Chapter 11
CHLOE
I’m hyper aware of Kit walking beside me as we make our way to my hotel room.
I don’t think it’s fair to just slope off – not that I actually want to do that – but also, it feels like a friendly gesture to invite him to my place this time, instead of expecting to go to his again.
He’s not been in my domain yet and I guess I want to let him in a little more. I think he probably deserves that. And I desperately need a distraction from the memories of that horrible day I’d described to him in the restaurant.
I can’t believe I cried in public like that.
Letting us into the room, I toss my bag onto the table near the door, then slide off my shoes and line them up carefully, aware of Kit doing the same thing beside me.
Then I walk over and sit on the edge of my bed, feeling it dip as he sits down next to me.
When I turn to look at him, he’s gazing at me with his brow furrowed, like he’s not sure if he should speak. Maybe he’s worried I’ll cry on him again.
Or maybe he’s not worried about that. Maybe he’s genuinely being a friend right now and keeping quiet so this can play out the way I need it to.
I really appreciated his kindness back there in the restaurant. I really thought he’d hate having to deal with my onslaught of emotion – he certainly would have back in the day – but he was a real sweetheart about it.
It must have been uncomfortable for him, but he didn’t make me feel stupid or embarrassed about it.
He just took care of me.
It had surprised me. In a good way.
And now I feel like I owe him an apology for ruining his night.
‘I’m so sorry about losing it back there,’ I say, painfully aware of the shake in my voice. ‘I guess talking about it opened a floodgate I’d been holding back. Dislodged an emotional blockage.’
‘Emotional blockage. Yeah. I get it,’ he says, giving a nod.
‘Pretty sexy, huh?’ I say, shamefaced.
He grins at that. ‘You are, yes, Dasher. The sexiest. And really fucking brave to stand up and face everyone. Especially when the selfish prick shit the bed the way he did.’
I can’t help but smile at that and I let out a long, low sigh, feeling some more of the stress I’ve been carrying leave my body. ‘I don’t know. He’s not really a bad person. He just didn’t handle things well.’
‘You don’t need to make excuses for him, you know. He’s a grown man and he should know better than to treat you like that.’
‘I don’t think he meant to hurt me,’ I say lamely.
Kit folds his arms. ‘But he did and you have every right to be pissed off with him.’
‘I know, but we were friends for so long and, despite everything, I still care about him.’
He frowns. ‘But there’s no way you’d ever take him back, right?’
I pause for a moment, but I’m sure of my answer to that.
‘No. He seems very sure he wants to be with Deacon – the guy he cheated on me with. Anyway, even if he did come crawling back, how could I ever trust him again? I’d always be wondering whether he’d suddenly announce he’d fallen for someone else again.
It wouldn’t have been so bad if he’d been upfront about how he felt about Deacon when he first started having feelings for him, but he didn’t say a word.
It’s the deceit that hurts so much. I genuinely thought he was my best friend, as well as my lover, and that he’d never do anything to hurt me. But he wasn’t and he did.’
‘Then think of it as dodging a bullet.’
Trying to order my thoughts, I gaze at Kit, taking in his furrowed brow and the fierce emotion in his dark eyes.
This is a side to him I’ve never seen before – an emotionally mature side. He’s really listening to me and being supportive.
Maybe he’s not as self-centred as I thought he was.
He’s clearly way more sensitive than most people at uni – including me, I’m ashamed to say – gave him credit for.
But he’s hung on to the roguish charm I remember too.
It makes for a heady mix.
This thought brings back memories of laughing with him a lot when we first got together.
He had this way of looking at me that just cracked me up every time.
A kind of wicked twinkle in his eye. I loved that.
It was the most genuine thing about him, that grin, especially when he couldn’t maintain his usual I’m too cool to find anything funny bullshit act and accidentally showed me his real feelings.
He made me feel like I was the only one who truly understood him when he let his guard down like that.
Not that it happened that often.
We’re still gazing at each other and I could swear something changes in his expression. I’m not sure what it is though. It’s a subtle shift.
As if he’s sensed my confusion, he looks away and leans back on his hands, adopting a more casual pose.
Perhaps this is all getting a bit too emo and downbeat.
I have a sudden urge to wipe my mind clean and start the evening again.
But before I can open my mouth to change the subject, he asks, ‘What is it that made you want to settle down so young, do you think?’
I shrug and try to relax my posture too.
‘I guess I’ve always needed to feel absolutely secure about my relationships.
My parents set a brilliant example of what a solid, respectful partnership should look like and I wanted that for myself.
They met each other at school and they’ve been together ever since. ’
I shift a little, getting more comfortable. ‘I always imagined that would happen to me. I felt like it could. It was my ideal. I consider myself a loyal person and when I decide I like you, that’s it, you’re in.’
‘Except when you decide that person isn’t in any more.’
I look round to catch his eye. ‘Are we talking about you again by any chance?’ I ask, making my tone light and flirtatious.
His eyebrows raise and pinch together and I see a flash of amusement in his eyes. ‘We might be.’
Breaking my gaze, I flop back onto the bed and stare up at the ceiling. ‘Yeah well, honestly, when we got together, I really wanted it to work out with you. I really liked you, but it didn’t seem like you had the same attitude to relationships that I did and that worried me.’
‘Don’t you think it’s a good thing to have lots of experiences before you settle down though?’
‘I didn’t at the time, clearly. And I’ve always been pretty single-minded.’
‘No shit.’
I turn to smile at him as he flops down next to me.
‘And I’m guessing What’s-his-face made you feel like he was as grown-up as you and he took your relationship very seriously,’ he says, with a hint of droll derision in his voice.
‘Yeah, I’d say that was true. He totally love-bombed me when we first got together. I felt really special and seen. Wanted.’ I smile sadly.
‘What a creep,’ he jokes.
I have to laugh at that. ‘It’s all a gamble anyway, right?
We can’t ever know how things are going to work out.
’ I prop my head on my hand, my elbow digging into the mattress.
‘Can you please use your vast wealth to get someone to invent a crystal ball that actually works so we can see the future? That would be a real gift to humanity.’
‘Would it though? Wouldn’t life be deathly dull if we knew how everything was going to turn out? We’d just end up spending all our time waiting to die.’
‘At least we could prepare ourselves,’ I point out.
‘But to what end? Especially if you know your time will be up quickly. Imagine living your life knowing that. It’d be torture.’
I think about this for a second. ‘But maybe you’d make the most of every moment you had left.’
‘Shouldn’t we be doing that anyway?’
‘Yeah, maybe.’
‘Perhaps we’d both lost our sense of adventure if we were prepared to settle down with our ex-partners,’ he says thoughtfully.
‘Honestly, I was surprised when you said you were going to get married,’ I say. ‘It didn’t seem like the sort of thing you do. You must have been really into Katya if you got down on one knee and popped the question.’
‘Well, yeah, I was.’ He pauses and I get the impression he’s trying to gauge how much more he wants to talk about this. ‘But it didn’t exactly happen like that.’
‘How did it happen then?’
‘She sort of asked me. But in a roundabout way. We were both drunk and she was talking about how her best friend had just got engaged – to a fucking Scandinavian prince – and she was talking about how cool it would be for us to get married too, and somehow we ended up deciding to do it, for a laugh.’
‘A laugh?’ I’m horrified by this.
He shrugs, but I can tell he’s a bit embarrassed to admit to it. ‘Yeah. It sounds pretty stupid now in the cold light of day. But she texted her friends the minute we agreed to do it so it was kind of set in stone from that point on.’
‘And you were okay with that?’
Again, he shrugs. ‘It felt right at the time. I mean, I loved her. And she really wanted it. So I figured, why not? It was something new to experience.’
I widen my eyes. ‘Oh my God. You were going to get married because you were bored.’
‘Not exactly,’ he says heatedly, apparently horrified by that suggestion. But then he pauses and appears to think about it. ‘Maybe there was an element of that. But I felt ready to settle down too.’
I look at him, taking in his handsome profile, still not quite able to believe we’ve bumped into each other again the way we have. My insides do a strange little twist.
‘Why are you smiling at me like that?’ he says, when he becomes aware of me staring at the side of his head and turns to face me again.
‘I was just thinking it’s good to see how much you’ve grown since university.’
‘Grown up you mean?’
‘No. Grown as a person. You’re more self-aware than you were back then.’
‘Yeah, well, in retrospect, us splitting up probably had something to do with that. It woke me up to the fact that not everything was under my control in the way I thought it had been.’
‘Really? I had no idea. I thought you were totally cool about it.’