CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Dublin
The drive home is a blur.
Not because I’m not paying attention, but rather because I’m paying attention to everything.
The seams on the leather of my steering wheel. The jolt of the potholes. Anything to distract me from the faint scent of him still clinging to me. It’s on me. In me. Under my skin in a way I don’t know how to shake.
I even try cracking the window, hoping the cool air will clear my head and wash away the scent.
It doesn’t. Nothing does, because every time I try to think about anything else, I’m back to last night. His hands. His voice. The way he said he wouldn’t take it back.
Christ. You know how to make a man forget the bad by making him feel incredible.
I grip the wheel tighter. Focus, Dublin.
But by the time I pull into my apartment complex, my thoughts haven’t settled. They’ve only gotten louder and more impossible to ignore.
I park crooked, but don’t care to fix it. The second I step out of the car, my shoes squish against the pavement, water still trapped from last night. And of course, I’m just wearing Cole’s T-shirt, but the walk of shame to my apartment is short so I’m sure no one will notice.
Except.
Willa is standing there, arms crossed, eyes wide with a mixture of relief and anger. What the hell?
“Oh my God,” she says rushing toward me.
“I thought you’d been axe murdered.” But she pulls up short as she takes in what I’m wearing.
I can see the awareness slowly seep in as her expression shifts from disbelief to fury.
“You disappear, don’t answer your phone and make me worried sick, and then show up wearing that and looking like you just got laid within an inch of your life? ”
I wince as she bats a hand playfully at my arm.
“It’s a . . . situation.”
Willa freezes. Then it hits her what I just said. “Oh.” Another pause. “Oh. Oh. Oh.” Her hands go to her mouth like she’s trying—and failing—to contain herself. “You slept with him.”
I drag a hand over my face. “Don’t ask.”
“I didn’t ask. I stated.” She motions at me. “You told me with your whole situation going on here.”
I groan and brush past her toward the building. “I don’t have the bandwidth for this right now. I’m tired—”
“I wonder why,” she says, a smile in her voice as she falls into step beside me. “And you absolutely can. You vanish all night, show up in his T-shirt, and think I’m not getting details?”
“I can’t.” I unlock the front door.
“You mean you won’t.” She follows me inside.
“I mean I physically don’t have the capacity to process it yet.” I toss my shit on the washing machine off the kitchen and when I turn around, find her sitting at the counter there, her expression telling me I am not getting out of this one.
“Can’t process it yet. Hmm. Too good or too bad?” I shoot her a look and she grins. “Too good, then.”
I don’t answer, which is an answer enough.
“Jesus,” she murmurs. “Wow. We’re going to need coffee for this.”
“Already one step ahead of you,” I say, holding up a coffee pod and placing it in the machine.
Besides, messing with the coffee machine gives me a chance to distract myself from replaying everything in my head again.
But apparently the distraction isn’t long-lived seeing as the next thing I recall is looking up and seeing Willa sitting there, arms crossed, eyebrows raised and a smirk playing on her lips as she watches me.
“Reminiscing?”
“No. Yes.” I shake my head. “It’s complicated.”
“As it often is. Try me.” Her voice is gentler now, the I told you so in her tone, by the wayside.
“I don’t even know where to start.”
She nods like she expected that. “Then don’t start with him. Start with you.”
I close my eyes. Exhale. “I made a mistake.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.” I nod, as if the action is going to emphasize how I know I’m supposed to feel but actually don’t. “No. I don’t know.”
She nods again. “Well, at least that’s honest.”
I laugh under my breath. “Great. Glad my emotional crisis is productive.”
“So my assumption is right?”
I bark out a laugh. Why am I suddenly nervous? “Yes. That would be a correct assumption.”
“Well, no one can say you aren’t a determined woman to finish what you started and get what you wanted.”
“It wasn’t like that at all.” Her eyebrow ticks up. “There was this . . . thing,” I say, not wanting to betray Cole’s trust and spill about his dad. “And I was worried about him and followed him home and we fought and then—”
“You fought and then you fucked.” She nods. “Can’t say there’s a better combination than that.”
“It’s . . .”
“Complicated. So you’ve said.” She takes the coffee I slide over to her as I begin a cup for myself. “And now you’re spiraling because I’m assuming it was great—”
“Better than great.”
“Noted.” She chuckles. “And you want to do it again, but holy shit, flashing lights, sirens going off, five alarm fire . . . this is a major conflict of interest.”
I draw in a deep breath and stare at the ceiling for a beat. “No matter how I spin or justify it, yes.”
“Which is part of the reason for this spiral while the other part is you freaking out over why this man, of all the men I’ve ever seen you with, is the only one who’s ever pushed you to buck the box you perpetually stay within.”
“It was a bad call. A very bad call.”
“But a call you’d make again if the chance arose, right?”
If you could take it back . . . would you?
Would I?
I meet her eyes and she knows the answer.
“I figured as much. So, here are your options,” she says, ticking them off on her fingers. “You tell your boss. You come clean, get ahead of it, deal with the fallout.”
I flinch. “I can’t . . .”
“Or,” she says, “you walk away. From the case. From him. From all of it.”
“That’s not an option.”
“Which part of it?”
All of it. But the words never make it to my lips, because that option isn’t feasible. I hang my head for a beat and shake it. “I’ve worked really hard for my job and my reputation.”
“I know.” Willa’s voice softens. “But Dub, when’s the last time you let yourself work this hard for anything outside of your career?” She reaches out and squeezes my hand. “When’s the last time you dated someone longer than a few weeks or let a man matter enough to disrupt your routine?”
“That’s not fair.”
“No?” she asks gently. “Because from where I’m sitting, you built yourself a very controlled life. A good one. Successful and safe. I know you’re not the white picket fence type of girl, but it’s okay to admit all this structure has also contributed to you being a little lonely.”
I draw in a deep breath and know I don’t have an argument for that.
There was a time I thought I’d have more than this. More than takeout at my desk at nine o’clock at night. More than airport lounges and hotel bars and work becoming the thing that filled every empty space because it was easier than admitting there wasn’t much waiting for me outside of it.
Relationships were distractions. Messy and temporary.
It’s not that I gave up on wanting one completely, but it also means I’ve lived the past few years not focusing on it. You can’t miss something if you don’t have it or care about it.
And I hate that one freaking night with Cole has me even thinking these ludicrous thoughts. Like . . . we hooked up. He didn’t regret it. Why is my head suddenly filled with this nonsense?
“You want to know the worst part?” I ask quietly. “Last night made me realize how much I miss feeling something, if that makes sense.”
“It makes total sense. I guess the question is if anyone could have made you feel that way or if it was Cole in particular. He’s the one who made you feel that way. The kiss to end all kisses,” she says quietly. Knowingly. Sympathetically. “It’s almost like it was inevitable.”
My head whips up. Now. Later. Does it matter when it’s inevitable? Her words match his. I swallow over the distaste in my mouth. “Pretty pathetic when you say it like that.”
“Not at all.”
“Nowhere in your scenarios did you say he stays,” I say.
She looks at me, hands cupping her mug, teeth sunk into her bottom lip. “I didn’t not say it, but this is a zero-sum game for you when for him it’s . . . I don’t know what it is.”
I shake my head and chuckle disbelievingly. I left Cole’s house because of all the reasons she’s stating, and now I almost want to argue with her over the same things.
“What if I don’t do either of the things you suggested?”
“Then you’re playing a dangerous game.”
I stare at the floor, at my shoes that are still wet—evidence of a night I can’t undo.
“You sure know how to rain on my parade,” I mutter.
“Pretty sure you already did that yourself. I didn’t mean to, Dub.
I just . . . I know how hard you worked to get where you are.
I also know you deserve someone who makes you come home like this.
” She gestures at me. “Happy. Wrecked. Glowing and completely screwed. I want all of those things for you.”
“Yeah.” My voice breaks. “Me too.”
“How did you leave it?” she asks quietly.
I let out a breath. “Open-ended?”
“Is that a question or a stated fact?”
I shrug. “More like an I told him it can’t happen again.”
“And?”
“And he didn’t believe me.” I swallow. “He told me he didn’t have any regrets.”
Her brows lift slightly. “Do you believe you?”
I don’t answer because I can’t. Because the truth is sitting there, loud and unavoidable.
No. I don’t believe me.
The look on her face says she knows as much. “What is it you want, Dublin?”
“It was one night. I don’t get to want anything from it.”
“Wanting doesn’t need permission.” The words settle in the space between us. “But it does come with consequences.”
“Fuck.” I scrub my hands over my face. “I don’t know.”
Willa studies me for a long moment. “But you do want there to be something.”
It’s not a question.
I shake my head immediately. “I can’t. That’s—no.”
She doesn’t argue or push. She just watches and waits. And because she’s Willa, because she knows me better than anyone, she doesn’t need me to say it. Not when it’s written all over me. In the way I haven’t changed out of his shirt or stopped thinking about him since I left.
In the way my body still remembers every second of last night.
“I don’t know,” I repeat.
But that’s a lie.
I know exactly what I want.
And that’s the problem.