Chapter 21
I’m going to kill him. Is he freaking kidding me? This has to be a dream. This can’t be real life. There’s no freaking way this is happening. That once again we share something intimate and he throws me away. What is his problem?
What’s my problem? Why do I keep falling for him? He brought me to my knees, only to kick me down instead of helping me back up.
I throw myself on my bed with a huff, my hands covering my face. At least Gigi followed me this time. She must have known I needed emotional support because she burrowed herself under my hands to lay her neck over my mouth in typical wiener dog fashion.
Maybe I should go stay at Jade’s tonight . . . or for a few nights. I have her spare key and she’s still on vacation with her family. I doubt she would mind if I went to spend a few days there. Or hid there with my tail between my legs until she got back in a week.
I realize that I would be running away again—this time from my own house—but I just can’t face him.
I know that with just one look he would have me on my knees again and I can’t keep just rolling over for him again and again.
I’m a strong independent woman, I tell myself.
If anyone is going to run away this time it’s him.
Who am I kidding? I know I’m going to end up at Jade’s tonight.
My ping-ponging thoughts are interrupted by my phone ringing.
Cassie is calling.
“Hey, girl!” she says, the second I pick up the phone. “What’s up?”
“Nothing,” I say.
But clearly my voice isn’t as happy as I tried to make it because she immediately says, “You’re lying. You know I know you better than that. So, just tell me what’s wrong. Better yet, just tell me what Liam did so I can call him and give him shit.”
I knew I shouldn’t have answered; I should have let it go to voicemail. Now, I’m in the impossible position of having to tell her I just slept with her and her husband’s—aka my older brother’s—best friend.
I go sit in my closet so I know Liam can’t hear me spill my guts to Cassie.
“It’s not what Liam did . . . it’s what I did,” I admit to her as silent tears start streaming down my face at how stupid I was.
It’s not that I gave him my virginity, I couldn’t care less about that.
It’s that I let myself believe, for those moments, that he was mine and I was his.
I should have known it wouldn’t mean anything to him.
I was probably just the closest and most convenient thing to scratch his itch.
Like the kiss seven years ago, he just got caught in the moment, and when reality settled in, he freaked out.
For some reason, I let the naive part of me, the part of me who still wishes and dreams about a life with Liam, win. And now, I know what Liam and I could be—the magic that we could create together. I’m in so much trouble.
“Sloane? Do I need to come back? I have some family leave that I can take. What’s wrong?” she repeats, her voice filled with concern.
“I might have made a mistake,” I tell her as a sob breaks through.
“Sloane, you need to tell me or I’m telling Ronan you’re crying and you know damn well we’ll be there by the end of the day!” she continues.
“Is that Sloane? What is she up to?” I hear Ronan in the back. “Wait, what’s that face for? What did he do now?” he asks, with a deep exhale.
“It was me,” I tell Cassie, now that I’ve calmed down a bit. I can’t have Ronan making his way back here, not right now. Not after what just happened. “Tell Ronan I’m fine, and to leave you alone so I can tell you,” I instruct her, knowing I have to tell someone.
Cassie was the only one I’d talked to about Liam before I met Jade.
For as bubbly and outgoing as she is, she has a talent for knowing when to sit, listen, and not judge.
“Ronan, leave, she’s fine, she just needs a little girl talk,” I hear her say in her sugary sweet voice that I’m sure has his eyes rolling.
“Fine,” I hear him grumble in the back, before I hear a door closing.
The minute the door is closed and I know she’s alone, I tell her, “I slept with him.”
She doesn’t say anything for what feels like minutes, but it’s probably only a few seconds. “Just to be clear, when you say him you mean Liam, right?”
“Yes.”
“Umm . . . okay. How . . . when . . . what? Okay. Okay. Okay,” she says, not knowing where to start. “How about we start with a fun question before we get to the shitty ones. How was it?”
Her question makes me smile, because I know that if I was calling her about having slept with anyone else for the first time it would be her first question.
“Honestly,” I say, “it was magical. Better than I ever could have imagined.” I feel a blush rise on my cheeks as tears, somehow silently, flow down my chin.
It’s how perfect, unplanned, and organic it was that has me unable to stop the tears. “It kinda just happened.”
“How did it happen? I mean, I know you slept in his room while we were there but . . .”
“I’ve been sleeping in his bed pretty much every night since the day he moved in,” I admit to her.
“He was waking me up screaming every night from nightmares. I told Jade and she jokingly told me to sneak into his bed, so I did. The nightmares stopped so I kept doing it. He didn’t know.
He found out because I told him when you got me drunk. ”
“That still doesn’t explain how you ended up having sex with him,” she says. I don’t hear judgement in her voice, just intrigue. What I don’t like is her use of the word “sex”—it’s not deep enough of a word to describe what happened between us.
“Before you guys got here we had somewhat gotten into a routine of having supper and watching movies together every night.” I kept the bad date and plant notes to myself.
For some reason, I wanted to keep that turning point private, for now.
“We had a good friendship of sorts going, I guess you could say. It wasn’t like it was before I left, but it was heading there.
Anyway, he ended up finding an old shoe box of all the notes he’d ever left me when I was a kid under his bed.
” I hear her let out a small gasp. “I caught him going through them. We had a discussion, but then he told me to go grab a duffel bag from his closet. In it were a couple of freezer bags filled with colorful notes. Apparently, he kept writing me little notes, even when we had no contact with each other. Next thing you know, I’m sitting on his lap, and he’s telling me to get undressed,” I finish, my cheeks probably resembling two stop lights.
“Holy fuck, Sloane! Damn, I bet it was good. All those years of pent-up emotion neither of you really knew you had, plus all that tension from living together the past few weeks . . . It must have been explosive!” she says with a dreamy sigh, making me giggle.
“It was,” I agree. “I had no idea it would be that way.”
“I bet he was bossy, demanding, controlling even, wasn’t he?” she asks.
“You could describe him like that,” I say, thinking back to him ordering me to sit on his face as if it was a non-negotiable.
“Figures,” she says, and I can hear the eye roll and smirk in her voice. “Sounds like you enjoyed it, so why are you crying now?”
“Because just like last time, I thought I had an actual shot here. I thought he saw me for me. I thought he was actually interested and that he wanted me of all people. I should have known better . . .” I trail off.
“What did he do?” she asks again, getting impatient. I know I’m going to tell her, but for some reason I’m embarrassed. I feel like I was such an idiot, trusting my feelings for him . . . again.
“I' got up to clean up and grab us some water, and when I came back it was like a switch had been flipped. He was pissed, and when I asked him what was wrong, he just told me to leave.”
“To leave?” she asked, confused.
“Yeah. I asked him if it was because he was sore or something—if he needed his pain meds—but he just got more mad and told me to get the hell out of his room,” I relay to her, making me start to ball my eyes out again.
Through my sobs, I can hear Cassie trying to comfort me, telling me it’ll be okay, that we’ll figure everything out. What has me stopping and catching my breath is when she says, “That’s it, I’m telling Ronan. We’ll be there by tomorrow morning, promise. We’ll figure something out.”
“No,” I almost shout through the phone. “Please don’t,” I beg. “I already feel like an idiot. I don’t need him knowing I told you everything. He doesn’t need to know I called you crying.”
“You didn’t call me crying. I called you, remember?” she says, trying to lighten the mood. It doesn’t work.
“I can just pretend it meant sweet frig all, like he’s doing right now,” I tell her.
If he can act like I’m just another girl, then I can pretend that he’s just another boy.
“I’ll be fine, promise; I just needed to get a good cry in.
I’ll shower and I’ll be fine. I mean, I should have known this is how it was going to play out.
Maybe I’m just upset because he’s the first guy to see me naked.
” I try to lighten the mood. Anything for her to stay in Vancouver.
“I know what you’re trying to do here. I’ve known you your entire life, Sloane. I won’t come if you don’t want me to, promise. But if you call me crying again, or if I get the sense that you’re upset, I’m not even asking, I’m just showing up, got it?” she says in what I like to call her mom voice.
“I didn’t call you, you called me, remember,” I say, volleying her words back to her so she knows I’m okay.
We don’t stay on the phone long after that.
Ronan keeps knocking on the door, asking what’s going on—if I’m actually okay or if I was lying.
Cassie says if she doesn’t get off the phone soon he’s probably going to call Liam to see if he knows why I’m so upset.
Neither of us want that to happen, so we quickly share our goodbyes and love yous before hanging up.
With a deep cleansing breath . . . or ten, I stand from my closet and make my way to the bathroom as if the last four hours never happened. It was just a bad dream.
Fake it until you make it and all that jazz. Right?