Chapter 26
I was sitting cross-legged on top of the comforter, heels forgotten on the floor, when Adam came back about ten minutes later, carrying a glass of tinted liquid and a smoothie.
“I—” I began, only to hesitate because I didn’t want to make things worse. “I really don’t think I can drink that.”
His head bobbed. “I know, but you need to. If you weren’t nauseous,” he continued on a sigh, then made a face as if to say he now knew I was, “you could eat whatever you wanted. But there’s stuff in here that’ll help speed up the process of you feeling better. Berries. Greens,” he added as an afterthought.
I watched as he set the glasses on the bedside table, his jaw clenched tight and his brow furrowed. His eyes never strayed toward me and failed to mask his hurt.
“I’m sorry for hurting you,” I whispered when he stepped back, but he just continued as if I hadn’t spoken.
“The water has the same powder I put in your drink yesterday,” he informed me. “If you would’ve just asked, I would’ve told you. I would’ve shown you.” He tossed something at me, and I briefly glanced at the rapid rehydration and electrolyte powder wording on the unused packet as he continued. “We used them whenever we had missions that dropped us in places with high altitudes.”
I nodded and repeated, “I’m sorry.”
He started walking away, toward the door, only to stop and ask, “What would I gain from drugging you?”
A dull laugh tumbled past my lips. “Nothing.”
“And yet, you still thought it.”
“I never said that.”
“You’re not denying it,” he tossed back just as quickly.
“You don’t understand,” I whispered.
“I don’t,” he agreed. “I have you here. I’m protecting you. I—” He drew in a sharp breath and seemed to war over what all to say before he finally finished, “And you thought I’d drug you.”
“I...” I hesitated, then held up the packet with a sad smile. “Look, it doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me,” he shot back.
“I don’t know what you want from me.” I told him. “I told you I’m sorry, and I am?—”
“The truth, Chloe,” he ground out. “Just give me the?—”
“It isn’t you,” I cried out. “None of this was about what I truly thought of you. It’s me. It’s that I can’t trust myself. Okay?”
His brow furrowed as his arms crossed over his chest, making him look scarily similar to Asher right then. “No,” he said with a shrug. “No, I’m not buying the it’s-not-you-it’s-me line on something like this.”
“It—” A harsh, humorless laugh bled from me as I wavered for long moments before everything came spilling out. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to not be able to trust yourself? It never made sense for Owen to want me; for him to choose me. I knew that . And I still let myself fall for him and his words because everything felt real with him. I was sure of it. But it was all a lie, and then there’s you.”
It felt like I was dying under my embarrassment as it raced to the surface, but I’d already begun, there was no stopping now. “Even though you’ve given me every reason to know I mean less than nothing to you, I still find myself—” A whimper of humiliation sounded in my throat as I dropped my face into my hands.
My head swam from the abrupt movement, but by the time I lowered my hands, the dizziness had mostly passed. I kept my stare on my crossed legs, unable to look up at the man in the room, when I continued. “I find myself falling into this delusional hope that you might feel even a fraction of what I’ve started feeling for you,” I confessed, then hurried to continue. “And even when you do or say something that reminds me how wrong I am, that hope sneaks back in, and it’s—it’s terrifying,” I admitted.
“It’s terrifying to know my own mind has failed me once before, and this time I’m fully aware it’s failing me again,” I said on a shamed whisper. “So, I didn’t consciously think you were drugging me. It was just one of those times when I started letting myself fall for the illusion again, only to remember why I couldn’t.”
“Because you thought I was drugging you,” Adam muttered, still not getting it. Not that I was sure I could blame him for that.
“Because I would’ve believed anything you said to me. I would’ve accepted anything you gave me,” I said, my too-tight chest pitching as I added, “Blindly. And I needed to bring myself back to reality.”
“The reality that I’d drug you.”
“That you don’t care about me,” I cried out, my stare lifting to his. “That you wouldn’t do something as sweet as make me a drink separate from what everyone else was having. That your touches and words don’t actually mean anything. That I all too easily fall for the lie because I’m just the na?ve girl who stays at home and clings to her books...right?”
Adam’s head bobbed a few times before he gave a quick shake and roughed a tattooed hand over his face.
“ You fall for the lie?” he asked. “What do you think I’ve been trying not to do? Why do you think I’ve been begging you for the truth—for the real you?”
My heart stalled before taking off in a furious rhythm, but I desperately tried taming the hope clinging to each beat as Adam started toward the bed, his voice low and grave when he continued.
“I keep thinking I know where she stands , so I try—and mostly fail—to keep where I’m really at in check. But after everything you just said, let’s get everything else out right here, right now. We’re not leaving anything to question.” He stopped just beside the foot of the bed, looking at it as if there were some invisible line he needed to stay behind, then lifted his amber eyes to me.
“Despite how much I wanted to hate you—and trust me, Bubbles, I wanted to hate you—all I’ve been able to think of since this sunshine-of-a-girl dropped me to my knees, is you.” He pressed a hand to his chest that pitched with his next exhale. “I wanted to get rid of you. I wanted the threat to my friends gone. But I became surprisingly possessive whenever Rush volunteered to interview you. I was unreasonably jealous every time I found Gray trying to take you home.”
If I hadn’t been so stunned by the confession pouring from him, I was sure I would’ve laughed at the asinine assumption. As it was, my words came out dull when I said, “Hudson never tried to take me home.” When Adam gave me an incredulous look, I added, “That’s just his personality. He doesn’t actually mean anything he says to me.”
“You sure about that?” he muttered as he crossed the boundary he’d set for himself, coming closer and closer as he continued. “See, I can’t help but watch you, so I’ve seen you interact with plenty of people, and I know you don’t think all that highly of yourself. But, Chloe, you attract every guy you so much as walk past. With a brief look or a simple word, you have them eating out of the palm of your hand.”
My eyes rolled only to widen when he knelt on the bed and slipped one of those large hands around the side of my neck, his thumb absently brushing along my jaw in a move so tender that I was sure my heart was going to give out.
Right there.
Or maybe I would just wake up soon because there was no way Adam Thatcher was gently holding me while saying the things he was right then.
“Gray’s personality? Yeah, I’ll give you that,” he continued softly. “But he was still trying to get you to go home with him until he realized I was battling things I didn’t wanna feel for the girl I couldn’t trust.”
I sucked in a strained breath when his thumb traced along my bottom lip and felt every one of my precariously built walls crumble when his stare followed the same pattern before meeting mine.
“Everything about you has driven me crazy from that first day,” he admitted like he still wasn’t sure if that was a good thing. “From your telling eyes and the way you blush, to your distracting smiles and the freckles I find myself counting whenever you’re near, to your ridiculous heels and shirts.”
“I love my shirts,” I muttered.
“Never said I didn’t.” The corner of his mouth twitched with amusement. “No matter how much I wanted to believe your reason for forcing that mask of joy was pure, I pushed against that belief and held tighter to my suspicions. Sure I was only seeing what I wanted because I was falling for a girl I’d been set on hating. And no matter how much I want to, I still don’t know how to fully trust you because it’s ingrained in me not to trust someone who’s hiding something. But you’re right, you don’t owe me whatever’s in your past.”
I was definitely dreaming.
And my swooning, melting-into-a-puddle self was going to be so mad when I woke up to angry, golden eyes.
“Now you know.” He swallowed thickly, a look crossing his face as if he just realized how vulnerable it was to have laid himself bare. “No matter what I wanted to feel or think, I couldn’t continue to.”
“This isn’t real.” The words tumbled free without permission, but just as shock and a hint of frustration started bleeding from him, I awkwardly and embarrassingly added, “Right? It can’t be. I’m...I’m gonna wake up soon, and this will all have...you know...”—I waved a hand in the barely-there space between us—“not happened.”
A wry smirk slowly tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Do you often dream about me, Bubbles?”
“N-no,” I stammered, the obvious lie making his smirk widen.
His other hand slowly wove into my hair, tipping my head back so he could search my eyes. “If this were a dream, would you stop me from kissing you?”
A shuddering breath left me. “No.”
He dipped his head so close that I became his air, and he became mine, but he held me achingly still, just a breath apart. “And since it isn’t?”
Seconds passed in tense anticipation before I tipped my head up, closing the last of the distance between us, and felt my soul come alive at that first brush of contact. The smallest press of my lips against his, and already I knew this was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before.
There was no chill clinging to my spine. The nausea I’d been fighting since the night before was blissfully absent as wings took flight in my stomach, making me feel lighter than I had in—well, ever. And the only thing on my mind as Adam slowly, teasingly parted my lips with his own, was this kiss.
Not a worry that I probably shouldn’t be doing this. Not a wonder of how we had gotten there. Not a suspicion that something was off.
Nothing had ever felt as right as kissing Adam Thatcher.
A shiver ran through my body and curled through my stomach when he effortlessly took control, drawing me closer and deepening the kiss until I was dizzy.
Dizzy off the way his mouth moved against mine. Dizzy off the way his muscled body felt pulling me against him. Dizzy off him.
Wait, no. I’m— “Dizzy,” I gasped and reluctantly broke away from the kiss when I realized it wasn’t just the kiss or the man making me lightheaded. “I’m dizzy,” I breathlessly repeated as I clutched at his forearm and shirt to keep myself grounded.
An apology left Adam like a curse as he leaned far enough away to search my eyes. “I wasn’t thinking.”
“No, no,” I said weakly and just barely remembered to stop before I shook my head. “I’m fine. I?—”
“Stop,” he said on an exasperated laugh. When I finally managed to focus on him, his tone shifted to something more serious. “Even when you have your mask in full force, I can see when something’s wrong. So, when I ask how you are, tell me. When you aren’t okay, don’t try to convince me you are.”
My grip on his shirt tightened at the genuine plea.
Okay.
The word was right there, on the tip of my tongue. It was such a small word and should’ve been so easy to say, but the words, “I can’t,” left me instead.
Dejection and a sliver of frustration filled his eyes, but Adam forced himself to nod as if he’d known to expect this.
“I-I need water,” I said as I shakily released my hold on him, my throat suddenly so dry as everything I’d kept inside for nearly my entire life bubbled to the surface.
Because I realized I wanted him to know. And even though Adam saw me in a way no one ever had—even though he could already see past the mask—it didn’t make it any less terrifying to bare myself in this way.
“Right,” he said, seeming to just remember why we were in here in the first place. “You need to drink this. Both of them, if you can,” he added, then nodded to the glass he was handing me. “But you have to drink all of this.”
I didn’t say anything as I forced myself to take a sip of the electrolyte-infused water. And then another.
But when Adam started standing, I grasped his hand to keep him there.
“I need to let you rest,” he told me as he used our joined hands to brush his knuckles across my cheek. “I’ll check on you soon.”
“When I was young,” I began, the words a weak whisper at best, “six, maybe seven, my little sister was diagnosed with Leukemia.”
Adam changed in an instant.
His body stilled and eyelids slowly shut before opening to reveal amber eyes filled with so much regret that even seemed to weigh his body down. As if one sentence was enough for him to know he’d had me pegged all wrong from the start.
“Chloe, don’t . . . you don’t owe me this,” he said softly, repentantly.
“But I don’t think I’ll ever be able to do what you’re asking,” I told him. “And I want you to know why.”
Gripping my hand tighter in his, he sank back to the bed so he was sitting beside me, silently waiting for me to continue.
“It was long and brutal,” I continued after a moment’s hesitation. “There were actually a couple times where we thought she was going to make it. And I should preface this by saying that my parents are great; they really are. But, obviously, they were fully focused on her, as they should’ve been,” I said with a subtle nod.
“And even at that young age, I understood my sister needed happiness because my parents were a wreck. I...I learned when something happened to me, my parents didn’t have the mental or emotional strength to deal with it,” I continued, my throat tightening at the shame I knew I shouldn’t feel over all this. “They needed joy to come from somewhere, so I became that joy.”
“Your mask,” he said in understanding, and my shoulders sagged.
“Yeah. And it’s fine,” I hurried to add, and knew from Adam’s slow, heavy inhale that he disagreed, but I continued before he could say anything. “I was always happy to be what they and my sister needed, but it never changed, so it just became...me.”
“It’s been . . . what?” Adam asked. “Twenty years?”
“Since she passed?” At his nod, I gave a weak shrug. “Almost. But my parents...they didn’t grieve or cope in a healthy way. They had locks put on the outside of my sister’s bedroom door as soon as she died that have never been touched. Her birthday and the anniversary of her death have always gone by without acknowledgment. A place is set for her at the table every night, even though she can’t be talked about. If anyone does mention my sister, even still, my parents fall into a startling spiral of grief before suddenly popping back up and going on with their lives like, What grief? What daughter? ”
A sound that was more unease than humor left me, even though I was desperately trying to explain away the skeletons of my family’s closet like they were no big deal. Like this wasn’t the first time I’d ever told someone about my parents’ harmful way of healing .
“They make her favorite foods every Thursday like clockwork,” I went on, “but again, we don’t bring up whose favorites they are. And if anything in our lives doesn’t go exactly perfect, you’d think they malfunctioned.”
“Malfunctioned,” Adam echoed, his brow furrowed in a silent question.
“They’re like happy robots now,” I told him. “Too great. Too normal. Picturesque.” I gave a soft laugh that was equally distressed and embarrassed as I wondered if that was how Adam saw me too. “When my dad didn’t get a promotion he was up for, he wrecked his car...into a tree.”
I quickly glanced away when Adam’s eyes widened, hurrying to explain, “He claimed he fell asleep, but I never believed that because when I didn’t make Valedictorian—which, I was nowhere near a candidate for and hadn’t even known they’d been counting on—both my parents went into a depression. Didn’t talk to me or anyone. My dad disappeared for a week before suddenly reappearing like nothing had ever happened. Then when I left teaching, no matter how hard I tried making it seem like it was what I wanted and for the best, my mom lost it. Started throwing the pots she was cooking in. Broke plates. Cried for days. And whenever any of our non-perfect events sneak back into our conversations, I have to redirect before everything falls apart again.”
“Chloe,” Adam began, my name conveying his shock. “Chloe, that isn’t...that isn’t okay. It never should’ve been put on you to keep your parents from falling apart. They need professional help?—”
He cut off so abruptly that I risked looking at him. But even though his stare seemed faraway, his emotions were practically pouring from him. Unease, worry, and...was that fear?
But he wouldn’t upset me with his thoughts. The only worry here was what he thought of my parents and me.
“It’s fine,” I assured him. “You’re not saying anything I don’t already think.”
Adam quickly blinked as if bringing himself back into the conversation, but his unease only seemed to grow as he cleared his throat. His stare shifted to the floor when he said, “I get how this became you . I get why . But that doesn’t make it okay.”
I shrugged, and even though he wasn’t looking at me, he must’ve sensed the movement because he added, “This isn’t something you brush off, Chloe.”
“But it is,” I told him.
“Your parents need help,” he repeated, those worried eyes finding mine.
“Trust me, I’m aware.” My head slanted ever so slightly as I backtracked, “I didn’t become aware of that until I was in high school, but I am. However, they can’t imagine why they would need therapy.”
He nodded, the movement slow and seeming absentminded. “Thank you for telling me,” he murmured, then pointedly looked at the glass in my hand. “Drink. Rest. I’ll check on you later.”
He slipped his hand from mine and pushed from the bed as he spoke, and before my stunned brain could begin to form a coherent thought, he’d stolen through the room without so much as a backward glance.
When the door shut behind him, I just stared at it, trying to sort through the absolute certainty that his words and that kiss had been more real than anything else in my life, and the impulsive worry that I’d just fallen for the trap I’d sworn not to.