Because It's You (Carolina Rebels 2)

My eyes widen as I take in what is definitely not the bathroom. It’s a bedroom with two twin beds. The walls are a cream white, but everything else in the room screams girl. There’s a toy chest, stuffed animals, and the entire package. What in the hell?

“What are you doing?”

I swivel on my heels at the sound of Elizabeth’s even voice. “Picked the wrong door for the bathroom. What is this?”

“Sylvia’s twins like to come over sometimes. I fixed a room up for them, so they’d be comfortable.”

Oh. Well, that makes sense. Elizabeth opens the correct door for the bathroom and waves me inside. The moment I step away from the girls’ bedroom, she closes the door. I don’t think any more of it. The timer I set is going off when I return for my cakes and Elizabeth is already pulling them out of the oven and putting hers in.

“Hey, you have some missed calls,” Elizabeth says, hitting the dismiss button on the timer on my phone, which was sitting on the counter.

“They can wait.” It’s most likely my father anyway. I start my icing and now, I’m the one being watched.

“Are you sure? There’s a bunch of them.”

“I’m sure.”

“But what if it’s an emergency?”

“It’s not. Leave it the hell alone!” Fuck. She stiffens and I mentally berate myself for being so harsh with her. “There’s things you don’t want to talk about, and there’s things I don’t want to talk about, but I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that.”

“It’s okay. If anyone can understand that, it’s me.” She even comes over to monitor my job with the icing, lightly resting her hand on my back.

“Are you ready for time without me?” I ask to change the subject.

“What? You’re not going to talk to me at all?” Is that a trace of hope in her voice? Or disappointment? Maybe it’s a mixture of both.

“Depends. How much of a break do you need from me?”

“I don’t know yet. How much of a break do you need from me?”

“I don’t need a break from you at all.”

She rolls her eyes at me. “Yeah, right.”

We’re quiet until I go to put icing on my first layer. I’m sitting at her table with the cake in front of me and the icing slightly to my left. My chair is perpendicular to the table. Elizabeth is sitting in the seat to my left, analyzing my every move.

“What are you doing?” Elizabeth asks me just as I’m about to drop a scoop of icing onto the layer.

“What am I doing wrong?”

“Everything.”

I grab her hand and pull her into my lap. She’s tense. “Show me how it’s done.”

“Okay.” There’s less icing in her scoop than what was in mine. I have one hand on her hip while the other trails random patterns on her lower back. I almost wish I could play in her hair, but she’s put it up in a ponytail. It is shoulder length. “You have to remember that you have to divide this up, too,” she continues. She starts to spread it out. “You want to spread it evenly, but you want the edges to have extra fluff because it’s going to have cake sitting on it and you want it to be pretty.”

My lips quirk. I just want the cake to taste good. It doesn’t have to look pretty. Elizabeth gets the icing covering the top of the layer and then gets to work on fluffing how it looks on the edges. I expected her to make me try to do it myself, but she doesn’t. When she leaves my lap for the second layer, she sits there once again to repeat the process with the new layer.

By the time she’s done, her cake is now sitting on the counter, waiting to cool before she decorates it and we’re sitting at the table, tasting my cake.

“Mmm. There’s no way you’ll win.” I’ve never had a German chocolate cake before, but it’s delicious.

She scoffs and looks over at me. “I helped you with this one. What makes you think mine won’t be better?”

She makes a good point. “Shouldn’t I get something since my first attempt was an obvious success?”

She pats me on the back with a smirk. “There you go.”