Chapter Fifteen – Chloe

What. A. Clusterfuck.

Dom dipped his head, touching his forehead to mine. His hot breath danced across my parted lips, and his thumbs gently swiped away a tear that escaped from the corner of my eyes.

If I had to tally how many times I’d wanted to hear those words from his lips, then I was gonna need more paper.

Now, it’d happened. He’d told me the one thing I’d always wanted to hear, except now I wasn’t sure I did.

Up until a few days ago, I’d made my peace that this was over. I had to move on, and we’d never be together.

Then, I’d gotten drunk.

I’d gotten drunk, and before I’d passed out, I’d texted Warren about a second date. Something I’d forgotten about until I’d woken up forty-five minutes ago and seen his text asking if we were still on for tonight.

I couldn’t think of anything that I wanted to do less, especially after what had happened today. But, I couldn’t cancel. It was too late, and I didn’t really have a viable excuse to cancel.

“I’m seeing Warren tonight,” I whispered.

Dom’s inhale was sharp, as was the way he released me. I swiped at my cheeks, furiously removing the lingering wetness from the few tears that had made it past his thumbs.

I opened my mouth to explain why I was going, how it had happened—but I couldn’t. Even if I did, I knew it’d be a waste of time.

Because he didn’t give me the chance to explain.

By the time I’d formed a sentence in my brain, my front door slammed shut.

I slid over to the chair and crumpled into it. No more tears came out, but I stared through the little view I had to the hall and at the front door. I wanted him to turn around and come back and demand to know why, but I knew he wouldn’t.

That was Dom.

He was like Peyton. He’d fight you until he was blue in the face, but the second you hurt him, he was done talking to you.

And I’d hurt him. I didn’t need to be a genius to figure it out. Fuck, he’d just said everything I’d ever wanted to hear, and my response was to tell him that we’d never work, and I was seeing another guy for dinner tonight.

I buried my face in my hands. What was wrong with me? He was literally everything I’d ever wanted, and I was running away from the situation like he was trying to poison me.

My phone rang from somewhere in the house. I ignored it. I didn’t want to speak to anyone right now. I didn’t care if it was my mom or one of my best friends or even Dom himself.

I just needed to be alone.

I needed to be alone to figure this all out in the hopes I didn’t fuck everything up.

Any more than I already had, that was.

***

I put the phone face down on my bed and stared at it. I had it on silent because I was supposed to meet Warren in an hour, yet I was seriously thinking about canceling. I knew he’d be on his way, and this all made me a terrible, terrible person.

To everyone.

I wasn’t sixteen, so why the hell was I acting like it? I was twenty-seven, for the love of God. I needed to get my shit together. I either wanted Dom, or I wanted to see where it went with Warren.

He was the easy choice, believe it or not. He had everything I wanted in the perfect guy.

But he wasn’t Dom. And being the perfect guy didn’t necessarily equal being the right guy. If Warren was the right guy, I wouldn’t be thinking about canceling the second date.

Would I?

No. I knew the answer.

But did that mean Dom was the right one?

I picked up my phone and opened my group chat with Mellie and Peyton. Apparently, being alone wasn’t cutting it. It’d been three hours, and all I’d achieved was folding my clean towels.

Me: I had sex with Dom.

As expected, the messages came thick and fast.

Peyton: WHAT

Mellie: REAL SEX OR DREAM SEX

Peyton: WHAT

Peyton: WHAT THE

Mellie: Chloe explain

Peyton: WHAT THE FUCK

Peyton: WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN

Peyton: HOW DID THIS HAPPEN

Mellie: I think the how is pretty obvious, Peyt

Me: He slipped on a banana peel, and his penis accidentally ended up inside my vagina.

There. That ought to explain it.

Peyton: Well, shit. Elliott’s been putting it in the wrong hole the entire time.

Mellie: Well, he’ll be disappointed when he moves from your asshole to your vagina.

Peyton: He’s never put it in my ass.

Me: She meant your mouth.

Peyton: Please explain how you ended up having sex with my brother.

Me: Like, from the start? Because I don’t have time for that. I’m in a crisis over here.

Me: We had a fight, then we had sex, then we had another fight, except in that fight he told me he wants me and is crazy about me and all the little things he does that he never told me about.

Mellie: THIS IS GREAT!!! Why are you in crisis?

Me: Remember how your boyfriend got me drunk and I texted Warren?

Mellie: Oh no (Phoebe's voice)

Me: Oh yes. He literally said, “I’m crazy about you,” and idiot over here goes, “I’m seeing Warren tonight.”

Mellie: You’re not still seeing him, are you?????

Me: I don’t know. I’m supposed to meet him in an hour, but I don’t know what to do.

Mellie: You tell him something came up, an emergency, and you order pizza because I’m on my way over.

Me: You don’t need to come over.

Mellie: I’m supposed to meet Jake’s highly-Christian aunt tonight. I need to come over. What a shame. I’ll pick you up on the way, Peyt.

Me: Well, okay, but this is me doing you a favor, you know.

Mellie: I’ll stop for ice-cream, too.

Me: K. We’re even.

***

“Where’s Peyton?”

Mellie put a brown grocery bag on the coffee table and grimaced at me. “I went there, but she said she couldn’t come because Elliott was on his way over.”

I blinked at her. “What? I need her, and what?”

“Oh, he was already there. He laughed and told her she was a shit-ass liar, which she is.” She pulled out two cartons of Ben and Jerry’s ice-cream. “Dom was on his way over there. She didn’t want me to tell you because she didn’t want you to think she was choosing him over you.”

I rolled my eyes. “She’ll be texting you all night finding out what I’m saying.”

“She will.” She grinned, both cartons of ice-cream in her hands. “And I told her to fuck off, she knows where we’ll be.”

A gentle laugh escaped me, and I fluffed my fingers through my hair. I’d taken a shower after texting Warren and canceling due to a family emergency, and my hair had dried in a wavy mess—the kind that looked cute on little kids after they’d had wet, braided hair.

Not so much on me.

“Okay, that’s in the freezer.” She put the bag on the floor and dropped onto the sofa with me. “What happened?”

I told her everything. The words flowed out of me like water from a faucet. From the second he knocked on the door until the moment he slammed it on his way out.

Mellie twisted her lips to the side, looking at me with more than a little sympathy in her eyes. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” she said slowly and softly, “But this is everything you’ve wanted. You’re in love with him. Why do you feel this way?”

“Because I made peace with it.” I pushed my hair from my face and rested my elbow on the back of the sofa to prop up my head. “I put every idea I had of us being together away and, for the first time, I was really serious about moving on. I was totally okay with the idea that I had to get over him, and I think I really could have done it.”

“If he hadn’t kissed you.”

I nodded. “If he hadn’t kissed me.”

“Okay, but you can still do it. Just because you’ve kissed him and had sex with him doesn’t mean you still can’t move on. Or you should get a kitten and fall in love with that instead.”

I paused. That wasn’t really a bad idea. But kittens did need a lot of attention… “I don’t know if I have the patience for a kitten.”

She thought about it for a moment and said, “You’re right. You definitely don’t. But you still have the option to get over him. I think it’s totally okay for you to say, “I don’t want to do this anymore, it’s time to move on.””

I chewed on the corner of my thumbnail. “But are there too many questions with that? I feel like if I do that, then I have to explain why I don’t want to do it anymore. Plus, we work together. We co-own the business. I can’t just turn that off or never see him again.”

“Working together does throw a wrench in the works. Have you considered maybe finding another job?”

“More times than I can count,” I muttered. “I love my job. And I love him. But is it enough to be with each other twenty-four-seven and not want to murder each other? How do you and Jake do it?”

The doorbell went just as Mellie opened her mouth to speak. She held up a finger and jumped up before I could move. Returning seconds later with a grin on her face, she put the pizza box on the cushion between us and got comfortable.

“First,” she said, “I’m going to say that you and Dom want to murder each other anyway, but that’s just how you work. And, honestly? It makes a hell of a lot more sense now that it’s out in the open about how he feels about you. You fought because you cared about each other but had to keep all that emotion inside, almost all the time.”

Damn it. She was onto something.

“Now that you have it all out in the open, you shouldn’t be at each other’s throats nearly half as much.”

“Well, he has it out in the open. I didn’t do much talking,” I admitted. “And I definitely didn’t tell him completely how I feel, but I think he knows I feel something.”

“At least y’all are catching up to what the rest of us have known for a while.” She shrugged and opened the pizza box. “You’re trying to base your decision on what your relationship is like now, but it’d be totally different. And second, me and Jake work because we’re not together all the time. If we work all day together, we’ll eat lunch together, but spend the evenings apart. He’s not there as much as he used to be, but it’s all balance.”

“Like how you’re here tonight when you should be meeting his family.”

“You should be on a date.”

“I’m having a crisis.”

She wiggled her slice of pizza at me. “And I’m helping with the crisis like a good best friend.” A grin stretched across her face before it dropped, and she put her pizza back into the box. “Honestly, Chlo, I think Dom’s right in a way about you not being willing to try. I think you’re willing; I just think you’ve wanted to be with him for so long that you’re too scared to try.”

And, there it was.

She’d nailed it. She may as well have whacked me on the head with a hammer because that was the goddamn truth.

I’d wanted to be with him for years, and now the prospect was in front of me, it was terrifying.

“You’re right,” I said, picking a stringy bit of cheese on the pizza. “I think…I think I’m so afraid of losing him that I’d rather never have him at all.”

Mellie gave me a sympathetic smile. “Exactly. But is that worth knowing you’ll always have to wonder what could have happened?”

I opened my mouth to answer, then stopped.

I didn’t have an answer.

I couldn’t answer that.

And you know what?

I didn’t want to know the answer.