The Secret (Winslow Brothers 3)

My phone vibrates from my bag, but I ignore it.

I don’t want to talk to anyone right now.

I can’t talk to anyone right now.

I just need to be alone. I am literally the only company I can tolerate, and even that’s pushing it.

By the time I make it to Nolita, a line of sweat discolors the front of my blouse, my breathing is ragged, and tears are streaming down my cheeks. I can’t feel myself crying—my body is numb—but the evidence is plain to see.

Upon arrival at the bakery—and seeing Lydia and Lou at the front, chatting and laughing with a customer—I realize my plan to run until I couldn’t anymore has still landed me somewhere it shouldn’t. This may be my home, but it’s their life.

There is no way I can walk into their bakery looking like this. I won’t do it to them and their unflagging sympathies, and I won’t do it to their business.

Bringing that kind of pain and stress to their doorstep and leaving it there would be my undoing.

I round the block to the rear of the building and sneak in through the back doors, and I somehow manage to slide underneath Maude’s attention while she stays focused on piping white icing onto a tray of cupcakes. She’s got earbuds in or something, and for that, I’m thankful.

Bathed in the safety of my apartment at last, I lock myself inside.

But the relief I thought I’d feel by separating myself from everyone, from the outside world, doesn’t come. If anything, I feel more anxious. Like a caged animal in a zoo that just wants to return to its home in the wild.

The silence of my apartment is so thick it makes my ears ring. Mindless, I reach for my phone and look at the screen—the absolute stupidest thing I could do.

10 missed calls Ty Winslow.

6 text message notifications Ty Winslow.

The pressure comes rushing back into my chest like a freight train, but I can’t stop myself from reading the texts inside.

Ty: Where are you?

Ty: Call me back, please.

Ty: Look, I know I said something back there that probably was a lot to comprehend, and I absolutely didn’t do it the right way, but…just…call me back. Please.

I lock the screen of my phone before I can read the rest and toss it back into my bag.

I feel frazzled. Shaken. Confused to my very core. I don’t know how I want to feel or why I’m feeling the way I am. All I know is that I can’t stay here. I can’t stay like this, or it’ll kill me.

I shouldn’t have come back to New York.

My phone rings from inside my bag, and I don’t have to look to know who it is. I can’t face him—not right now. The undeniable urge for space roots deep in my chest and sprouts itself into something I can’t deny. It’s pervasive—debilitating.

Without even thinking, I head to my bedroom and start slamming shirts and shoes and random toiletries into my favorite messenger bag, my eyesight blurred heavily by uninvited tears.

I know my sister’s in the middle of the afternoon bakery rush, and I know she’ll be too busy to check her phone. And that’s why I have to handle it like this.

Me: I’m going somewhere. I will call you when I get there and explain everything.

I hate leaving Lydia and Lou high and dry when it comes to bakery shifts I’ve already agreed to for the foreseeable future, but I can’t stay here. I can’t wait to explain.

I have to go, and I have to do it now. Once and for all, I have to take back control.

Ty

Texting, calling, scouring the campus, and even climbing the fire escape at the back of Rachel’s apartment like a fucking stalker have all turned up empty in my search for her.

I held class in the hopes that she’d show, but when she didn’t, I told all the students to go home. It was unprofessional and a direct violation of my rule to never let my personal life affect my job, but this is different—this is the kind of thing that I would go to the ends of the earth for if I had to.

This is the woman of my dreams.

There’s only one more place to go for answers—a place where I doubt I’ll find Rachel, but may just find the clues that will lead me to her.

Her sister’s bakery and the enabler of my cookie addiction—Little Rose Bakeshop.

I swing open the door and step inside, and the bell chimes above my head. Lydia is busy at the front, switching cupcakes from a tray onto the glass shelf underneath the register.

I move quickly toward her without delay or any regard for the tables in my way, bumping into a couple of them clumsily. Still, it takes me standing in front of her and clearing my throat for her to look up and meet my eyes. I’m fairly certain, just because of that, she already knows it’s me and not another customer.