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“Why?” she asks, her voice still edged with disappointment. “Why are you stopping yourself? Did I do something wrong?”
My mouth drops open. How the fuck could she ever think this is because of her? Something she did? What the hell?
“Are you joking right now? This has nothing to do with you.”
And now she looks offended. Fuck
“Okay, I guess…” Her eyes drop to the ground, and now I’ve embarrassed her.
“I’m trying not to fuck anything up, and here I am fucking everything up. I’m sorry.” I grab her hands again and take a small step closer, careful not to get too close. Remember dickhead, you’re trying not to fuck this up. “Listen, Sloane. I would love nothing more than to kiss you thoroughly right here and right now in front of everyone, including the press outside. But that would be disastrous. For you. For Rhapsody. For the kids.”
“What are you talking about?” She steps closer, but I mirror her and add that space between us. The confusion now clouding her face is devastating. “Why?”
I fucking hate this.
I fucking hate everything about this.
But this is the reality I know.
“Well, you may or may not have seen the stories about me in the press recently. I’m not exactly known as a good guy. And I’m definitely not the person someone like you should get involved with. Even though it kills me to say that. For once in my life, I’m not being selfish.”
And I don’t know why, either. If it were anybody else, I’d have zero second thoughts about getting what I wanted from them. But with Sloane, I don’t want to get anything. I want to give. And the best thing I can give her right now is freedom from any sort of relationship with me. All it would do is harm her and the Foundation. And that’s the last thing I’d ever want.
“So, now you want to be a stand-up guy?” she scoffs as if not believing it. “Every other day on the calendar sauntered on by, and you decided to pick today, to pick me as your relationship line in the sand.”
“Sloane, you’re twisting my words…”
“No. I get it, Cooper,” she says, stepping away from me. The hurt on her face is splintering something inside me I didn’t realize was there. My heart. “Just forget all of this, okay? Tomorrow, we’ll go back to butting heads and clashing tempers. There’s no reason to ever imagine we could be more than that, right? My bad for even considering it. Go on, and feel free to keep doing your bad boy ‘rockstar’ thing. I will certainly not get in your way.”
She turns to head into her office.
“Sloane, wait. Please,” I start to follow her but stop when she doesn’t react at all to my plea. She is as hard-headed as they come, and there’s no way to convince her of anything she doesn’t want to be convinced about.
Great. In my attempt to do the right thing and not fuck things up, I’ve gone ahead and fucked everything up anyway.
Way to go ‘rockstar.’
Dickhead.
* * *
The following day, I find Ethan in the classroom early as usual, but he doesn’t glance up at me or acknowledge my presence. He keeps playing as if I’m not in the room.
“Hey Ethan, how’s it going? The song is sounding good.” I pull out my case from behind the table and grab my guitar, taking my usual position in a chair across from him.
He still doesn’t respond.
“Yo, Ethan. What’s up, man? Why are you ignoring me all of a sudden?” Worry that something is terribly wrong with him starts snaking along my nerves. Did something happen at home? He hasn’t mentioned his home life too much, but I’ve not asked either. This is supposed to be an escape from all that.
He finally stops playing and glares up at me. “What’s up?”
“What’s up? I’ve been trying to get your attention for the last five minutes. That sounded great.”
Something shifts behind his eyes, but I can’t figure out what it is because his demeanor hasn’t changed. I think it was a little bit of pride peeking through from the compliment, but he’s still defensive and angry, though, for the life of me, I have no idea why.
Instead of responding, he jumps in and starts playing the song again from the beginning. I join and play Remy’s rhythm guitar parts with him this time. Unfortunately, it throws Ethan off.
Frustrated, he sets his guitar aside roughly and heads out of the room.
