I reached across and put my hand on his shoulder, squeezing tight. He turned and looked me right in the eyes. “We’ll get it there one day, I promise,” I said. “I don’t know how, of course, but somehow we’ll make it happen.”
Tate smiled. “You’re far too sweet to me, Chasen,” he said. “But I don’t mind. Dreams change and I have a new dream now. This family is my dream.”
I started the car and drove us over to my place, unable to get Tate’s dreams out of my head. Why should those dreams go away because he was going to be a dad? It didn’t make sense to just leave them all behind. I wanted him to be happy. I wanted to be next to him when those dreams came true and he got to see his bakery just how he always envisioned it. I’d be there. I’d make it happen.
The next morning, Tate had headed off to work and I worked from home. I had a few calls that I needed to make and a few conference calls I certainly didn’t need to be in the office for. Any excuse to stay in my pajamas a little while longer.
I was typing away when my phone rang. It was Preston. I’d not heard from him in a little while. I’d been so busy with Tate that I’d let him get on with things, keep everything ticking over smoothly until I could step back into the fold and help out.
“Good morning,” I said, a lot chirpier than I intended.
“Gosh, someone’s in a good mood,” Preston said. “Big day today I suppose, maybe I should be a little brighter.”
“Big day?” I said, my stomach dropping at the thought of something huge slipping my mind. I opened the calendar on my desktop, but nothing came up for today. Had I missed an email? “What’s up?”
“Oh, I thought you knew,” Preston said, sounding suddenly sheepish. What was going on?
“Knew what, Preston?”
“I thought someone might have let you know, it doesn’t matter,” Preston said. “Besides, it’s a good thing. We’re cleared to go ahead with the construction on Main Street. Everything was signed off at the tail end of last week and we can start as soon as next Monday.”
My stomach fell to my feet. That had to mean…
“Have the notices gone out to all the businesses there?” I asked, already knowing the answer, already fearing the worst.
“They all got posted last night, should be with the owners this morning. They’ll need to be cleared out by next week so that we can get on with the job at hand,” Preston let out a sigh. “This is a huge contract, Chasen, I’m still a little bit in shock that we managed to do it. I’m proud of you, proud of us.”
“Yeah, me too,” I said.
If the notices had gone out last night, that meant that Tate would be getting his the second he got into work this morning. I couldn’t imagine that was the happiest piece of news to start your day. How had I let this slip my mind? Everything with Tate and me getting together, the pregnancy, him moving in with me, it had all filled my head so much I’d forgotten that one: I had a job to do, and two: it was seriously going to affect the livelihood of the man I love. Shit.
“Chasen?” Preston said tentatively. “You still there, buddy?”
“Yeah, I am, sorry dude,” I said. “You actually just reminded me of something pretty big that I’d forgotten to do, do you mind if I call you back later? We can discuss when to get the builders in and start knocking the place six ways from Sunday.”
“Great,” Preston said. “I’ll make sure the boys are ready for a call, okay? Again, Chasen, really proud of you. This is going to be huge.”
I hung up the phone. The unfortunate thing was, Preston didn’t seem to realize quite how huge this was going to be in my life. So huge it could be about to fuck everything up if I didn’t get down there before Tate could check that notice. I needed the chance to explain, I couldn’t just let him find out like that.
I grabbed my car keys and barreled out of the house, not bothering to get changed. There wasn’t time. I needed to get down there. Why had I let this slip from my head? How could I have been so stupid? I should have said something to Tate already, explained it to him. Now he was going to find out from a fucking notice and it was going to look like I was keeping it from him the whole time. I didn’t want that. I couldn’t let it happen. What with him being so far along in the pregnancy, I didn’t want him getting upset or stressed, this was the exact time I needed him to be relaxing, not worrying about where his profits were going to come from during the construction.
I pulled up outside Frostbites and walked straight inside. Tate stood behind the counter, a piece of paper in his hands, his face thunderous. He looked up to catch my eye.
“Chasen, tell me this is some kind of sick joke.”
12
Tate
How could he do this to me? How could he keep something so huge from me? My store was going to be almost totally inaccessible over the two months of construction. The roads would be closed, the access would be severely restricted, no one would come to a bakery looking for somewhere to work or a calming atmosphere when there are people digging up the fucking street outside. This was insane. What the fuck was he doing to me?
“Chasen, say something,” I barked. My blood boiled, my face going hot. I was about to start crying, I could feel it, and I didn’t want to cry out here, not in front of Jonica, not in front of the customers.
“Tate, I-“
“Upstairs,” I interrupted. “We’re not doing this here.”
I stomped upstairs, aware of his presence behind me, of him following me up. I threw the door open and flew inside, the notice now a crumpled piece of paper in my hand, my nails digging into it. I heard Chasen close the door and I rounded on him.
“So, when were you going to tell me about this?”
“Tate-“
“Were you going to bring it up over dinner one night, or after we’d had sex, or maybe you’d just wait until the builders started knocking the street apart and you’d surprise me with the fact that I can’t open my fucking bakery.”
“Tate, it’s not like that I swear it just…”
“It just what?”
He sighed. “It slipped my mind.”
I thought my head was going to explode. The wolf inside me raged, prowling my veins wishing it could be unleashed, wishing it could tear him limb from limb. How could he do this to me?
“It slipped your mind?!” I growled. “Are you actually fucking kidding me with that, Chasen? It slipped your fucking mind?”
“This all started before we got together-“
“So you were going to betray me whether I was carrying your baby or not?” I interrupted. I knew it wasn’t fair, but I was absolutely raging.
“It started before we got together, and then we started happening and there was all this excitement and drama, you know I’ve hardly been working because of all this.”
“Oh, so this is my fault?”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“Then what are you saying?” I screamed. “What the hell are you saying, Chasen?” He didn’t answer. He stared at me, dumbstruck. We’d never fought before. We’d never so much as exchanged strong words, it had always been flirting or words of love. This was completely different. I didn’t like this color on me and I didn’t like how I felt about Chasen right now. I wanted to throttle him. “I can’t open my business in these conditions, Chasen,” I said quietly, trying to regain my composure. “That’s at least two whole months without me getting an income, without me being able to support myself, without my regular customers who might end up going somewhere else for their daily caffeine fix by the time I reopen.”
“You could still open-“
“Chasen, don’t do this,” I pleaded. “With the amount of work this notice said is being done, the advice is that business close for a little while. What the hell am I going to do about money? What the hell is Jonica going to do?” I can’t believe I hadn’t even thought about Jonica. I could hardly afford to pay her as it was and here she was going to be out of a job.
“Brent is looking for a
nanny,” Chasen said softly. “She knows the kids really well and they like her. It could be a way for her to get by while the bakery is closed.”
“I don’t want suggestions, I don’t want options, Chasen, I want to know why you kept this from me,” I groaned. “Is that why you asked me to move in with you? You couldn’t think of a way to tell me, so you just thought we could play happy families so I’d be less freaked out.”
“No, no, no, Tate-“
“Don’t come any closer, I don’t want you near me right now, Chasen.”
He sighed, all the fight seeming to fall from his body. “I wanted to live with you because I love you. I promise that I didn’t keep this from you on purpose, Tate. I swear it. I wouldn’t. Let me help you.”
“I think you’ve done enough,” I snapped. I shook my head. “I can’t believe you would do this. You could have told me. There were so many opportunities to tell me. You could have done it any time and you didn’t. How is that supposed to make me feel? Because it makes me feel like shit, Chasen.”
Chasen sighed. “I never wanted to hurt you, Tate, I promise. I swear to you it just slipped my mind. Maybe try and keep it open, see how it works out. I’ll call Brent and make sure he knows that Jonica will be free to nanny for him for the next couple of months. And I can support you, if it isn’t working out.” He walked towards me again, putting his hands on my shoulders, trying to convince me to look him in the eyes. But I can’t bring myself to do it. I want him to go away. I want him to leave me alone.
But he’s my fated mate. We’re supposed to be together forever, and how is forever meant to even start if we don’t at least try and be together when times get hard. He can’t have meant to do this. Chasen wasn’t like that. He wasn’t cruel or malicious and why the hell would he want to hurt me?
He wrapped his arms around my shoulders, pulling me in for a hug. I was sobbing now. I hadn’t even noticed that I was crying. I must have been doing it the whole time we were arguing, which made me feel suddenly weak and feeble.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll stay open. Let’s see what happens.”
“Am I forgiven?” he mumbled into my hair, planting a kiss on the top of my head..
I didn’t know what to say. Forgiving him seemed like the easiest thing to do but I wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do right now. I felt petulant and hard-done by. The customers I had fought so hard to get, the patrons who came by every day to support me and what I made, and the help I had hired who had become a dear friend. All of it was about to fade away. And it was Chasen’s fault.
“I need to go and speak to Jonica,” I said. “Do you want to call Brent so I can at least give her some good news amidst all this?”
Chasen let go of me. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll just be outside, okay?”
Talking to Jonica had been the easy part, it turned out. She totally understood what was happening and where I was coming from, even though I was crying like a baby pretty much the whole way through. I wasn’t sure how Jonica would take it, but she seemed more worried for me than anything else.
She took the temporary job with Brent, something that I thanked him for over and over via text, and the following Monday she didn’t show up to Frostbites as she normally would have, bright and early, that sunny smile on her face ready to brighten the days of anyone who walked through the door. I was alone. Chasen was busy making sure everything was ready for the construction and I had butterflies dive bombing my stomach.
I walked down the street to Frostbites. Overnight, the roads had been closed off, warnings of ongoing works until further notice, how shops were still open as usual, a crowd of trucks and metal equipment waiting to be put to use, waiting to fill Main Street with all the noise pollution needed to kill some industry.
I stepped into Frostbites and I’d never seen it so empty and quite. I mean, I’d had it quiet when I’d closed it before but Jonica was often there or a customer who was hanging on right until I kicked them out for the night. The quiet was a creeping sort of dread, the kind of quiet that I imagined I would be feeling for the rest of the turned over the sign in the window and got myself behind the counter, ready for the day to start.
Seven o’clock hit and I waited for those first customers to trickle through the doors. I know that Mr. Jordan was almost always the first through the door ordering a cappuccino and a fresh Danish. But he didn’t come.
At nine o’clock, I expected the usual moms coming back from the school run to come in and clog up three or so of my tables until the middle of the day. But they never arrived either.
Outside I could hear the construction starting up, the sound of metal drills hitting the roads, of people shouting to one another over the sound of the machinery. I didn’t see a single soul walk by that wasn’t in a high visibility jacket. I stayed behind that counter all day, waiting for someone to come in, even Chasen or his partner Preston, but nobody came inside.
It looked like I was right. I was going to have to close the bakery. I was in trouble.
13
Chasen
I saw Tate leaving Frostbites at around two o’clock, putting a paper sign up in the window and locking the doors. He looked so upset, so unbelievably hurt. I knew why, of course. This was all my fault. I’d forgotten that this was even happening and it was ruining his dream.
I hurried over to him, heading him off on the pavement. He couldn’t even bring himself to look up at me. His cheeks were red, there were tears running down his face. I hated that I had done this to him.
“Tate,” I started, stepping a little closer to him, putting my hands on his shoulders. “Tate, I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t want you to be sorry,” he sniffed. “I want you to fix this.”
“Are you closing up?”
“I haven’t had a single person come through those doors today, Chasen,” he sighed. “I thought maybe they wouldn’t come in the morning, maybe they’d come at lunch time, but not a single soul.” He sighed. “I mean, you didn’t even walk through those doors, so how would you know?”
“Tate, that’s not fair,” I said. “I’ve been working.”
“Working so hard you don’t get to stop for coffee,” Tate said. “I get it, I totally get it.” He didn’t get it, he didn’t get it at all. He hated me for this. Every word was venomous. “I’m heading back to the house. I’ll see you later.”
He started away from me. I didn’t know whether I was supposed to stop him or just let him keep going. I’d never done this before.
“Chasen,” he said. He’d stopped a little way away. “There’s nothing you can do to help me out, to try and save Frostbites from this?” It was a last ditch effort from him, but my hands were tied. This was always the way things were going to go.
“I’m sorry, Tate,” I said. “The deal has been signed, this is what’s happening.”
Tate shook his head. “It was worth a try, I guess.”
He carried on down the street and back towards my house.
I struggled to focus for the day after that. Preston pretty much took charge because I couldn’t keep my mind on the job at hand. He was a great help actually, checking in with me, making sure that I was okay because I wasn’t acting like myself.
When I got home, I made Tate and I dinner and we watched some TV on the sofa, but it wasn’t the same. Tate was cold and distant, not really wanting anything to do with me at all.
When we slept, I found myself staring at the ceiling, because Tate faced away from me, trying to figure out what I was going to do next. There had to be something that I hadn’t thought of, some way to make him happy, some way to save Frostbites and save my relationship. But I drew a blank.
At some point around three a.m. I’d managed to drift off to sleep, but it was fitful, and I found myself looking over to the other side of the bed to make sure Tate was still there. I didn’t want to lose him but with every passing second I could feel him slipping away and I didn’t know what to do.
“This is a v
ery extensive proposal, Mr. Ewen,” Mayor Suchy flicked through the pages I had printed out this morning, including fiscal projections and a schematic for a new special building permit I was asking for. She took her glasses off and fixed me with a cold dark stare. “Is there any particular reason it was not presented to me before now? You could have presented this with the rest of the presentation, why wait until now?”
“We didn’t quite have it perfect yet,” I lied. The fact was I had been working on it early this morning and just managed to squeeze in a meeting with her.
“These fiscal projections are…” She trailed off, looking them over again. There was the ghost of a smile on her face. “Quite conservative given the nature of the proposal.”
I had to stop myself from looking too surprised. I thought I had overdone the numbers and she was going to tear me to shreds for trying to play her. Conservative. That was a good thing to hear. That meant she would approve it. That meant this could work and maybe it would be okay.
“It could just be the tip of the iceberg,” I said, leaning forward in my chair. “I didn’t think it wise to put huge numbers against it in case it didn’t quite come off that way.”
“Always better to be cautious,” she said with a smile, taking off her glasses and pointing them at me. “I knew you were the right man for the job.” She handed the proposal back to me. “Consider the permit granted so you can get started, all the paperwork should be with you in the next few days for your own personal files.”
“Thank you Mayor Suchy,” I said, trying not to be to effusive, doing my best not to bow to her like she was some fearless overlord. This was perfect. “We’ll get started right away.”
“Don’t let me down, Ewen,” she grinned. “I’ll be catching up with you soon I imagine.”
Furbitten Falls Alpha's: A Wolf Shifter Mpreg Romance Bundle Page 21