Page 48 of Cakewalk
“Good luck.” Madison hung up.
I stared at my phone, hardly having it in me to pull up Griffin’s number. Was he even still in town? Iwashis acting landlord, so I needed to at least know that. I pressed his name in my contacts and waited, my pulse racing.
Griffin answered, his voice groggy. “Hello?”
It was six at night. “Hey, Griffin? You okay?”
He let out an extended groan, then said very unconvincingly, “I’m just dandy. You?”
“I don’t know. So we waited to see how this played out. What’s happening next?”
“What’s happening next is I’m handing the property over to be managed by someone else. They’ll clean it up, then turn it into a full nature reservation. No commercial development, and the town can keep declining if that’s what they want.”
“Then… that means you’re leaving?”
“Guess so. The transition to new management will probably take until the end of next month, so I’m just hiding out in this apartment until then. Then I’m going back to the city.” He paused, before adding tentatively, “You’d have work there if you wanted to follow me.”
I felt my throat tighten. “I can’t leave this town.”
“You’re a more loyal person than I am. I just don’t have it in me to help people in spite of themselves.”
“I understand that. God, I wish this could have turned out differently.”
With a finality to his voice, he said softly, “Me too.”
Everything in me wanted to beg him to stay, made me want to repeat Madison’s words about bulldozing our way through all the roadblocks. But another part of me thought:You’re doing it again. I had begged Thomas, held on to him too tightly despite how he treated me, and all that did was make him retaliate and fill him with spite. I didn’t want my relationship with Griffin to end on the same sour note.
“I’ll miss you,” I whispered, and I heard him breathe in shakily.
“I’ll miss you too, Jade.”
Chapter 18
Jade
I had been dreadingthe last day of this month, but it was finally here. I supposed the timing couldn’t be better; just as the Davidsons were returning from their second home up north, Griffin would be moving out of the apartment above the cake shop. I planned to move in right after him, as painful as it would be.
I would have wanted to live anywhere else than a place that’d remind me of him, but my PR firm wasn’t exactly taking off to the moon. I had a dozen clients, but they were all remote, and all I was doing was managing their social media profiles and mailing lists. That kind of work didn’t exactly pay the big bucks, so I could really only afford the apartment at a family rate.
With it being the last day of the month, I figured Griffin would be out by now. He had kept communications to a minimum, just to wire me the rent and nothing more. Part of me hoped he’d still be at the apartment when I walked up the metal stairs, but another part of me yearned for the finality of seeing the place empty.
It was noon on a Saturday, and the town had its usual weekend visitors, which wasn’t saying much. All the excitement of the scandal seemed forgotten now that the powers that be “won”—if you could call chasing Griffin out of town winning. It was all back to status quo.
Even Courtney was talking to me again, having forgotten how pissed she was at me after giving birth to my new niece. And at dinner last week, my parents acted like all was back to normal, asking me about work and definitely not about my love life. It seemed everybody assumed I was going to be a single spinster forever after my last escapade. And at this point, I probably would be, because nobody could hold a torch to Griffin.
So I walked up the staircase and knocked on the apartment door, just to be sure, before taking out my key. I unlocked it, then cracked it open, expecting it to be as empty as it was before Griffin came to town.
Instead, I saw it was fully furnished and lived-in, even more so than before.
“What?” I said to myself, before calling out, “Griffin?”
Not a soul stirred, and I didn’t see him from my vantage point at the front door. The apartment was wide open, so he’d have to be hiding in the bathroom for me not to see him.
I closed the door and stepped back, feeling like I was intruding, then whipped my phone out and started typing hastily, “I thought you’d be out by the end of the month. Where are you?”
His response was simple: “Calhoon Saloon.”
“Oh my god.” I typed back. “I’ll be right there.”
