Chapter 8
CHELSEA
Seamus rubbed his temples with the fingers of his left hand as he held my phone against his ear. Maybe it wasn’t kind of me to pass the phone to Seamus, but I couldn’t deal with Eli right now. Plus, I knew my brother would probably just get in his truck and drive right over here if I didn’t.
It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Seamus, I knew. It was that he didn’t trust me. Indignation bloomed hot in my cheeks. I was a grown woman.
One who’d given no one a reason to trust me.
Still, I was sick of my siblings controlling my life—or trying to.
But I made an effort to relax. Seamus was Eli’s best friend. He knew how to handle him.
Seamus strode away from the ridge. Eli’s voice still raged through the earpiece, though I couldn’t hear his words. Then Seamus seemed to consider something. He came back and took my hand.
For a moment, my stomach fluttered. What was he—
He pulled me back onto the grass. He wasn’t looking at me—he was listening to Eli. But he wanted to keep me away from the edge. Maybe I should have been insulted, like he didn’t trust me, but it didn’t feel like that. He was moving me away from the edge because it was dark.
Dangerous.
And he wanted me safe.
Then Seamus walked away from me.
“She’s fine,” I heard Seamus’s voice, that rolling gravel sound riding on the breeze toward me.
He was over by the edge of the clearing now, his back to me, and really, I should turn away, look back out at the beautiful view.
The moon was bright, nearly full. But for some reason, I couldn’t stop watching Seamus.
He was wearing a cable-knit sweater and work khakis—I knew he ran a contracting business with his dad—but this looked like a blend of office and outdoor wear. In that sweater, he looked more like some kind of fisherman. A handsome Irish fisherman just come home from sea.
Seamus grasped the back of his neck with his hand and looked over at me as he spoke, too low for me to hear. In the shadows, I couldn’t quite see his face. But suddenly, I was blasted with a memory. Only a brief flicker, like a cut-off video clip, but so clear it took my breath away.
It was the night of the crash. Seamus was driving the truck. Me feeling loopy next to him, and something else, too. A deep, dark self-loathing running under the loose avoidance of my tipsiness.
I knew Seamus had swooped in and taken me away from the bad decision I’d been about to make by getting into Mia’s car that night. He knew I’d been about to do something stupid. That I should maybe care about what happened to me.
But there had been another feeling that night, I remembered now.
I’d been angry with him for thinking he knew better than me.
And… oh god. Shame flooded through me. I’d wanted him to get in trouble with Eli.
I’d wanted to exert some control over my life by hurting him.
I wanted to hurt Eli, for thinking he knew best.
“Seamus,” I said. “Let me talk to him again.” I couldn’t fix what I did, but I could tell Eli to back off now.
I could just tell him the truth. That would be enough.
I strode over to Seamus just as he turned around, and I realized I’d come too close.
For a moment I stumbled back, and Seamus reached out to steady me, his broad hand spreading across my back.
Eli was still talking, but I could see now that Seamus’s attention was on me. We were so close I could smell him. The homey, wool smell of his sweater. The spice of some kind of shampoo or deodorant.
Him, warm and clean and good.
I should have stepped back, but I was frozen to the spot. God, he was so tall, everything about him so long. I’d felt the way my hand had been enveloped by his. But I didn’t really grasp the sheer size of him, the length of his limbs; his tapered fingers making my phone look half its size.
A soft, prickling heat ran through me.
It hadn’t all been about lashing out that night. I’d wanted him, too.
Seamus’s eyes were still on mine, his hand still on my back.
“Yeah, she’s okay. I think it’s just quiet out here,” Seamus said. If he didn’t still have my phone to his ear, I’d have thought he was speaking to me. “Hell, you come out here when you need a break, Eli.”
Seamus dropped his hand, as if realizing it was still pressed against me.
He turned away from me too quickly.
I wanted to grab his hand, to make him turn around and hold me like that again. The feeling was so strong I had to fold my arms to keep from doing it.
But I wasn’t the same flirtatious, fake-carefree girl I was before, was I?
The one who could snag any single guy at the bar, if only for a brainless make-out session.
Now? Where did I get off thinking Seamus might still even have any attraction for me?
Pain ran through me, only it wasn’t just physical this time.
I would never be that person again. That part of my life was over now.
But good riddance. I didn’t want to be her anymore.
And I didn’t want to get in between Seamus and Eli. They had the kind of easy, real friendship I’d never known. How could I ever have considered doing something to wreck it?
“Yeah,” Seamus said, turning back to me. “Okay. Here.” He handed my phone back to me.
I took it from him, this time being careful to make sure we didn’t touch, shame washing over me at my past behavior.
“Chels?” Eli said in my ear.
“Yeah.”
“You’re fucking crazy, you know that?”
“Yeah. I know.”
“Listen, the only reason Cass hasn’t put out an APB is because Griff said he saw you, that you were going for a drive. But that was hours ago.”
I looked at Seamus, but he’d taken a step back and had pulled out his own phone. Whatever moment we’d had had before was long gone, and it needed to stay that way.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just needed some time to think, and this was the only place I could think of where no one would come looking for me. Seamus doesn’t… he doesn’t talk a lot. He doesn’t ask me questions I don’t know how to answer.”
Seamus’s back was to me now, his broad, sweater-clad back glowing in the moonlight. He looked good in that sweater. Gorgeous, actually.
“Yeah,” Eli said. “He’s good like that. And it’s only because it’s Seamus that I’m not there dragging you away.”
“And because I don’t need a bodyguard?”
“Yeah. That too.”
“I’ll be home in a bit, okay? Please tell everyone to stop worrying. I need everyone to trust that I know what I’m doing.”
There was a pause, where I almost heard Eli make the decision. “Okay. But only because you’re with Seamus.”
“Eli—”
“We’re just worried, Chels.”
“I know,” I said. “But I promise I’m going to be fine, okay? I feel better now than I have in a long time.”
I was surprised at the words, but I realized they were the truest I’d spoken in a long time. Maybe it was being here, or maybe it was the weight of knowing I couldn’t get up to my old tricks if I wanted to—not without scaring people. But I felt free in a way I hadn’t in years.
“Can you call me when you get home so I know you’re okay?” Eli asked.
I couldn’t help smiling. “I’ll call you tomorrow. How’s that?”
This time I felt like I could hear him biting his tongue. Eli wasn’t used to not getting his way.
“Trust me, okay? For once?”
I knew, with him onside reassuring everyone I was okay, everyone else would probably leave me alone too.
He let out a breath. “Okay, Chels.”
After saying our goodbyes, I hung up the phone, feeling like I’d won some small but major victory. I could go home now and no one would be hovering at my apartment. I could have the peace I was looking for.
But as I pocketed my phone, I realized I didn’t want to leave yet.
I cleared my throat, and Seamus turned around.
It wasn’t up to me.
But Seamus surprised me by speaking next. “Do you want to stay for dinner?”
I was so surprised by the way my stomach flipped that for a moment I didn’t say anything.
“Not…” he pressed his hand to the back of his neck once more. “Nothing else, Chelsea. Just food.”
“Right. Of course,” I said. Of course I didn’t have the same pull I used to, with men.
I kept forgetting that. My scar seemed to burn on my face.
Had I even wanted it to be something else?
That wasn’t the way forward. I turned, stuffing my arms into my elbows and taking a few strides away toward the ridge.
“It’s not because of you, and… what you look like,” Seamus said behind me, fully reading my mind. “It’s just… Eli’s my best friend. He asked me to look out for you.”
A flicker of anger rushed through me. Just when I thought I’d gotten Eli to fucking trust me.
I walked back to him. “Eli’s not in charge of my life,” I said.
I knew I sounded like a petulant kid. I also sounded like I’d wanted him to ask me for dinner for some other reason besides being friendly.
Embarrassment added to the heat in my face. Thank God he couldn’t see it.
“No, he’s not. But I don’t have a lot of friends, Chelsea. I’ve got some poker buddies, but we don’t exactly open up to each other. Eli’s the only one. And I’d rather not fuck that up.”
I almost said, yeah, well, I don’t have anyone.
Not anymore. But in the moonlight, I could see the pain etched across Seamus’s face.
He’d gone through some bad stuff. Right then, a memory hit me from when I was a kid.
Seamus—or rather, the absence of Seamus.
He stopped coming to our house for a while, and Eli was gone all the time with him.
My parents and Cass were teary-eyed, and even Griff had seemed less quiet and more…
somber. When I finally got up the courage to ask Mom, she had to explain to me that Seamus’s brother had died.
I felt my shoulders drop. Oh my God. I’d completely forgotten. And then his Mom…
A lump formed in my throat, so hard and fast, and I felt tears brimming.