They were going to shoot extra footage before the competition segment. Usually it was DJ asking questions, and that put her at ease. Today it was a crew they hadn’t seen before. Her nervousness was palpable.

“It’s just an interview,” he said, hating how seeing her like this made him feel. “Just pretend you’re at a party and answer as though someone’s chatting with you. It’s not a performance. Just be yourself.”

“Just be myself?” She looked down at her hands. “How is everything so easy for you?” She bit her lip, clearly regretting the words the moment they left her mouth.

Sure, this was easy for him: being in the public eye, knowing how to navigate the spotlight.

“Not everything,” he said quietly. Obviously, some things were easier for her than for him, because twelve years later he was the one back here, still looking for closure, not her. “I could ask you the same question.”

The universe shifted in her eyes. They softened with loss, then hardened with the effort to cover it.

“I thought you wanted to be here. To save your restaurant. You chose this.” Over me. “Then why is it so hard?” It came out harsher than he’d intended, but he couldn’t be stupid enough to give up control again.

Did she regret making that choice?

She regretted something. That was clear.

Is this also something Daddy dearest is demanding? Why is it still so hard for you to stand up to him? The words almost came to his tongue, but her father still made too much rage rise inside him. And letting her see his rage at him had cost him everything once.

You’re a bastard. She’s a princess.

How had an asshole like that made her?

Her hands shook in her lap and she gripped them together. “You would never understand.”

How were they back here, where it mattered if they understood each other or not? But it did and here they were.

“You’re right, I don’t. I couldn’t have imagined it, you following in your father’s footsteps, you taking over the restaurant. You hated it, Ashna.” That day when he’d shown up at Curried Dreams uninvited, he’d seen misery inside her. The kind that had shaken him all the way to his young soul. It struck him that the misery he’d seen that day had congealed inside her now, burrowed so deep he couldn’t separate her from it.

“I don’t hate it. Will you please stop saying that!”

He’d never said it before.

Embarrassment suffused her face.

“Well, you don’t love it, that’s for sure. Then why? Only because it’s what your father wants you to do?”