But the hurt behind her eyes, the embarrassment, the confusion—he couldn’t stop seeing it. The scene kept unfolding in front of him again and again: her trembling chin, her tear stained face, the hope in her expression, the words that elated him and tore his heart out at the same time.
I said no, Chase.
He closed his eyes and shook his head, taking the cigarette between his lips to free his hands as he walked briskly toward the kitchen and reached above his refrigerator. He grabbed the first bottle his hand landed on and glanced down as he unscrewed the cap.
Johnnie Walker Black, although it hardly mattered.
He pulled the cigarette from his lips with one hand as he brought the bottle to his mouth with the other, taking a swallow as he walked back to the living room.
Chase fell back onto his couch, his head resting against it as he switched the bottle for his cigarette.
He wanted to tear himself open, to reach inside his chest until he could get his fist around the feeling that was aching there and yank it out of his body.
He had felt guilty enough when he thought he was intruding on their relationship, but he had no idea things were that serious. Shit, they had only just started dating when he met her, which meant they couldn’t have been together for more than a year and a half. He didn’t expect that either one of them would already be thinking about marriage.
It was shitty enough to want Colin’s girlfriend, but to want his wife? To take that away from him?
He exhaled a puff of smoke as he brought the bottle to his lips again. Chase had no idea their relationship was there. If he did, he would have tried harder to rein himself in. How could he have been so selfish? How could he have done this to his friend?
How could he have done this to Andie?
He swallowed, feeling the heat glide down his throat, and he leaned forward, putting the bottle on the coffee table before he ran his free hand roughly down his face.
He shouldn’t have gone to her apartment the night she left Ripley’s. Up until that point, everything was manageable. Everything was under control. He should have just left well enough alone. But no, he had to follow her. He had to invite himself in under the bullshit pretense of giving her a piano lesson. And with one selfish move, he had managed to ruin her entire future.
He stared down at his hand as he rolled the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, and with a dexterous flick of his wrist, he watched the ember disintegrate, raining down on his carpet and speckling it with little dots of gray. Chase brought the cigarette to his lips once more, jumping slightly as a loud, frantic knocking sounded at his door.
He stilled for a moment before he closed his eyes. Only one person would be coming to his apartment at this time of night, knocking with that sort of frenzied determination.
Colin.
Mother fucker. He did not want to do this now.
With his eyes still closed, he fell back against the couch, exhaling the smoke slowly through his nose. The banging on his door sounded again, a little louder this time, and the muscles in Chase’s jaw flexed.
He had never been the type to run from consequences. In fact, few things turned him off more than a person who couldn’t own his mistakes. And as questionable as Chase’s integrity had been over the past couple of months, he would not show weakness of character now. He ran his tongue over his teeth, laughing humorlessly to himself at the pathetic irony of it all, as if he’d be showing some type of moral fiber by facing his friend after he had furtively lured his girlfriend away from him.
Despite the fact that he could not even wrap his mind around having this conversation right now, he knew he would open the door out of principle. Colin deserved an explanation just as much as Chase deserved some type of repercussion.
The thumping on his door sounded again with such ferocity that Chase was sure the person on the other side had kicked it, and he sat up slowly, reaching lethargically for the bottle on the table and taking one last swallow.
Chase knew, on some level, that this was coming. He knew it the second the words left Andie’s mouth earlier that night. He just didn’t expect that it would be this soon. But maybe it would be better to get this over with. Maybe it was early enough that something could still be salvaged.
He stood from the couch, bending to duck out his cigarette as he placed the bottle back on the table, and he finally straightened, rubbing his eyes roughly with the heels of his hands before running them up through his hair.
Chase approached his door, feeling the instinctive set of his jaw as he steeled himself for whatever was coming now.
But as he pulled the door open, his mind went completely blank.
There was nothing that could have prepared him for this.
She stood at his threshold, her eyes red and swollen, and although her face was still streaked with tears, it was expressionless; her eyes were impassive, her posture perfectly still.
Chase stood frozen, staring at her. It seemed like an hour had passed before any coherent thought returned to him, and at that moment, he realized he should probably say something. But as she met his gaze from behind that blank expression, Chase found himself struggling to find words. A simple apology would never be good enough for what he had done, but it was the only thing he could think of in that moment that made any type of sense.
Before he could even attempt the words, Andie lunged forward, shoving him with such force that he went stumbling back into his living room. Chase struggled to steady himself, and as soon as he regained his balance, she drove forward again, her palms making contact with his chest hard enough to send him reeling back into the wall.
“You don’t just do that!” she yelled, her voice hoarse with emotion. “You don’t just show up in someone’s life and screw it up like that! I was fine before you!”
Chase pushed himself off the wall, completely stunned, and she took a step back, shaking with rage.
“You think you can do whatever you want at the expense of other people? That you don’t have to care about anyone but yourself? Chase only lives for Chase, right?” she shouted, gesturing at him angrily. “You think that just because you’ve been hurt, you don’t have to consider other people’s feelings anymore? That you get to flip me upside down on a whim and then just walk away?”
He stood immobilized beneath her glare, his heart pounding in his chest. He deserved this. He deserved every second of this and more. He would stand there and take whatever she needed to dish out, giving her the only kind of reparation he could.
She roughly swiped the hair out of her eyes, her chest heaving.
“I didn’t imagine it, Chase,” she said, her voice softening and trembling in a way that caused a sharp pain in his chest. “So what was it? Did you just want to fuck me?”
Except that.
He would take anything she had to give, except that.
He could stand there and let her tear him down, let her call him out for everything he was and wasn’t, but he would not tolerate her demeaning herself. He would not stand by and let her diminish what he felt for her, or let her believe, even for a second, that this was just about sex.
That he would think so little of her.
“Andie, don’t.”
“No, tell me,” she said, shifting her weight as she folded her arms, putting on an air of mock intrigue. “I know I didn’t imagine it. Whatever this was between us. So what was it? Did you just want to screw me and send me back to him? Let him handle the actual relationship while you had your fun? Did it suddenly get too serious for you?”
He swallowed, his chest stinging with a familiar pain, and he realized the last time words had cut him this way, they had come from his father’s mouth.