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“Bullshit,” she spits, shoving back against me. “You saw a challenge and made me your mission. That’s all I was to you. I’m not stupid! I know you must think I am after I let someone cheat on me for so long, but I’m not, and I refuse to let it happen again!” Pain slashes her features, but she shakes her head furiously, trying to clear it before I can see it.
It’s too late; I’ve already seen it.
“Claire,” I plead, trying to control the way my voice shakes and breaks, all of the anger I was feeling a mere moment ago dissipating. I’m desperate, and I hate to see her hurting. “I would never—”
“Save it, Avery.” Her voice is soft now, tiny. She drops her gaze.
I clasp at her hands, bringing them between us, shaking my head. “No. You have to listen to me.”
“I don’t have to do anything!” She wrenches her hands free and pushes away from me. “This—” she circles her hand around the air between us, “—this whole thing is meaningless. You can be with whoever you want. You can have phone sex with whoever you want, screw whoever you want, date whoever the hell you want.”
“I want to date you.”
She barks out a laugh. “No. You don’t. You wanted to fuck me, and you did. It’s over now.”
“It’s not anywhere close to over.” Closing the space between us, I grab her face in my hands. Her eyes flicker, her forehead creasing. “We have something. I don’t want anybody else. I want you. Please, tell me you want that too. Tell me what you want, Claire.”
I search her expression, watching her eyes bounce between both of mine, her bottom lip clamped between her teeth. She’s right there, right on the edge of giving in.
Her hand comes up to rest on mine and I feel the warmth that spreads from her fingertips into my hand, up my arm. She leans her cheek into my touch and for a second, I think I’ve got her.
But then she takes my hand off her face.
“I want you to see other people.”
***
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Claire
I’m not inside my apartment for a minute before I’m stripping off my clothes and running a bath.
Naked, I pull down a bowl from my kitchen cupboard, dump a whole bag of chips in it, top it off with two handfuls of mini rainbow chip cookies, crack open my favorite Strawberry Grove beer, and plant myself in the tub even though there’s only three inches of water in it so far.
“Claire Thompson, pity party for one,” I murmur, tossing a mixed handful of cookies and chips into my mouth. A mini cookie falls into the water. I pluck it out and toss the soggy treat in my mouth. Yep, I fucking do that.
With my toes, I somehow manage to squeeze out a generous helping of bubbles into the running water and sigh as they start to foam up around me.
“Hey Google!” I yell unnecessarily loudly. It’s only on the counter, not five feet away. “Play my walking playlist!”
“Okay, here’s a shuffle of your playlist called walking.”
“Thanks, Googs.” In goes another handful of junk, followed by a long pull on my ice-cold beer as I sink deeper into the too-hot bubbles.
My phone starts vibrating on the toilet lid, rumbling toward the edge. I scramble for it, throwing my bucket of snacks across the floor, not because I don’t want the phone to fall, but because I think/hope it might be Avery. Fucked up, right? Yeah, I’m a hot mess.
But it’s not Avery, of course. It’s Charlee.
“What are you doing?” she asks as soon as the call connects. I hate how uppity she sounds right now, but it beats the harsh tongue-lashing I got when she stumbled back into my office after Avery whipped the door open and stormed out.
“Drowning my sorrows.”
“With?”
“Beer, chips, cookies, and bubbly water up to my belly button because I couldn’t wait for the bath to fill before I got in.”
She chuckles. “Well, get out and dry off, babe. You’re coming over.”
