The question hit me like a wave.
I could not look at him anymore.
Did I feel something?What did I think of Cole?We had been such good friends for so long. There had been moments between us before, moments filled with tension that neither of us had ever addressed. Those moments had always passed quietly, unspoken.
Was that my fault?Was it his?And was that enough to build something real between us?I had promised myself that I would not get into another relationship.Yet somewhere deep inside me, feelings for him had been quietly growing for a long time.
I tried to reason with myself.Did I really want to jeopardize our friendship?What if we didn’t work out?
Lucas finally had a stable male figure in his life.Did I want to risk taking that away from him… again?Cole had been in my life longer than Harper.Longer than Caleb.Why was it so hard for me to accept that maybe it was okay to feel something for him too?
I stood there silently, trapped inside my own thoughts, like a prisoner behind my own walls.
“I guess I got my answer,” Cole said in a hollow voice.
He shook his head once, disappointment written clearly across his face.
Then he turned and walked out of my house.
The sound of the door closing echoed through the hallway.
I remained standing in the kitchen, staring at the empty doorway where he had just been.
My hand moved instinctively to my stomach as the knot of regret twisted inside me.
I had screwed things up…again.
I might not have only lost my business partner… I might have just lost one of the best friends I had ever had.
34
COLE
Apainful tightness formed in my throat the moment I stepped out of Jiya’s house.
I barely remembered walking to my car. My hands trembled slightly as I opened the door, and when I dropped into the driver’s seat, the frustration and hurt inside me exploded. I slammed the car door shut harder than necessary.
The silence inside the car felt suffocating.
I gripped the steering wheel and stared straight ahead for a few seconds, trying to regulate my breathing, but the image of Jiya standing in her kitchen replayed relentlessly in my mind.
That shouldn’t have happened.
The words stabbed at me all over again.
I started the engine and drove back to my apartment, my jaw clenched so tightly it ached. The streets blurred past me as anger slowly replaced the initial shock and pain.
How could she say that to me? How could she look at me after everything that had happened between us and say that it should not have happened? How could she say she felt nothing?The thought made my stomach twist.
By the time I reached my apartment building, my emotions had hardened into something darker, like steel cooling after fire.
I parked, got out of the car, and stormed toward my apartment, slamming the door behind me as soon as I entered.
The sound echoed through the apartment.
The place felt colder than it had the night before; the warmth had drained out of it.
Just hours earlier, Jiya had been here. She had been laughing softly in my living room, her hand in mine as we danced slowly to the music.
