The Devil Wears Black

“Let me get this straight.” He frowned. “You went to yell at him about kissing you, then let him kiss you again?”

Admittedly, I wasn’t explaining it really well. Not that there was a way to explain the insanity that was Chase and me together.

“I know it’s weird. I can’t even explain how it happened. One moment I was yelling my lungs out at him, and the next . . .”

He was shutting me up with a bone-melting kiss.

“What does he want from you?” Ethan scowled, dropping his taco on his paper plate. He wasn’t so happy about my fake engagement anymore. Maybe because parts of it were beginning to feel real. “He can’t seem to let you go, but he sure as hell did a fine job scaring you off when he had you.”

I’m sorry, how is Natalie doing? I was tempted to ask. He wasn’t really in a position to give me crap.

“He wants us to continue pretending until his dad passes away.” I blinked at the shabby flowery rug under my coffee table. It was full of crumbles from the crunchy tacos. Daisy was nowhere in sight to clean them up, so my guess was she was trying to piss into Ethan’s shoes, as she did with every person who entered her fort and wasn’t me. I’d had the good sense to place his shoes inside a plastic bag on the stand by the door.

“And put your life on hold?” Ethan scowled. “How very considerate of him.”

“I said no.”

“Of course you said no!” Ethan threw his hands in the air, then paused. “Wait, why did you say no?”

Why had I, really? Who knew? Because I was scared. Because it had seemed like the right thing to do. Shout-out to the people who understood the ins and outs of their decisions. I wasn’t one of them. I mainly went out on a limb and tried to follow my logic and whatever I thought Dr. Phil would say about my situation.

“Because of you.”

I mean, it was half the truth. Well . . . maybe a quarter. The main reason was I knew Chase was more than capable of breaking my heart again.

Ethan scratched his smooth jaw. “I don’t like him.”

“Me either.” Another lie.

“Then I don’t see the problem.” He picked up his taco again. “The fake engagement is over; you are officially back on the market. So what if you kissed? I . . .” He stopped himself at the last minute. “I did things, too, while we were each seeing other people. That’s why we’ve decided to wait until now before we take things to the next level.” He arched his brows meaningfully. “Welcome to the next level, Maddie.”

“I’m not ready for the next level yet.” I tore the already shredded lettuce between my fingers meticulously, not meeting his eyes.

“We don’t have to today.”

I shook my head, closing my eyes.

“Or tomorrow, even,” he began to bargain.

“I don’t know if it’s a good idea, period. That kiss happened for a reason. Maybe I’m not completely over Chase. I thought I was when I signed up for SeriousSinglesOnly. I truly did. But now I’m not so sure.”

“You just said you refused him because of me,” Ethan pointed out.

“Yes, because I want someone like you,” I agreed. “I just don’t know if I’m ready to move on.”

Our silence was punctuated by the robotic voice of the news anchor on TV, who moved to another item, about a nineteen-year-old criminal who carved his name onto his girlfriend’s face. His name was Constantine Lewis. I bet if Chase were watching it right now, he’d say he hoped to hell he’d at least had the good manners to carve Stan for short.

I was predicting what Chase would say or think. How he’d react. I thought about him every waking moment. What he was doing, thinking, eating. Who he was seeing. I was definitely not over him.

“I’m really sorry, Ethan. I’m horrified that I put you through this. For what it’s worth, you’re absolutely perfect.”

“You’re giving me the it’s-not-you-it’s-me cliché.” He clutched the left side of his shirt, but his voice lacked venom. “Ouch.”

“It pains me more than it does you.” I smiled tiredly.

“But you want to get over him. It’s half the journey.”

I said nothing, because it was the truth.

“Can I at least have a say in this? I’m the wronged party here, supposedly.”

I chuckled. “That’s fair.”

“I’d like to think about it. About whether I want to forgive you for doing the unforgivable and kissing your billionaire, hotshot, not-ugly ex-boyfriend.”

I full-blown cackled now. “Are you reserving the right to dump me?”

“Nicely,” Ethan corrected. “And yes. I’m not sure I’m ready to give up on this, whatever it is. I appreciate your fair warning I might get hurt, but I might still want to give it a shot. Deal?” He offered me his hand. I took it, shaking it with a stupid smile. It was the nicest thing that had happened to me today.

“Deal.”

We fell into comfortable silence, eating the rest of our meal, until we heard a thin sound of liquid coming from the door, followed by a puppy growl.

“Daisy!” I jumped from the couch, but it was too late. My chocolate-colored Aussiedoodle was already standing by the door, tattered plastic bag in her mouth, peeing straight into Ethan’s shoes.

 

I spent the next three days screening Chase’s calls. Even though Ethan reserved the right to change his mind about us, I hadn’t heard from him since our Mexican-food night. I was mildly relieved by this turn of events. It was one less thing to worry about. I did send Ethan an apologetic, lengthy text message before Layla told me to stop being more saintly than the pope. “The man dicked someone else the day he wined and dined you. You were obviously not that committed to one another.”

Three days post the nuclear kisses and sort-of breakup from my nonboyfriend, Ethan, and I was beginning to breathe again. Shallow, tentative breaths of someone who knew it wasn’t over yet.

Ronan was still sick.

Chase was a man who always got what he wanted.

As for me? I was slowly learning to stand up for myself.

I threw myself into work and finished three sketches for the Mother of the Bride collection. I made one of the sketches in honor of Mom, drawing the model with the same orange turban she’d worn when she’d been going through chemo. She had the same smiling hazel eyes as Mom and the same full lips and freckles. The dress was floral and big and lacy. Something Mom would’ve worn for my wedding. When Sven saw the final designs, I could see the confusion in his face. It wasn’t common practice to put details into the face of a model in a sketch. Then the penny dropped, and he reached to squeeze my shoulder, exhaling. “She’d have loved it.”