All Chapters of Too Late To Love Me : Chapter 91 - Chapter 100

"You don't have to stay all night. The lock's new. There's a camera now."Mira said it at midnight in the school basement, sitting on an upturned crate outside the storage room door. Dante sat on the cold floor across from her with his back against the wall and his legs stretched out."I know," he said."Julien put the camera in himself.""I know. I helped him carry the ladder."She looked at him. "You helped Julien?""He asked." Dante shrugged. "He said, if you're going to sit in my basement all night, Russo, you might as well be useful." A small smile. "I think he likes me a little.""He doesn't like anyone.""Then I think he hates me a little less.""He gave you the ladder.""He handed it to me upside down." Dante's mouth twitched. "I'm choosing to believe it was an accident."It was the third night. New lock. New camera. The man in the gray coat had vanished again. Every night since Lyon, Dante had come down at eleven and sat on this floor until six.He had asked permission every

"Don't move."Mira said it on the dark stage, one step from him, so close she could see gray at his temples she hadn't noticed before.Dante didn't move. He stood with his hands still in his coat pockets and his eyes on her face."I'm not going to say anything," he said. "I promise.""Good.""You were amazing today," he said anyway. "I'm sorry. That one slipped out."She almost laughed.She looked up at him.She had never reached for him first and been met. Every time, he'd stepped back, or turned away, or looked at his phone. On the dining room floor, she had reached with her whole body, and he had pulled free.She had promised herself she would never reach first again.She reached anyway.She put her hand flat on his chest, over his coat. Over the inside pocket where the wallet was. She could feel his heart under it, hammering."You're shaking," she said."So are you."She was.She rose up on her toes. The way she had in the snow on Harbor Street, before the camera flash.There was

"Two hours fifty. Two hours fifty left, chefs."The timekeeper's voice boomed over the speakers. Mira didn't look up. Her hands were full of gold.Three hours in, and it was going right. She didn't trust it.Her plated dessert was finished and resting in the chiller. A small tart. Bitter caramel, salted butter crust, the dark edge right at the line.Now the showpiece.She had drawn it a hundred times in the last month. Thrown away ninety-nine. The last drawing was pinned to the inside of her knife roll.A house of spun sugar. Small. Her grandmother's kitchen, the way she remembered it at five: the window, the copper pots, the little chair by the stove. And over the chair, no bigger than her thumb, a white sugar apron, too big for the chair, its hem pooled on the floor, five tiny red letters on the pocket.She was building the walls now. Thread by thread. Fabre's sugar pulled like silk in her fingers, warm and pliable, smelling of butter and smoke.At station one, Julien was building a

"Mira Beaumont."For one breath, the hall made no sound. Then Adèle's voice tore through it. "THAT'S MY FRIEND! THAT'S MINE!" A guard reached for her. Theo said something low, and the guard stepped back with his hands up.Mira didn't move. Her thumb throbbed in time with her pulse."By one point," Arnaud said into the microphone. "The judges' note reads: a showpiece that broke at hour three and was finished better than it began." She turned. "Chef Beaumont. Please step forward."Mira's legs would not go.A single clap broke the quiet.Then another. Slow. From station one.Julien stood with flour on his apron and his arms at his sides. He brought his hands together once more. His eyes were red. His mouth was almost a smile. He nodded at her the way he nodded at a cage that stood.The hall caught it. Applause rolled in from every side. The floor shook with feet.Julien mouthed one word. Go.She went.Arnaud lowered the gold medal over her head. It was heavy. It was the same gold as the

"Do you think he did it?"Dante asked it at eleven at night on a wooden bench in the corridor of the police station, low enough that the desk sergeant wouldn't hear. Theo sat on Mira's other side with his elbows on his knees. Three doors down, Julien was inside an interview room.Mira studied the green linoleum."I don't know."She heard herself say it. The words sat in the air like something she had spilled."I don't know," she said again, and was sick at the sound.Dante didn't flinch. "I do," he said. "I know.""How?""I watched him stop his own soup and shout across that stage to save your tart. A man who cut the cable doesn't coach you through the fire." He kept his voice even. "Mira, you asked me not to manage you. So I'm not. I'm asking you to think. Who gains if you stop trusting him?"She thought of Julien in the basement door at six in the morning with his keys in his hand, looking at her and Dante asleep on the floor, and saying nothing. She thought of his coat over her sho