Baking Me Crazy (Donner Bakery, #1)(69)

She pulled her face back, eyes searching mine. "You'd give it up? Are you crazy?"

"I'm crazy about you," I clarified. "I couldn't move across the country from you, not now, not after this."

Joss raised a shaking hand to her mouth and stared out the windshield. "What the hell is it about this truck?" she said, almost to herself.

"What do you mean?"

She laughed under her breath and shook her head. "You kiss me for the first time and then tell clueless me that you've wanted to be more than friends for the entire time you've known me."

I closed my eyes.

"We have sex, and now you've got this whole future planned across the country that clueless me had no idea about."

"Hang on, I don't have a whole future planned there." When she wouldn't meet my eyes, I felt a quick stab of panic. "I want to plan that future together. And if your heart is here, if Green Valley is the only place you can imagine yourself, then I'll beat the pavement as long as I need to in order to stay right here with you."

Her breathing got faster and faster as I spoke. "Great, so I can be the dream crusher. Always a role I've wanted for myself."

"There will be other jobs, Joss," I said, and my voice was sharp enough that she finally gave those eyes back to me. But the shuttered emotion I saw there had my chest squeezing tight. "You are the dream I've had longer than any work I might do."

"You can say that after a couple of weeks," she said quietly.

"It's not about the length of time, and you know it."

Her face turned away, but she didn't argue.

"When did you go?" she asked.

I inhaled slowly. "They flew me out a couple of days after … after you asked for time to think."

She nodded, turning her chin back toward me. "You are asking a lot of me, no matter what I say. You know that, right?"

"I know." I took her hands again, and she let me. "I know."

"Did you like Seattle?" Her tentative voice was so unlike her. She was scared of my answer, and I could hear it, plain as day.

"Will you look at me?"

"Just answer the question, Levi." She sniffed quietly.

I lifted our hands and kissed her fingers, breathing in the scent of her skin.

"I loved it," I told her, my lips brushing against her knuckles.

"And you could see yourself living there?"

"Without you? Not happily," I answered immediately.

Her face turned to mine. There was a shine in her eyes, but she wasn't crying. "That's not what I asked."

"I feel like I'm being baited here, Sonic."

"Really? Because I'm the one who's always tossed into these conversations right before everything changes. You feel like you're being baited, Levi, when you've known about this for weeks and didn't tell me." Her voice rose, and her eyes flashed. She pulled her fingers from mine.

I had two worst-case scenarios, and this was one of them. I bit down on every defense I could've conjured and let her unload. It was better than her leaving, shutting down.

"You had how many interviews? Two? Three?" she guessed. "I'm your best friend, and you didn't tell me shit. And all of a sudden, I get one or two days to either decide to uproot my life or tell you to give up an amazing opportunity. How the hell do you expect me to react to that? We've been dating for like, five minutes, Levi."

"Don't," I interjected. "Don't diminish it because you're pissed at me. One I'm fine with, and the other I'll call bullshit every time."

"Great," she said back, straightening her legs and unlocking the door. "I have school. I have a job."

"You can get another bakery job," I told her.

"Don't diminish it because you're pissed at me," she repeated my words dangerously. Her hand yanked on the door handle.

"You're actually leaving?"

Her eyes flashed hot as she paused in the open door. "Yeah, because sometimes other people get to decide when big things get talked about, Levi."

"That's not what I'm doing."

"Bullshit." She grabbed the handle and slid off the seat.

"Give me a break, Joss. How are we ever supposed to discuss things if you bolt every single time it makes you uncomfortable? This is what a relationship is, working on things together."

"Working on things?" she scoffed. "That's not what this is. This isn't our first fight over something like Christmases with families or who made dinner last or why you forgot my birthday. This is me, once again, being the person in the really shitty position. I either give Levi the thing that will make him happiest, or I break his heart."

I dropped my head to my chest and struggled to breathe evenly.

"You can't even deny it."

"I'm not trying to," I told her. "But you're not being fair either. I got the call last night, and this is the first I'm seeing you, so here we are, ready to discuss it, like normal, rational adults in a relationship."

She narrowed her eyes, framed in the open doorway, gripping the seat as she leaned toward me. "Except I'm deciding that I'm not ready to discuss it right now. You can't spring this shit on me and expect that I'll be ready to make a massive life decision in the course of five frickin' minutes."