Chapter 45
“Alright. Let’s address the giant elephant in the room.”
I rolled my eyes at Lucas, and my jaw ticked as I dropped the weights on the floor. “Please, can we not go there?”
Lucas chuckled, shaking his head. “Nope. We have to. Because this is just—”
“Crazy,” Gabe interjected with a laugh.
I glanced at where Blake was sitting on the weight bench. He gave me a small smile and shrug.
We’d met at Lucas’s condo Sunday afternoon to use the gym facility—it was more to keep Blake occupied, and we knew working out helped him clear his head. And I knew this conversation was coming after what happened last night at the bar.
To say I was surprised by Morgan outing what the two of us had been doing the last two years to our entire friend group—along with her brothers and Loralei—would be the understatement of the damn century.
I’d been so caught off guard I could do nothing but laugh and walk away to try and collect myself.
When she came out to find me to apologize, I could see the genuine remorse in her expression.
I wasn’t angry. Like I told her, it was bound to come out eventually.
I just hadn’t expected it to come out like that.
I knew she’d had a few drinks last night, so I was sure that probably played a part in her being so candid with everyone.
When I told her about ending the sabotage and calling a truce, she took it exactly as I had expected.
She was fine with it. I tried to throw out a vague, last-ditch attempt to see if she’d pick up on it.
Maybe if we were on the same page, things could be different.
It didn’t seem to faze her in the slightest and gave me the answer I already knew: we weren’t on the same page.
Then she threw out a “I’m happy for you” and that was like the final knife to the gut.
“So, I need to know how this even started because you two were literally at each other’s throats all the damn time,” Gabe said.
I sighed. I might as well answer their questions and get this shit done and over with. “It just happened one night.”
“When?” Gabe asked.
“The night of your housewarming party.” I had to fight back a laugh at his expression. “That was the first time. And don’t ask for details. All I can say is…we were bickering one minute and the next…”
“And then it kept happening?” Lucas asked with a chuckle.
“I mean…yeah. Well, no, not instantly. It happened again the next night. After that, it was a couple of months before it happened again. And that’s when I proposed a deal of sorts…for us to help each other out.”
Blake arched a dark brow. “A deal…”
“Yes. We were both in these slumps, so I said that we could use each other to scratch an itch when we needed it because we didn’t even like each other, so we wouldn’t have to worry about it getting all complicated with feelings and shit.”
“And you had that agreement for two years?” Gabe questioned.
“Yeah…”
“Wait a minute,” Lucas said, letting out a laugh. “Are you the one who gave her that hickey that one time?”
“You gave her a hickey?” Blake deadpanned.
I snorted. “Yeah. It was an accident.”
“And this just continued…” Gabe crossed his arms, his eyes full of skepticism. “Until she went to Miami?”
I nodded nonchalantly. “Yeah.”
“And then things happened with the other one,” Lucas said.
“Loralei…yes.” The three of them stared at me, their expressions blank. “What?”
“Nothing,” Lucas was the first to speak before turning to spot Blake when he laid back on the weight bench.
“That just seems like really impeccable timing, Callahan,” Blake said as he gripped the barbell—I didn’t even want to know how much weight was on that thing.
“Very convenient,” Lucas agreed.
I scoffed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Gabe simply chuckled with a shake of his head.
I knew exactly what they were getting at, but I wasn’t going to satisfy them with a response.
Things with Loralei had just kind of…happened.
And a little quicker than I expected. After the night I met her at Agora, I reached out and asked her on a date.
One date turned to two, then three, and so on.
After a month, we talked one night, and she said if things were going to continue, she wanted to know it was going somewhere. She wanted a label going forward.
And suddenly, I had a girlfriend.
The coincidence of the timing of it happening and the return of a certain someone wasn’t much of a coincidence at all. Did it play a part in my jumping the gun on the whole label thing? As fucked up as it sounded and as shitty as it made me feel, I’d be lying if I said no.
I did want to give things with Loralei a shot, but I knew if Morgan came back and, for whatever reason, wanted to resume the arrangement we had before she left, I would have done so with zero hesitancy.
And doing that would have done me no favors with getting over the feelings I’d already been struggling with.
So, a part of me agreeing to label this thing was to force myself into exclusivity to keep away from the temptation that was Morgan Hayes.
I’d been doing okay with pushing my feelings aside, but I knew a lot of that had to do with the fact that Morgan hadn’t been around.
The minute I saw her last night for the first time in two months, it was like the dam I had them locked behind crumbled, and everything came flooding back in an instant.
When I went to talk to her at the bar, I did it mostly to try and prove a point to myself—that I could be around her and not be consumed by what I was trying to bury.
Then I caught a whiff of her signature rose scent, and I knew it was going to be much harder than I anticipated.
I was still stubbornly standing my ground, however.
I still planned to ease into things with Loralei.
I knew that didn’t make very much sense, considering we already slapped a label on it, but just because it was labeled didn’t mean we still couldn’t take things slow.
Haley asked if I was going to bring her to Sunday dinner, but I drew the line there.
Family dinner was sacred, even for my sister—she only brought that douchebag ex of hers, Brett, over once, and they were together nearly a year before it happened. I had no plans for that anytime soon.
As for Morgan, I hoped being around her again now that she was back would become easier.
And now that the cat was out of the bag about what had been going on with us before, at the least, we wouldn’t have to pretend to dislike each other when we were out with everyone. We could be friends out in the open.
Because I did want to be her friend, even if it was hard at first.
I pulled into the law office parking lot for Tuesday night trivia and got out of my car, making my way to the bar. Usually, the others would be waiting for me, but I was running behind because I stopped by Loralei’s beforehand.
After that first Saturday when I brought her to meet everyone, she tagged along for trivia the following Tuesday—she said it wasn’t her thing, so she didn’t really care to join in anymore, so I would stop by to see her before I went.
That Tuesday was also the last time I’d seen Morgan.
I didn’t know if it was because it was only a few days after she outed us to everyone, but Morgan was acting off that night.
She stayed for a mere thirty minutes before she said she wasn’t “feeling that great” and was going to take off.
When Gabe protested and said we needed her for trivia, she was the one who suggested Loralei take her spot.
That was a month ago.
Morgan hadn’t come out on Tuesdays because she was “slammed with work.” She stopped coming out on Saturdays because she was “catching up on work” or “had other plans.” In all of the time I’d known her, I could count on one hand the amount of trivia and nights out she missed.
It made me feel like she was purposely avoiding me.
I didn’t know if she felt awkward around me now that things had stopped between us or if some part of her felt weird being around Loralei because of our past, but I naively thought with things being out in the open, we might actually talk more, even if it was just as friends.
That couldn’t happen if she wasn’t around.
When I walked into the bar, I headed for our usual table and spotted Gabe, Lucas, and Callie.
“Hey,” Lucas said with a smile.
“Hello.” I signaled to Susan for a drink. “No Blake?” I asked Gabe.
“No. He wanted to take it easy tonight.”
I nodded in understanding, then glanced at the empty seat beside Callie. “Where’s Morgan?”
I already knew the answer.
“She had a project she was working on,” Callie answered.
“Again?”
Callie offered a small smile, but I couldn’t help but feel like there was more behind it. “Yeah…”
“Is she going to come out Saturday? Or does she have other plans?” I quipped, but my tone was a little sharper than I intended. I didn’t give a shit anymore; they knew about what had been going on between us before, so I didn’t need to be careful with asking about her now.
“I’m not sure,” Callie replied with a soft shrug.
Something told me we both already knew the answer.