Chapter 26

Chance

AS I PACED the living room of my apartment, my anger continued to heat my blood until it reached the point of boiling over. I couldn’t believe what I’d seen. I’d almost convinced myself that it was some kind of joke, but no matter how many times I blinked, the image remained the same. That fuck-head kissed Melany! My Melany. And what was worse, she fucking let him.

Le Petite wasn’t a restaurant I’d normally step foot in if given the choice. But the client I was wining and dining that evening had grown up visiting his French grandmother every summer and was feeling a little nostalgic. I’d laughed to myself when we sat, thinking that Melany would despise the place. But as my dinner started coming to a close, I caught a familiar flash of brown hair and legs wrapped in a tight pencil skirt that I knew intimately.

At first, my brain couldn’t comprehend what was going on. I thought that she might have called my assistant and gotten the name of the restaurant and decided to surprised me. Then I saw him, touching her, and my heart came to a screeching halt in my chest.

For the life of me, I couldn’t tell you what the fuck we talked about those last few minutes. My mind was consumed with what was happening across the crowded restaurant. Somehow, maybe by the grace of God, I managed to keep myself in check until my client and his wife left. Instead of following them, I headed for the bar, perching on a stool with the best vantage point of Melany’s table.

I felt like I was coming out of my skin the longer I watched. As their meal progressed, her smile grew more and more forced, until it disappeared altogether, an unhappy frown taking its place. It was only then that my anxiety started to wane. I told myself that there was a perfectly logical explanation as to why she was in a restaurant that she’d normally never eat at, with a man she’d claimed to spend five years loving. Maybe it was a business dinner.

Then she stood. For a moment, I thought she was going to leave. But the dick stood as well. His body was blocking my view of Melany, but there was no missing what happened next. His arm wrapped around her and his body twisted in a way that I could see his lips on hers perfectly. It felt like something was crushing my lungs. I couldn’t pull in enough air. I was slowly suffocating as I waited for what felt like an eternity for her to push him away.

But she didn’t.

In my haste to leave, I’d accidentally run into a busboy carrying a tray loaded with dirty dishes. They fell to the ground with a crash. I should have stayed to help him with the mess since it was my fault, or at least thrown a few bills his way for the trouble, but I was running on autopilot. My only thought was on escaping.

I hadn’t calmed down a bit since reaching home. Instead, with every minute that ticked by, I felt another little piece of me die inside. I thought something important had happened between us when we made love earlier that morning. I felt the shift, and I could have sworn she did too. I just couldn’t believe I’d been so wrong.

I lifted the highball glass in my hand to down the last of the whiskey, only to discover it was already empty. I stopped midpace, the sight of the empty glass only fueling my rage, and before I could think better of it, the glass was flying through the air. The shattered glass glinted in the overhead light as it rained down onto the floor, but I couldn’t find it in me to care about the mess. I only wished I had another glass in my hand that I could throw.

Just as I contemplated going to the kitchen to grab another one, the front door opened and Melany stepped inside. “What happened?” she asked, her eyes going from the shards of glass to me.

“Dropped my glass,” I grunted in return. I tried to swallow back some of my anger and make my tone conversational as I stated, “You worked late tonight. You hungry? I could scrounge you up something for dinner, if you want.”

She hung her purse on the hook by the front door, her smile trembling nervously. “Oh, uh… no. Thank you. I’m good. I, um… o-ordered some t-takeout at the office.”

That lie from her lips killed another piece of me. “Really? You ordered takeout? From where?” Tell me the truth. Please just tell me the truth and we can get pastd it. Please don’t have chosen him, I begged inside my head.

“Uh, just s-some Chinese place.” Christ, it was like someone reached inside my chest and was squeezing to the point of agony. Melany moved into the kitchen and pulled a glass from the cabinet before turning to the sink and filling it with water. “So, how was dinner with your client?”

“It could have gone better,” I managed to answer past the knot that had formed in my throat.

“Oh no. Did you have trouble with the client or something?”

My gaze stayed fixed to her mouth as she lifted the glass and drank, her tongue darting out to catch a drop of water that was resting on her lips. “No. Nothing like that,” I replied, my tone sounding as dead as I felt inside. “It was the restaurant. I wasn’t a fan. Pretty sure I’m never going back.”

“Where’d you go?”

I crossed the room to the bar that separated the kitchen from the living room—separated her from me—and rested my hands on the cool granite, leaning in closer to her. “Some French place. Maybe you’ve heard of it? Le Petite?”

I knew she understood when those amber eyes got big and her face drained of color. “Y-you…”

“I saw you with him, Melany. I saw you fucking kiss him,” I growled. “What I want to know is why the fuck you did it? And why did you come home and lie to me about it?” I finished on a yell.

“It wasn’t what it looked like,” she rushed out, as she skated the bar in an effort to get to me, but I took two steps back before she could touch me. “Chance, I swear.”

“I just fucking asked you about dinner, and you lied to my fucking face, Mel!”

“Because I was afraid you’d react like this! Please, just let me explain—”

“Oh, that’s great!” I laughed sarcastically, crossing my arms over my chest. “I can’t wait to hear this. So tell me, Melany. Why’d you kiss him, huh? Why’d you fuck me this morning, then turn around and kiss another guy tonight.” I hated how sharp and condescending my voice sounded, but I had no control over it.

“I didn’t kiss him!” she cried. “He kissed me! Chance, please, just listen—”

“Well, I sure as hell didn’t see you putting up much of a fight,” I snapped.

Her eyes welled with tears, and when she blinked, they tumbled down her cheeks, dripping off her jaw as she continued to try and get through to me. “I was in shock! I didn’t expect for him to kiss me. I got up because I wanted to leave. I shouldn’t have even agreed to that stupid dinner! I just wanted to get out of there, but he cut in front of me, and the next thing I knew, he was kissing me! I was surprised. It didn’t mean anything. I didn’t even want it to happen! As soon as I realized what was happening, I stopped it and walked out.”

My top lip curled in an ugly sneer. “You really expect me to believe that? The guy you’ve been fucking obsessed with for five goddamned years finally kisses you, and you expect me to believe you didn’t want it?”

“It’s the truth!” she shouted, throwing her arms out to her sides. “I didn’t want to go to dinner in the first place! I just wanted to come home and go to sleep, but he caught me when I was walking out and my stomach grumbled so I couldn’t claim I wasn’t hungry. I agreed to a quick dinner, just as work colleagues.”

I raked my hands through my hair and began my agitated pacing. “You know, I can’t really be mad at you for it. I mean, it’s what I told you I’d help you do, right? Land another guy? Why the fuck I’m surprised when it finally happened is beyond me. But I at least expected you’d have enough respect to fucking tell me when you wanted to end what we were doing before making a move on another guy.”

Her hands clenched into tight fists at her side as a vein in her forehead began to throb, and she yelled, “That’s not what happened!”

I should have stopped right then. I should have given us both time to get control of our emotions, but men don’t function that way. We throw our punches first and ask questions later. “I don’t know why the fuck I thought this time would be different. Should have learned my goddamned lesson the first two times.” By that point I was ranting more to myself than to her. “I told myself when we started this bullshit plan that I wasn’t going to fall for another woman who already had her eyes on another man, but did I fucking listen to myself? Of course not!”

“Wait, Chance. Please!” Melany shot out in front of me, her hands slapping against my chest to stop my pacing. “What are you talking about? Just stop for a minute and talk to me. Please. We can fix this.”

“I’m talking about how I’m a goddamned idiot!” I barked. “First, I make a move on Pepper, but she’s been pining for Griffin nearly her whole damn life. Then, I actually think I’m getting somewhere with Devon, that we have something good, but she’s so wound up in Collin she couldn’t even see straight. But with you…!” I threw my hand in her direction as I carried on. “With you, I go and do something as epically fucking stupid as fall in love with you, only to lose out again to that bastard!”

“Y-you…” Melany’s entire frame locked up, her mouth dropped open, and her chest began to heave with every breath she took. When she spoke again, her voice was so quiet I could barely hear her. “You love me?”

“Of course I do!” I shouted.

She looked like she was in a daze as she repeated. “You love me.” She gave her head a tiny shake, like she was trying to clear it. “W-why didn’t you tell me?”

“Oh please!” I scoffed, laughing in disbelief. “When I met you, you could barely put two sentences together without risk of lapsing into an all-out panic attack—”

“It wasn’t that bad!” she defended, her own anger starting to outweigh her bewilderment.

“Please, you were fucking terrified of everything! Everyone. You really think you wouldn’t have freaked out if I’d told you my feelings had changed?”

“No. I don’t think I’d have freaked out. But you didn’t give me the chance to prove that.”

“If I had said anything to you, it would’ve scared you half to death. You’d have closed yourself off in that goddamn imaginary world you invented in your head so you wouldn’t have had to deal with real, authentic emotions. I knew I’d lose you, so I did everything I could think of to make you see that you could do better than that son of a bitch! That I was better for you. I kept going along with that stupid plan of yours. I fed you that line of shit about practicing with me.”

I should have stopped right then. I should have reined in my temper and checked the pulse of the room. I should have focused on the fact that Melany’s entire face had turned an unhealthy shade of red.

But I didn’t.

“Hell, I even got you to go on a date with that anchor-wearing douchebag to prove to you that I could give you everything you thought that asshole could. But you’re so blind you didn’t see it!”

It was her next words that clued me in to the fact I’d just made a big mistake, a huge fucking mistake.

“You played me?” she said on a whisper, but her voice held so much fury the room practically vibrated with it.

Uh-oh. “What?”

“You played me? You manipulated me in order to get me into your bed?” Of course that would be all she’d hear in that entire longwinded speech I just gave.

“That’s not what happened.”

“From everything you just said, that’s exactly what happened! You played games! You promised you’d always be honest with me, but you played head games! All to benefit yourself!”

“Because I’m in love with you!”

“Oh my God!” Her laugh was loud and hysterical. “You expect me to believe that? After everything you just said, it sounds to me like you saw an easy target and went in for the kill. After all, I’m just some pathetic, terrified little girl who’d rather live in her own head than deal with my feelings, right?”

When she threw it back in my face like that, what I’d said sounded pretty bad. But she wasn’t the one who had a right to be angry. I was. She was the one who’d been sucking face with someone else just hours after I’d been inside her. “You’re twisting what I just said.”

“No, for the first time, I think I’m actually seeing things clearly.”

“And I’m telling you,” I said in a low rumble, “you’re wrong.”

“Then maybe I should move out,” she threatened, a defiant gleam in her eyes. How the hell had this shit gotten so tangled up? The entire argument had gone so far off course I couldn’t even remember where I’d been initially going.

I crossed my arms over my chest, mimicking her exact expression. “Maybe you should.”

“Fine!” she snapped. “Then I will!”

“Fine!”

And just like that, we’d reverted back to childishness, neither of us willing to apologize first, neither of us able to admit defeat. And because of my stupid male pride, I just stood there, stewing in my anger as Melany threw clothes into a suitcase and walked out the door.

Wondering what the ever-loving fuck just happened.