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“You didn’t break anyone with your vagina,” Piper says. “Stop being so dramatic.”
“She’s right,” Harlow says. “He’s not broken. He’s just pissed off. And he has every right to be.”
My mouth drops open. “What? Why?”
Harlow gives me a knowing look before rolling her eyes. “Do I need to spell it out for you? Fine. You both agreed to be fuck buddies, right?”
I’m not sure I like the crude phrasing, but I nod.
“But then you became friends, right?” Harlow asks.
I nod again. “Right.”
“And then, maybe something more?” Piper asks, her voice gentler than Harlow’s.
I open my mouth to argue, but I can’t find the words. Because I think maybe my sister is right.
“You did everything with that man except date him,” Harlow says. “You hung out. You watched movies. He knows your favorite ice cream flavor, your food allergies and where you keep your EpiPen. If that’s not a man who’s smitten, I don’t know what is.”
Piper’s mouth drops open, and she leans around me to look at Harlow. “Oh, my god! You’re right. It makes so much more sense now. The way he was panicking when he thought she ate the shrimp! He’s totally in love with her.”
“You’re both delusional,” I say, unwilling to consider the validity of their words.
They’re both wrong. Of course, they are. There’s no way Cole is in love with me. I would know. He would have said something. He would have shown me somehow.
“He’s not,” I whisper. “He would have told me. He had every chance to tell me.”
Piper runs a hand over my hair and sighs. “You want to explain it, or should I?”
“I’ll take this one,” Harlow says.
She puts her hands on my shoulders and turns me to face her. “If he does love you, can you think of a reason he might not have told you?”
I shake my head, trying to ignore the way my chest feels tight and achy and wrong.
She sighs. “You two did everything that comes with a relationship except go on dates. For over a year. Put yourself in his position. How would you feel if, after all that time together, he came to you and said he was ready to start dating seriously. And he was doing it with someone else. Without even considering you as an option or asking if you were interested. Do you think you would have told him you had feelings for him?”
“But he always said he didn’t want anything serious!” I shout. “He said it so many times.”
Piper’s voice is gentle. “Sometimes people tell you what they think you want to hear. If he’d told you, and you didn’t feel the same, you would have ended things, right?”
“Probably,” I admit.
I think back to that day in my bedroom and Cole’s face when I’d told him it was the last time. The way he’d joked about being chopped liver. He’d played it off as a joke, but what if he was serious? What if he’d wanted more with me and I’d pushed him away? What if he could have been mine this whole time, but I fucked it all up?
“Oh, shit,” I whisper, my hand coming up to cover my mouth.
Memories of the past year run in a loop through my head. A hundred different things Cole said or did to make me happy. His sexy grin and the way his eyes light up when he laughs. All the ways he went out of his way to be there for me, even as I’d fought him every step of the way. Why had I done that? He was right this morning. I never let anyone help me, even when I so clearly need help. I’m always pushing people away just so I can prove I’m capable of doing it myself. For what? What’s the point?
“What did I do?”
Tears fill my eyes again and I pull in a ragged breath.
“Oh, no,” Harlow says. “Enough of the crying shit. Crying time is over. Now is the time to make a plan to fix this shit show. Preferably before the wedding.”
Chapter 34
Layna
