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“You and I were instant,” I whispered through my embarrassment and watched as his expression shifted with that anger.
“Did I know?” he asked, the question all grated steel.
“Yes. Anna and I—” I shook my head and explained, “She’s one of my best friends. We’d gone to get tattoos. Brian was doing them, but you and I started talking and never stopped, even when you started tattooing someone else.”
A small smile touched the edge of my mouth as I remembered that night and quickly fell when I focused on the coldness of his eyes.
“I told you from the beginning that I had a boyfriend and must’ve repeated it half a dozen times in an attempt to remind myself. But again...instant.”
“What happened?” he demanded when I didn’t go on.
“You told me I was with the wrong guy, and I ended up giving you my number,” I said with a roll of my eyes. “When we went to leave that night, you followed us out and grabbed my hand, pulling me close to you. I was so sure you were going to kiss me, but you just held me there and looked at me like you were committing me and that night to memory before you repeated, ‘You’re with the wrong guy.’
“I should’ve broken up with him that night,” I went on, “but I told myself probably a hundred times that I wouldn’t hear from you. And when you called me the next morning, I told myself it was nothing. Thatyouwere nothing, even though I’d known from the first moment I saw you that you were unlike anyone I’d ever met.”
“So, when did you leave him?” Chase asked, already guessing it’d taken me far too long.
“Two months later,” I whispered. “I hurt you so much during those months and made it worse when we gave in because we couldn’t stay away from each other anymore.”
He rubbed at his jaw, head bobbing as that frustration poured from him. “How long into everything was that?”
“A little over a month.”
“So, it took you another month to break up with him?” he asked with a sneering laugh.
I tried to keep my spine straight and shoulders back. Tried not to let his words affect me.
After all, this wasourstory.Ourlife.
But it was difficult when it felt like I was laying my sins bare to him and receiving his disappointed judgment for the first time.
“A few weeks,” I corrected, then added, “Chase, you were right there with me.”
“You should’ve left him.”
“Stop judging me for something I did years ago,” I snapped shakily.
“It’s happening right now for me,” he reminded me.
“It doesn’t change the fact that you already knew. That you wereright there with me,” I repeated through clenched teeth. “Giving in to something so powerful and unstoppable.”
“If that’s how it was, why didn’t you leave him?” he asked, head shaking. “That first night. When we hooked up. Any time in those weeks after.”
“Because I felt trapped—”
“No.” The word was soft but held a depth that had the rest of my explanation dying on my tongue. “No, I want to knowwhy.Whydid you stay with him?Why, if we couldn’t stay away from each other, was I not worth it to you?”
“That wasn’t it,” I choked out, but he continued.
“Whydid you continue choosing him over me if we were supposedlyinstant, Scarlet?”
“You were worth everything,” I cried out, repeating a version of the same words I’d told him years before. “I know what I did, and I know the mistake I made in taking so long to choose you when we both already knew Iwould. But it isn’t fair to make me defend myself over something you already know and were a part of years ago.”
“I don’t know any of this.”
“But youdid,” I shot back, then quickly wiped at my wet cheeks. “You knew how I felt for you. You knew I fell in love with you faster than should’ve been possible. You knew he wasn’t just someone I’d been with for years; he was my best friend, and our parents had been best friends since high school. Not only that, less than a month before I met you, his parents had bought us a place, and his uncle had given me a job at his prestigious physical therapy clinic. And even though I worked my ass off for that degree, I knew it was only because of who I was to their family.
“So, it had nothing to do with you not being worth it,” I said as my chest shook with trembling breaths. “It had everything to do with beingtrapped. It had everything to do with being terrified of hurting people who had always been family to me. Being terrified of imploding my life, my family, and my career, and then deciding none of it compared to the pain of not being with you fully.”
