Mixed Signals (Lovelight, #3)

by B.K. Borison

For everyone who has settled for crumbs, you deserve the whole damn cake.

“You deserve good things, sweetheart.” He swallows hard, eyes searching mine. “Why can’t you see yourself? Why can’t you see how incredible you are?” “Because,” I say, my voice cracking at the edges. “Because no one else has bothered to.”

I only get hard twice when she uses fancy baking terms. I consider that a small miracle.

LOL WHAT

“You’re not supposed to work for it, sweetheart. I am.” And then Caleb goes to work.

“Yeah, maybe that. But there was someone giving you crap about a cake at the counter. They said you got the icing wrong, and they didn’t want it if it was wrong, and you just—you looked so flustered and a little bit sad, and

I wanted to—” I remember the anger burning in my chest, the quick roll of it down my shoulders. A burn in the palms of my hands. “I was still a deputy, and I figured punching the guy in the face wouldn’t be appropriate . . . so I waited. He left, and he left his cake too, and when I asked you what you were going to do with it, you sort of did this little shrug and looked at the pretty flowers on top like they were the worst thing you’d ever seen, and—” And it had broken my heart, a little bit, to watch her stand behind the counter and try not to cry. “So I bought the cake. And, Layla, it was the best cake I’d ever had in my whole life.”