His Private Chef (by Amycee) novel Chapter 89

Chapter 89

I drew in a shaky breath, the ache rising in my throat. “It doesn’t really matter anymore.”

His expression didn’t change. He just nodded like he’d already prepared himself for every version of me.

I squared my shoulders. “Why did you come here really?”

His jaw flexed. “To fix things. If Wells has a problem with me, he should come at me. Not take it out on you.”

I glanced at the door, half–expecting to hear yelling still echoing from inside. Whatever Liam had said to him, it left a dent.

I shook my head. “You didn’t have to do that. I can handle this. I’m not your girlfriend anymore. You don’t owe me anything.”

His voice dropped to a whisper. “Maybe not. But I still care.”

He stepped closer, and his scent wrapped around me, sandalwood, crisp linen, and that faint trace of expensive cologne I used to breathe in off his skin.

“I’m sorry for what happened,” he said. “But I’m not sorry for coming here. And if anyone tries to hurt you because of me again, I’ll burn this place to the ground.”

The words were a promise. Not a threat.

I didn’t speak.

Because the walls I’d built were unraveling, and if I opened my mouth, every buried ache might spill out.

He stepped past me, and every part of me went still.

I turned just in time to see him pause, back still to me.

“Emily,” he said.

I held my breath.

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Chapter 89

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“You’re not mine anymore, but I’ll still protect you like you are.”

Then he walked away.

I stood there, stunned, as his footsteps echoed down the corridor.

Damn him.

For still knowing exactly where to press even after everything.

It didn’t happen overnight. The shift was small at first. Subtle. Like someone had peeled away a layer of fog I didn’t even know I’d been walking through.

Chef Conrad didn’t yell the next morning. He didn’t sneer when I accidentally sliced my truffles too thin. He didn’t call my name like it was a slur on his tongue.

Instead, he nodded. Once.

Not a compliment. Not forgiveness. But acknowledgement.

And it was enough.

For weeks, I’d braced myself for the next blow, the next humiliation. But after Liam’s visit, after that moment outside the office when everything in me cracked open and I let it, something changed.

In Conrad. In me.

He didn’t become soft. That man didn’t have a soft setting. But the personal edge disappeared. The storm in his eyes when he looked at me dulled to gray.

And for the first time, I could breathe in his kitchen.

School moved fast.

Too fast.

One day I was practicing soufflés until my arms ached, the next I was submitting mock business proposals for my final portfolio. Between prep labs and culinary theory, there was barely time to eat, let alone think.

But I found rhythm again. It was slow. Uneven. But it came.

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Chapter 89

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And in that rhythm, I healed, quietly.

I started waking up before my alarm, not because of anxiety, but because I was finally sleeping.

I stayed after class to practice, not to prove anything, but because I wanted to.

I laughed with my lab partner. Took walks by the Hudson. Wrote in my journal without sobbing halfway through.

Liam didn’t call.

He didn’t text.

But he didn’t disappear either.

Every few days, a bouquet of white peonies showed up at my dorm front desk, no card, no note. Just the same kind of flowers I’d once mentioned were my favorite.

Once, a signed cookbook from my favorite pastry chef appeared in my locker. Another time, it was a bottle of that ridiculous wine we once finished in his house. The memory made me smile.

He was absent. But present.

And somehow, I needed that.

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