drinking with my brothers and all I could think of was Claire. I had to endure listening to them talk about Stella and Violet even though talking about women is supposed to be against the rules—seriously, why do we have rules if no one follows them?—and I kept thinking about how nice it would be if I could brag about Claire, too.
She’s the only woman I want to brag about, the only one I want to tell them about. She’s the only one I want to come home to after a night of drinking with my brothers.
She’s not just a woman I’m going out with or kissing. She’s a woman I’ve known all my life, a woman I’ve wanted for a long time. No one else can replace her. No one should.
I grab my phone from the bedside table and try calling her. No answer.
I try again after five minutes. Then after ten. Then thirty. Still no answer.
She’s ignoring me. And I can’t blame her. I haven’t tried to get in touch with her for the past few days.
Is it too late for me to be with her?
I shake my head. No. I’m not giving up just yet. If Claire won’t talk to me on the phone, then I’ll just have to talk to her in person. I’ll go to her.
Then I realize that I don’t know where she lives. Last time, she asked me to pick her up from a cafe. And I can’t ask Joel.
Fuck.
For a few moments, I wonder what I should do. Ask Miller to find Claire’s address? Track her phone? Go to the cafe and hope that she shows up there?
I’m about to try that, since it seems like a better alternative than sitting here in my apartment, losing my mind, but as I pass by the kitchen, I remember something.
Claire said she was giving cooking lessons at a local school. Maybe I can find out where.
Chapter Seven
Claire
“Goodbye, Claire,” Dorothy tells me. She’s one of the students in my class, a married woman who just lost her job and has decided to devote herself to cooking for her husband.
I send her off with a smile. “Bye.”
After she’s gone, I grab a stool to sit on and rest my legs. That’s one of the hardest things about cooking—being on your feet the whole time. The same is true when you’re teaching people to cook.
But I’m not complaining. I love what I do. I love changing people’s lives through food. I love thinking that people can be happier and make their loved ones happier because of the dishes I teach them to cook. I love knowing that when they walk out of my class, they have something they’ll never forget, something they can make their own, something they can share with their friends or hand down to their children. I’m not just giving them recipes. I’m giving them fresh starts.
If there’s anything I want to complain about, it’s Ryker. He finally called me earlier. Four times. I didn’t answer. Why should I? He ignored me for four days. He was able to bear going through four days without hearing my voice, without making sure I was fine, without caring about me, while each moment, I was in agony because I missed him, because even though I hated him every second, I couldn’t keep myself from wanting to see him again, from hoping that maybe he’d want to see me.
Didn’t I tell him that if he didn’t want to be with me, he should just tell me? But he didn’t tell me. So I thought maybe he still wanted to be with me. But then he didn’t call me back to say anything else either, which tells me the opposite. So yeah, I’ve been feeling like I’m being torn in two.
Last night, I went out with Christy, got drunk and told her that I’d just forget about Ryker. Then this morning, he calls.
What the hell does he want now?
“I’m sorry. Did I just miss the class?”
I look up to see Ryker standing in the doorway in an unbuttoned denim jacket over a knitted, cream-colored top and jeans. What the freaking hell?
When the initial shock that has me frozen in place subsides, two courses of action immediately come to mind. One is to throw myself straight at him, grab the front of his jacket and kiss him. The other is to walk across the room so I can send my palm across his handsome face. I choose neither. Instead,