Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Cody
A s a man who generally didn’t get too worked up, I’d lost my cool tonight. Completely. But I’d grown frustrated enough with Charlie that I couldn’t seem to get past the wired, buzzing feeling of anger at the whole situation and settle into the embarrassment I could guarantee would be waiting for me when I came down from the adrenaline.
The knock on my front door came a few minutes after I’d arrived home, approximately ten after I’d left Craic. It had to be her. I yanked the door open to find her standing at the threshold. She immediately stepped inside and brushed past me.
“Please, come in.” The edge in my voice made my sarcasm clear, and she didn’t let it fly.
She flipped around and glared at me. “What is happening right now?”
I exhaled sharply, praying I could get a grip. Why had the last half hour thrown me so far over my usual response to this? I’d spent fifteen years pretending like it was fine she didn’t see me.
Maybe that was it, though. She didn’t see me—refused to. And her willful ignorance about why Jeremy would think we were finally together ticked me right off. “You barged into my house after I said goodnight at the bar.”
She crossed her arms, the pose sending all kinds of unimpressed, disappointed vibes. “Yes, thank you. Now can we talk about why you ditched me and ran away?”
I paced back to her, adrenaline lighting me up again. “I didn’t ditch you. I told you I had to get home.”
“Yeah. Suddenly, you had to get home to your empty apartment when you’d planned to spend the night hanging out with me.”
The jut of her chin and the tone in her voice made me want to shake her, or just take her face in my hands and kiss her. Something punishing and hot that would wake her up to me. To the us she found so surprisingly unfathomable.
I wouldn’t do any of that, so I clenched my jaw and dipped my head to look right into her fiery eyes. “No. But I also wasn’t going to sit there with you while you pretend you have no idea what’s going on.”
She double-blinked.
“Pretend? How can I pretend when I actually have no idea?” She flipped out her index finger. “First, Jeremy says it’s great we’re together. Then I say ‘that was weird, why did he think that?’ And you get mad at me for asking and flee the scene like I’ve committed a crime against humanity for not understanding a bunch of subtext I didn’t know was there. So please. Just say whatever it is you need to say and stop treating me like a criminal for not magically knowing your every thought!”
Her chest rose and fell, her neck and cheeks flushed. Good grief, she was gorgeous like this, and also infuriating as all get out. I grabbed her hand, still held in front of us with those three fingers showing her points of argument, and in a move I hadn’t premediated, flipped it around and pressed her palm flat over my thundering heart.
“You’re an incredibly intelligent woman, Charlie, but you are so damned dense, it’s painful.”
Her throat worked to swallow, and her eyes flitted from my hand over hers at my heart, my eyes, my lips, back around again. “What?”
“I’ve been in love with you since I can remember. You really never had any idea?” My tone had softened a touch, but the thrum of my pulse and the tension in the air that filtered out in the loaded silence following my confession made me feel wild. I couldn’t believe I did it. I finally said it out loud.
Her mouth dropped open and I thought she might not say anything. Based on her expression, she really hadn’t known. And she looked… profoundly upset.
“No. I didn’t. How could I?” She dropped her head as though processing.
I checked the impulse to comfort her and try to fix this moment—to smooth it away and pretend like it wasn’t an issue anymore. But my reaction tonight, never mind my response to every interaction we’d had since she’d been back this last week, told me it was. I couldn’t pretend this didn’t matter or that I didn’t still love her. Even with so much left to learn about her now, sucker that I was, I still loved her.
“Why wouldn’t you say something? I mean, there were times I wondered, of course, but you never said anything. No hint. No anything. ”
“What would I have said?”
That’d always been the crux of it. Nothing I could’ve said would’ve changed her plans, and if it had, she would’ve resented me in the end and I would’ve hated myself.
“How about something like, ‘Charlie, my best friend forever, I have feelings for you that will drastically change the nature of our relationship.’”
She frowned back at me, and it clicked.
She was mad at me. And not just a little.
As if on cue, she pulled her hand away and stepped back. “Seriously. You’ve been keeping this from me for years, Cody. How am I supposed to take that?”
I searched the room, hoping something in it would bring me out of this Twilight Zone-style confrontation. She was mad at me for not telling her I loved her? What?
“Are you kidding? You think I should’ve held you that last night as you cried about leaving, when you were on the verge of making your dreams come true, and instead of saying that you’d do great and this was what you wanted, I should’ve begged you to stay? Told you I was in love with you and that I wanted you to stay with me and give up everything you’d wanted? To stay in a place you outwardly hated and constantly reminded me wasn’t big enough, exciting enough, important enough, worldly enough for you?”
She huffed. “No. Obviously not. I just… I don’t get this. I don’t get you.”
She hugged her arms around herself, and her tone, so full of hurt and sadness, made my heart split down the middle.
“I couldn’t hold you back. I knew that with a certainty that outweighed my feelings. And I don’t regret not telling you.”
Her head shot up and her dark eyes found mine. “How dare you be the one to decide? I mean, what is that? You just… just… decide for me what’s right?”
I ran my hands over my face and pulled at my hair. It probably stuck up everywhere now, but whatever. She was making me want to literally pull my hair out. “You can’t have it both ways, okay? You can’t hate Silverton and run screaming into the hills the second you graduate high school and have your best friend, who is permanently tethered to that same town you loathe so much, confess his love for you. You don’t get both.”
Her nostrils flared as she breathed silently through her nose, and her mouth had pinched into a tight line. She looked as mad as I felt.
“That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just mad. I don’t get it. I don’t?—”
I stalked closer, right into her space again. “What? You don’t like that you can’t have it all? Well, welcome to life, Charlie. We all make choices. You left, and you stayed gone. That meant I had some choices to make too.”
“You should’ve told me,” she said, raising that chin again.
“Why? What good would it have done besides destroy me?”
“You—because… because?—”
And then she did it. She grabbed my shirt, rose to her toes, and pressed her mouth to mine. It happened fast enough that our mouths crushed together in an almost painful collision until I reacted, softening my lips and taking her with me, pulling her close at the waist as soon as I could get my hands on her.
She inched higher, and I dipped my head to deepen the connection, my mind a sultry blur of thoughts like finally and yes and don’t stop. The kiss electrified my body, the contact akin to a pleasurable encounter with a live wire.
Just when our momentum would’ve taken a turn to something even more intense and consuming, she pulled back and released me. One hand rose to press fingers to her lips like she couldn’t believe where they’d just been, and her wide eyes stared at me.
“I—I have to go.”
And she did. She bolted out the door faster than I could find words. Charlie had kissed me—kissed me good and proper, truth be told. She’d left my heart pumping hard, attempting to beat out of my chest, my lips still buzzing from the encounter.
And after all that?
She’d run away.