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2
MACK
My attention was torn.
On the one hand there was Nash, finally asleep on my couch after hours of staring at nothing. Distraught didn’t even begin to cover it. I’d figured something was going on between him and Jemma, but this implosion meant it was a lot more serious than I’d thought. He’d barely spoken a word since we’d got him back to my place, after he refused to go to his own. “She’s everywhere,” he’d muttered, “she’s everywhere I look.” My heart was fucking shredded for him.
Then there was Chase, standing beside me at the kitchen island, her eyes glued to Nash’s sleeping form. Even now, I could feel the space between us—it was alive, crackling. I still had no real idea what the hell had happened earlier. One second I was trying to give her a pep-talk, and the next her mouth was on mine. Suddenly I was lost and found and… I didn’t even know. I’d kissed plenty of women, but that kiss—that kiss had been something else entirely. Even calling it a kiss felt woefully inadequate.
She’d barely looked at me since. Yes, she was concerned about Nash, but it was more than that. Her shoulders were stiff, her jaw tense.
“I’m gonna go,” she whispered and darted around the island, walking to the door.
“Don’t go.” I followed but she didn’t pause. “Stay, please.” My voice cracked as I reached for her but she sidestepped, my hand falling useless through the growing space between us. No more crackling tension, it was a yawning cavern, cold and wide.
She shook her head. “I’m wiped out. I need sleep. You look like you could do with some yourself.”
She wasn’t wrong, I’d been exhausted before, right until the moment she’d kissed me and I felt more awake than I ever had. “You could sleep here.”
“The couch is already taken.” She lifted her chin in Nash’s direction.
“Not on the couch...” I barely recognised my own voice, coated with a longing I hadn’t heard before. Her eyes dropped to my mouth but I watched her shoulders straighten a little more, watched the wall come down over her eyes, the gold flecks losing their sparkle.
“Mack…” Her voice was low, but sure, and I could see the wheels turning, see her trying to find the right way to let me down. “That’s not—what happened, before, it was—”
“Please don’t say it was a—”
“Mistake.”
I flinched. Even knowing she was going to say it, the word still landed like a slap. A flicker of regret passed over her face, there and gone so quickly I might have missed it. But we were not doing this again. We were not missing this chance again.
“Let’s just—we’re both tired.” I ran a hand through my hair, squeezed the back of my neck to ease the growing tension. “We can talk about it tomorrow.”
Her eyes flashed. “There’s nothing to talk about, let’s just say it never happened.”
“Just like junior year, huh?” I hadn’t intended to say it but the hard look in her eyes snapped whatever leash I was trying to maintain.
Now it was her turn to flinch. We had never mentioned that night, not once in the last fifteen years. Memories came flooding back, the shock in her wide eyes as our kiss had broken, the way she drowned it—and her shame—out with so many jello shots we’d almost had to take her to the emergency room.
I’d been drunk, sure, but not drunk enough to forget kissing her, not drunk enough to not know what it meant. But she’d never mentioned it. So neither had I. I wasn’t making the same mistake again.
“It was a mistake then and it’s a mistake now,” she said with venom in her tone.
“That’s bullshit,” I growled, anger rising. Why was she trying to push me away again? Why couldn’t she see?
“It’s not. It’s reality. You and I would not work.”
“Why the fuck not?” As far as I could see, we’d be incredible. It would be a challenge, sure—working together, being a couple—but we could do it.
“You mean, aside from the fact that every one of my relationships has ended in a blaze of glory after a couple of months and you’ve got a different woman in your bed every night of the week?” I opened my mouth to argue but she cut me off. “We’d be a fucking disaster, Mack. You’d get bored, like you always do—”
“I don’t—”
“—and I don’t want to be another woman you throw away.” She held up her hand when I tried to cut in again. “I love you, you’re my best friend, my business partner. But I don’t want a relationship with you. I’m sorry for what happened earlier. I was excited and scared about the next steps for our business. I got carried away. But I—”
“Don’t want me.” I didn’t know if she was lying because she was scared or if this was how she really felt. Either way, my chest was caving in.
“Not like that, no. I’m sorry.”
