Page 93 of Frosted Fakes

Gabby went very still. "I'm sorry?"

"It was fake. All of it. She was living upstairs and doing all the baking, and I was pretending I could actually run this place. She was a sitting tenant. I thought you’d have her thrown out, and I didn’t want her to be homeless, so… we made an arrangement." The words felt like swallowing glass. She wasn’t sure how she felt about this whole honesty thing. Maybe Jamie had been wrong. "I lied to you. I lied to everyone. And now she's gone, and I can't bake, and I can't even…" Her voice cracked again. "I can't even keep a fake relationship going. What does that say about me?"

Gabby was silent for a long moment. Julia braced herself for the explosion. The lecture. The I-told-you-so that had been building for twenty-nine years.

Instead, her mother sighed and leaned against the counter. "Do you know why I bought you this bakery?"

"To torture me? To prove I'm a disappointment?"

"Because my mother never pushed me." Gabby's voice was different. Softer. Julia wasn't sure she'd ever heard her mother sound quite like this. "She let me drift. Let me make excuse after excuse. And I spent years being mediocre before I finally got angry enough to prove her wrong."

Julia blinked. "What?"

"I'm giving you what she never gave me. Support. Tough love. A reason to fight." Gabby met her daughter's eyes. "I thought if I pushed you hard enough, you'd push back. You'd find that fire. Instead, you found someone else to do the hard work for you."

"I fell in love with her," Julia whispered. "That wasn't supposed to happen, but it did."

"So you can't bake, and you can't hold down a real relationship." Gabby's tone sharpened again. "Quite the achievement."

The words hit like a slap. Julia flinched.

"I'm taking the bakery back." Gabby straightened, all business again. "Clearly, this experiment has failed. I'll find a buyer, or I'll shut it down. Either way, you're done here."

"No…Mum, please…" What the hell was she saying? She didn’t want the bakery. On the other hand, the bakery was where Elliott knew how to find her, the place they’d shared together. Jesus, she had no idea what she even wanted anymore.

"You can come back to London. Work for me again. We'll pretend this whole embarrassing episode never happened." Gabby smoothed down her jacket.

"No," Julia said. "No. Not yet."

Gabby looked at her, shook her head, and sighed. "Two months," she said. "Then we put this nightmare to bed." She turned on her heel and left.

Julia stood in the ruined kitchen, surrounded by burned biscuits and failed scones.

Tom poked his head around the door. "Is it safe?"

"No," Julia said. "Close the shop."

"Close it? But we've still got…"

"Another hour to go?" She started untying her apron. "We’re closing early. I can’t do this anymore today."

THE FLAT WAS QUIET. And Julia was done crying. Only because she didn’t have any more tears left. She was so dehydrated that her mouth tasted like sand, and she hadn’t been near a beach in years.

She didn't know what to do. She'd lost Elliott. She'd almost lost the bakery that she’d never even wanted. She'd lost the fantasy that she could somehow pull this off.

Jamie's words echoed in her head. Be honest.

But honest about what? That she'd never wanted this? That she'd spent her whole life pretending to be someone she wasn't? That the only time she'd ever felt like herself was when Elliott was looking at her and actually smiling like she never did at anyone else?

She wondered if Elliott was thinking about her. Probably not. Elliott was probably already moving on, planning her next steps, figuring out how to get her cookbook published without any help from people who only wanted to fix her. Without some silly little rich girl pretending to have all the answers.

The worst part was, Julia couldn't even be angry. Elliott was right. She had tried to fix her. She'd seen someone she loved struggling, and she'd reached for the only tool she knew: her mother's money, her mother's connections, her mother's power.

As if Elliott was just another problem to be solved.

What was she supposed to do now?

Go back to London. Fetch her mother's salt. Watch nursing videos in secret and pretend she was happy. The same life she'd escaped six months ago, waiting to swallow her whole again. She didn’t know what other choice she had.