He Made An Exception For Her But Never For Me Chapter 09
The rain lasted all night.
I took a hot shower and, as always, woke at six the next morning.
The sunlight was good, and the town’s morning market was warm and full of life.
I picked out the freshest lisianthus stems and carried them back to the shop.
I tied on my apron and began the day’s baking.
Over the next two weeks, business was unusually good.
Every evening, just before closing, a courier would arrive right on schedule.
And buy every last pastry and bouquet left in the display case.
At first, I assumed a nearby company was placing catering orders.
Until the day the courier didn’t come.
Instead, the person walking through my door was a man in a tailored suit, his face flushed with embarrassment. Adrian’s assistant, Lynch.
The moment Lynch saw me, he tried instinctively to retreat.
I called him back. I wasn’t angry.
I simply picked up the boxed cakes and followed him for two blocks.
At the corner, beneath the oak tree, the familiar black Maybach was parked.
The rear window was rolled halfway down, and Adrian sat inside.
In his hand was one of the small cream buns that had been left over from my shop the day before.
“Mr. Bosworth.”
I said it calmly.
Adrian jolted. The bun almost slipped from his hand.
He pushed open the car door and stepped out, brushing the crumbs from his clothes in a flustered rush.
“Sophia.”
He looked at me with something almost like appeasement in his voice.
“I didn’t want to disturb you. I was just afraid you’d be sad if things at the shop didn’t sell.”
I looked at him. I took out my phone and opened the calculator.
“Over the past two weeks, you’ve bought sixty-four hundred dollars’ worth of pastries and flowers.”
“After deducting my normal profit margin and my costs, you’ve overpaid by about twenty-eight hundred.”
I looked up. There was nothing but stillness in my eyes.
“Give me your account information. I’ll return the difference.”
Adrian’s face went pale, and he stepped toward me quickly.
“Don’t refund it. Sophia, this is just a small gesture from me.”
“I only wanted to take care of you.”
“I don’t need you to take care of me.”
I cut him off. My voice was calm.
“Adrian, I opened this shop to make a living.”
“To prove to myself that Sophia Callahan can build a good life even without you.”
“You empty out my hard work like this, and then what?”
“Turn around and throw it in the trash?”
“You’ve turned my effort into a prop for your own self-pity.”
“All that does is make you look not only arrogant, but pitiful.”
“I didn’t throw it away!”
Adrian’s eyes suddenly welled up. His voice broke into a rasp.
He turned around and yanked open the car door.
In the light of the streetlamp, I saw the wide leather back seat and the trunk of the Maybach.
Both were packed with dried, withering bouquets in every size.
And in the apartment across the street he’d rented, according to Lynch’s trembling report.
The refrigerator was stuffed with two weeks’ worth of pastries.
I looked at that carful of dying flowers, and I felt no rush of sickness in my stomach. Only a deep, tired kind of weariness.
“Look at yourself.”
I let out a long breath.
“You think this is love? You’re only punishing yourself.”
“You used to punish me with your logic and your rules. Now you punish yourself with self-inflicted suffering.”
“Adrian, you have never once learned how to respect another person as an equal.”
“You’ll always live at one extreme or another.”
“That’s not true!”
Adrian’s tall frame stooped low. Tears fell onto his polished shoes.
“I just don’t know what else to do to make you look at me.”
“Sophia, I’ve run out of ways!”
I didn’t want to listen to his confession any longer.
I transferred the twenty-eight hundred dollars directly to Lynch’s phone.
“This is the last time.”
I turned my back on him.
“Starting tomorrow, if a courier comes here again, I’ll close the shop immediately.”
“The world is a big place. I can always move to somewhere you’ll never find me.”
“Don’t push me to the point where I can’t even keep the life I have now.”
Behind me, I heard the muffled sound of him breaking.
I didn’t turn around. I walked, step by step, back into the life that belonged to me.