Page 170 of With a Cherry On Top

“Well, hurting your brother obviously wasn’t enough to stop you all those years ago.” His tone is eerily calm, but his eyes are anything but. “Would hurting my wife have?”

My response lodges itself somewhere in my chest, twisting.

Ian leans forward. “The woman who gave you a chance? Who tutored you? Who taught you everything she could, and made me give you a job, then offered you asecondjob, and?—”

“Trust me, I?—”

“Would you have stopped?”

I want to believe I would have. I want to say yes, swear up and down that I would’ve made the right choice. But the truth is...I don’t know.

Something that that feels so good can’t possibly be a mistake.

“You know I care deeply about Amelie,” I say, my voice hoarse.

Ian scoffs. “Yeah, Idoknow. Of course, you don’t care about me. My company. My work. And you don’t care about your job either.”

“No, I do. I?—”

“Chef & Tell is a new business, Aaron.” He presses his fingers to his forehead. “Do you have any idea what this could do to us? We could lose everything. If Beatrice made this public and people found out one of my chefs was sneaking into her house to fuck her daughter, a woman fourteen years younger than him, I—” He pulls at his hair. “Dozens of people could lose their jobs because of you, myself included.”

My chest constricts to the point of pain. “I know.”

He snorts. “Youknow.Well, that doesn’t help us, does it?”

“Look, I fucked up, okay? There’s no excuse. I should have handled this completely differently. I should have quit, which I didn’t do because I...” I close my eyes for a moment. “Because I love this job so much. I was selfish and irresponsible.”

Ian studies me, unimpressed. “Why do I feel like there’s a ‘but’ coming?”

My hands fist on my thighs. “I have feelings for her.”

It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud, but it’s undeniable. And maybe it doesn’t make any of this better, but Ianknowswhat it’slike to lose his mind over a woman. He met Amelie when she was engaged to someone else.

His fingers drum once against the desk, then still, a long silence stretching until the door swings open with a sharp crack.

Amelie storms inside, her eyes finding me instantly. The hurt in them is a gut punch.

“Hey, beautiful,” Ian tries, but she silences him with a flick of her wrist. She’s breathing hard, and I can see the vein in her forehead popping from here.

“Amelie,” I say, my throat dry. “I’m so?—”

“You’re fired.”

The words crack through the air, final and absolute.

I roll my lips, bracing myself. I knew it was coming, but hearing it—hearinghersay it—shatters something inside me.

“Hey, let’s just think about this for a second, okay?” Ian stands, placing a calming hand on her arm.

“There’s nothing to think about. He’s fired, effective immediately, and that’s the end of it.”

Ian’s hands rest on his hips.

That’s it. It happened. I’m fired.

I’ve been trying to convince myself that losing my job isn’t the end of the world. But the truth is, this isn’t just about a job. It’s about losing my purpose. The people who gave it to me, and made my life worth something.

Ian shifts beside her, his lips pressing into a thin line. “He has a young daughter,” he reminds her. “Maybe we could?—”

---