Page 47 of Faking it with my Bad Boy Crush

Her reply came immediately: That's what I'm afraid of. You two handling things together is either going to save the bakery or break both your hearts. Possibly both.

I stared at her message for a long moment, then put my phone away and returned to the kitchen.

Tomorrow's hearing would determine whether I could keep operating. The independent survey would determine whether I kept the bakery at all. And somewhere in between, Ethan Caldwell would decide whether to stay and fight or take Marcus's offer and leave.

Too many variables. Too many unknowns.

So, I did what I always did when anxiety threatened to overwhelm me: I made bread. Mixed flour and water and salt and yeast, kneaded the dough until my hands ached, shaped loaves with the muscle memory of seven years and the legacy of five generations.

Building instead of destroying.

Just like my grandfather taught me.

Just like Ethan was trying to learn.

At midnight, my phone lit up with a text from Ethan:Can't sleep. Keep thinking about the hearing. About everything.

I typed back:Me too.

I don't know what I'm doing. Don't know if I'm making the right choices.

I stared at those words for a long time before responding:None of us do. We just choose and hope and try to build something worth the risk.

His response took several minutes:Is it worth it? The risk?

My fingers hovered over the keyboard. The honest answer was too complicated, too vulnerable, too much to say over text at midnight.

So, I wrote:Ask me after tomorrow.

After tomorrow. Sleep well, Maya.

You too.

But I knew neither of us would sleep. We'd both lie awake, thinking about hearings and choices and futures that hinged on decisions we weren't ready to make.

Tomorrow would bring answers—or at least, it would force questions we couldn't avoid anymore.

The fake dating arrangement was over. The legal battle was reaching its climax. And somewhere in the space between professional and personal, Ethan and I had built something neither of us knew how to name.

Tomorrow, we'd find out if it was strong enough to survive what came next.

Chapter fifteen

Exposed on the Stand

Ethan

Iarrived at the bakery at 5:45 AM Friday morning, fifteen minutes earlier than we'd agreed, carrying coffee and a briefcase full of documents I'd organized and reorganized three times during my sleepless night.

Maya was already there, of course. She'd probably been there since 4 AM, making bread to keep her hands busy and her mind from spiraling. I found her in the kitchen, surrounded by perfectly shaped loaves, her hair in a messy bun, flour dusting her forearms.

"You're early," she said, not looking up from the dough she was shaping.

"So are you." I set down the coffee beside her workstation—large oat milk latte, the ritual we'd established about a week ago that felt simultaneously like forever and not nearly long enough. "Ready to review the response motion?"

"Ready as I'll ever be." She washed her hands and followed me to the office, where I pulled up the documents on my laptop.

The response motion was twenty-three pages of carefully constructed legal argument, each paragraph building on the last to create an irrefutable case: Hutchins's emergency motion was baseless harassment, designed to cause financial damage rather than address legitimate concerns. The parking area had been in continuous use since Mr. Romano purchased it without incident. The claim of irreparable harm was manufactured and contradicted by decades of peaceful coexistence.