everything we had achieved in the kitchen.
“Like I said, I didn’t mean to pry,” he said as he turned away from me. “I hope you have a good night, Laurel.”
“Wait…”
He didn’t bother to stay to hear me out. As his footsteps got softer, I couldn’t help but run up out the door and up the staircase in the cold to my room – despite the wind nipping at my skin and my nose feeling like it was about to freeze off. It was the easiest way to find the sanctuary that I had here at the lodge.
Upon arriving at the room, I collapsed just on the other side of the door once it had shut behind me. I buried my head in my knees as the tears started running even harder than before. A mixture of grief for the relationship I had lost with Mark and the relationship I couldn’t seem to start with Luke overtook me. As much as I wanted to wring Mark’s neck for the way he had revealed to me that he didn’t believe in the same kind of marriage that I did, I hadn’t wanted to make Luke feel as though I was comparing him to Mark.
It wasn’t fair to him. Especially now that he had revealed to me that he had gone through something similar to what I was going through.
Once the tears had all dried, I stood up from where I had been sitting against the door. As I went to wash my face, there was a knock at the door.
“Laurel?”
I immediately tried to muffle my sobs. My heart pounded, realizing Luke probably could have heard me crying through the closed door.
“I’ve started the dishwasher.”
With that, he left. I could hear the footsteps fading down the hallway and had to admit that my heart sank when that was all that he said to me. Was it all he cared about, this lodge? Or did he care enough about me to see if I was going to answer him? Have a chat with him?
Whatever the answer was, I was in the dark. Instead of dwelling much longer on it, I splashed some cold water on my face. It felt nice against my swollen eyelids and flushed cheeks as I struggled with the overload of emotions the conversation in the kitchen had brought out.
