Sugarcoat

Chapter One

Blossom

Spring

"I'm never getting married."

Blossom winces when her knife slips against the plate, creating the most awful scraping sound.

She's too startled by Henry's words to care.

"What?" she gasps.

He takes his time to finish chewing his steak before he answers. Of course he does, because Henry Hale Harrington is above all—intentional and in control.

At all times.

The only times he ever relinquishes control are to her, and she has always seen and appreciated how much that costs him. He needs control to feel safe.

"I said I'm never getting married."

Blossom gapes at him, her entire body going cold and numb.

"B-But... we've been talking about getting married, and you said—"

"And that's exactly how I figured it out," Henry says, cutting into his steak. Blossom watches the action, watches the sharp glide of the knife through the meat, and it feels like he's doing the same thing to her heart. "Can't do it. Won't do it."

"But—"

"I mean, look at my parents," he snorts, lifting his drink to his lips. "Twenty years divorced, still as bitter as the day they signed the papers. You want that to be us in twenty years?"

"No..."

"You remember Klein? The guy with the bad hair transplant from the Christmas party?"

The conversation is moving too fast for Blossom to keep up. She frowns and tries to picture the coworker he means, but there were so many people at that party that everyone's faces blurred together by the end of the evening.

"I-I guess?" she stutters.

"He and his wife are divorcing, and all I ever hear from him is how much court is sucking the life out of him. He said if he could go back in time and not get married, he would," Henry says. "He and his wife were high school sweethearts and now hate each other's guts."

Then he does a very cruel thing to Blossom's heart.

He raises his eyes to meet hers.

The brown of them is so soft and tender. It's the way he always looks at her. Like she is precious and adored. Like she is the only soft thing he has ever allowed himself to hold and care for.

And he does it so well.

For sure, better than any man she has ever dated who looked at her with her blonde hair and pink dresses and thought she was a stupid bimbo.

Or heard her name and thought she was 'just adorable.'

Or found out her job—flavor chemist at Candy's Candy Factory—and thought she was ridiculous.

That last one always burned because, most of the time, she was more intelligent than them, given her PhD.

She met Henry at a small corner store near his work, where he had stopped for an energy drink in between meetings. Immediately, she noticed his restless energy, huffing every time he read something on his phone as she stood behind him in line and watched him grab a candy bar at the register.

The brand he grabbed made her grimace, and she couldn't help but blurt out that the brand he was buying sourced its chocolate unethically and used only about 10% cocoa, while the brand she worked for, right next to the one he grabbed, used 30%.