Page 45 of The Beekeeper

“Do you want a piece?” Harper asked when I said nothing. “You don’t have to. We can just tell her you tried it⁠—”

“I’ll have a bite,” I said, meeting her eyes. A mistake because I’d sounded like I wanted to take a bite out of her. Which I did.

Harper darted like one of her damn bees around the small kitchen, fetching a small plate, a knife and fork. And then I was staring at a chocolate, gooey lump of cake studded with nuts.

“It’s not the prettiest because we didn’t wait for it to cool, but it’s delicious.” The blush that colored her cheeks was delicious, but I buried that and dug in.

I reeled—physically rocked back on my heels and felt my brows rise as the sweet, chocolate-hazelnutty cake melted over my taste buds. I wasn’t a huge cake fan—a huge fan of sweets in general, but damn, this was good.

“What do you think?” Harper asked after I’d eaten a few bites and said nothing.

“Good,” I said and swallowed. “Really good.”

She blushed. “I’m glad—Paisley will be glad you liked it.”

As I dug for another bite, and for something other than Harper to focus on, I said without thinking, “Megan—Paisley’s mom loved Nutella.”

“I mean, who doesn’t?”

I grunted and kept eating.

“Does Paisley know her mom liked Nutella?” she asked after a beat.

I swallowed again simply because my throat felt tight. “No.”

“Oh.”

Even if there was no disapproval in her voice, I still heard it.

“I was older when my mom died, but my dad and my brothers, my whole family really, still talked about her a lot, and I think it helped. It’s what drew me to beekeeping,” she said.

I should’ve made her stop, and I definitely shouldn’t have egged her on.

“She put honey in everything. Even her coffee,” I said, and looked at her just in time to see her pull in a sharp inhale.

“You remember.” It wasn’t a question even though she sounded surprised.

Of all the memories I’d lost over my lifetime—from excessive alcohol, from doing drugs, from the concussion I’d gotten from falling down the staircase at the inn, and then the coma I’d been in—somehow, the moments I’d spent in conversation with Harper all remained perfectly intact. Like a snowglobe surviving an earthquake.

So, yeah, I remembered when she’d told me about her apiary. About how her family helped her build her hives. I remembered what she’d answered when I asked, “why bees?”

“My mom loved honey. She even put it in her coffee, and she’d collect anything that had a honeycomb pattern on it. They were her favorite, and knowing that they were hers, I think made them mine.” Her emotional answer had quickly been followed by a brush of her hand under her eyes and a punchy addition, “Plus, who wouldn’t want to be part of a community ruled by females.”

I jerked out of the memory. “Paisley’s grandparents talk about her mother with her.”

Any other person would’ve let the conversation drop there, but not Harper. She didn’t even have enough caution to lower her eyes before charging forward.

“Is it too painful for you?”

“No,” I said, my jaw muscle firing. She wanted some sweet, emotional answer like I’d been a bleeding heart for the one who got away instead of the bastard I was. “I don’t talk about Megan because I hardly knew her. We met at a diner where she worked. I know she liked Nutella because it was what she always recommended to everyone to get on their pancakes. I know she wanted to be an actress. And I know that after we slept together a few times, my career started to sky-rocket so I stopped seeing her, thinking she’d either try to tie me down or use me to pull herself up.”

“Blaze—”

“I don’t talk about her mother because I have nothing to say. I have no answers for her, at least none that will make anything better, and definitely not her perception of me,” I bit out, bracing for the anger I expected Harper to feel—the anger I felt myself.

Instead, the only thing I saw in her eyes was sympathy, warm and soothing. A sharp break from everything around me. Like baking a cake in the middle of a thunderstorm.

“You didn’t choose to not be a part of her life, Blaze. You were never given the choice.”