Andie lifted her eyes to his; there was a hint of anger behind them, warring with the hurt that had been swimming there since she’d realized Colin had done this. She shook her head slightly before she whispered, “What is wrong with you?”
He laughed softly before sighing. Did she really not know the answer to that?
“The same thing that was wrong with me the night I met you in Justin’s wine cellar, and that first morning we drove to Florida, and the night I offered to give you a piano lesson. The same thing that will be wrong with me tomorrow, and next month, and next year.” He took the pizza off his eye and turned toward her, his voice impassive. “I’m an asshole, Andie.”
She stared blankly at him until he turned away from her to look back up at the ceiling again, and Chase felt the couch dip as she stood.
“Yes, you are.”
He closed his eyes and brought the pizza back to the swelling, and he heard a slight rustling sound accompanied by footsteps; his door opened and then slammed shut, and Chase listened as the clicking of her heels in the hallway faded away until there was nothing.
This time, Chase didn’t have the luxury of being oblivious to time; he felt every second, every minute that passed after the door closed behind her.
It was seven minutes of deep breathing before his heart rate slowed and bordered on regular again. It was ten minutes before the pizza had thawed completely and the wrapping started to come apart in his hands, and it was another five minutes before he even gave a shit. After he’d gotten rid of the soggy mess that remained, it was twelve more minutes of cursing the clusterfuck of a self-fulfilling prophecy that had destroyed this entire evening. He had been so bothered by the fact that Colin called him out for being a prick that he turned around and acted like one to the person who deserved it the least.
Chase was sitting up on his couch now; the throb behind his eye had diminished some and his thoughts were much clearer than they had been a half hour ago. He just kept wishing she hadn’t shown up at his place when she did. If she had come now, he wouldn’t have been such a snarky, insensitive jerk. In his current frame of mind, he would have been able to act like a human, to comfort her, to reassure her.
To take care of her, the way he promised her he would.
“Shit,” he mumbled to himself, running his hand down his face before he stood.
He had thought he wanted to be alone tonight, but as he stood in his living room looking over at his kitchen floor, at the grocery bags strewn where she had dropped them in the broken glass, he realized how badly he wanted her there.
With a heavy sigh he walked over to the mess in the kitchen. He was going to clean up, and then he was going to call her and ask her to come back. He’d beg her if he had to. He didn’t even care if they had dinner anymore. He just wanted her lying next to him, with her hand on his stomach and her head on his chest and her leg thrown over his thigh. He loved lying with her that way; she fit so perfectly against him, like the universe was reinforcing the fact that they were exactly where they belonged.
As Chase knelt down and used a piece of cardboard to sweep the shards of glass into a pile, he took slow, deep breaths, exhaling the bitterness and shame that had been consuming him since Colin’s visit. With every inhale, he focused instead on what it would feel like when Andie was with him again.
Because that feeling was what made all the other shit tonight worth it.
After he had swept up all the glass and wiped the floor down, he put Andie’s groceries away and went to the bathroom to check out his eye one last time.
“Shit,” he exhaled, bringing his fingertips to the lump. It had changed from dark pink to a bluish-purple, and he was still unable to open it fully. It was going to look like hell for the next few days.
Chase sighed as he closed the light and walked out of the bathroom. It was going to be extremely difficult to take Andie’s mind off what had happened with a constant reminder literally staring her in the face.
He grabbed his cell phone and hit the button to call her, closing his eyes when it went straight to voicemail.
He should have expected as much. He wouldn’t want to talk to himself either if he were her. Still, he hit the button to try again, already walking toward the closet for his shoes. And when he heard her voice, asking him to leave a message, he hung up and grabbed his keys before heading out the door.
She could ignore his calls all night, but she wouldn’t leave him standing outside her door for very long. He was sure of that.
Chase jogged down the steps and through the lobby, stopping short as soon as his feet hit the pavement outside.
Her car was still parked in front of his building.
He pulled his brow together and turned, looking as far down the block as he could before he turned and looked the other way. There was nowhere for her to go here, no restaurants or stores or anything within reasonable walking distance. Where could she have gone without her car? His neighborhood certainly wasn’t the type of place someone would want to take a walk around to blow off steam.
Chase decided to make a lap around the block anyway, in case she had taken off in her frustration without really thinking about her surroundings.
But after about ten minutes, he was back in front of his apartment building with no sign of her. Andie’s car was still where it had been when he left, and Chase eyed the surrounding area one more time before he turned to walk down the block toward his car.
He had only taken two steps before his foot came down on something that skidded beneath his weight, causing him to stumble forward.
“What the hell?” he mumbled, turning to look behind him.
His eye immediately landed on the small silver ring of keys attached to a purple swirl in the shape of a heart.
He’d recognize those keys anywhere. He’d helped her when she had locked those keys inside her apartment. He’d used those keys when driving her car.
Chase bent down and scooped them up before eyeing the block again, this time with something like panic in his chest. With the keys clutched in his fist, he dug his phone out of his pocket and dialed her number again.
It went straight to voicemail.
“Shit,” he hissed as he walked briskly to his car and jumped inside.
There had to be a reasonable explanation for this. She must have dropped her keys. She must have walked home. She was probably curled up on the couch right now, eating ice cream and lamenting her douchebag of a boyfriend.
Chase held on to those thoughts as he sped to her apartment. He called her number again and again as he drove, keeping one eye on the road and the other scanning the sidewalks and surrounding areas. Every time her voicemail picked up and Andie’s lilting voice asked him to leave a message, his heart beat a bit faster in his chest.
When he pulled into the parking space in front of her building, he already knew she wasn’t home. He could see the window of her bedroom and her living room, both inky black and still, but he ran up the steps to her front door anyway, knocking loudly as he tried to catch his breath.
“Andie?” he called, knocking again. “Andie, I swear, I’ll leave if you want me to, but if you’re in there, just let me know that you’re safe.”
Chase stood there for a minute, listening to the silence before he knocked once more. “Andie? Please just let me know you’re in there. You don’t even have to open the door.”
Again, nothing.
He whirled around, fisting his hand in his hair as he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket.
Where the hell could she possibly be?
“Damn it,” he said before squeezing his eyes shut. He didn’t know any of her friends’ phone numbers. He didn’t even know the number to her restaurant.