Chapter 30
THIRTY
LEO
I give my Calc II section a pop quiz this morning because I enjoy watching panic bloom, then immediately work through the answers with them so they can actually leave campus before conspiring to murder me.
They shuffle out early, grateful, and I text Dex to see where he is and what he’s up to.
Dexter, 10:45 a.m.: Free until 12:30 — lunch?
It’s 10:45 and yes, I could eat.
Leo, 10:45 a.m.: Nico’s?
Dexter, 10:45 a.m.: Bet.
We arrive just before eleven, order, and Dex heads to the back while I duck into the bathroom—three minutes alone, wash my hands, shake off the rest of the chill from the walk over.
I look at myself in the mirror and tell the face looking back that he’s a sexy motherfucker, because obviously.
Then I step out and walk straight into my own trouble.
Dex is standing at the take-out counter when I come back, his head tilted, eyes fixed on something in the corner across from us. He doesn’t even try to hide the way his jaw tightens when he sees me.
“Bro, is that who I think it is?” he asks, nodding toward the wall where a couple sits crowded in on themselves like they own whatever private bubble they have contrived in the chaos of the place.
My line of sight follows.
For a beat I don’t register the rest of the world: the chatter, the clatter of dishes, the Nico’s worker calling out names for take-out orders.
All I see is Tori — and the man across from her.
Chase.
The last person in the world I want, or expect, to see sitting with her.
He looks… calm. Not the loud, angry, impossible-to-ignore version of himself. Calm enough that for a second I think maybe I’m misreading a hallucination.
Tori is listening to him. Not flinching. Not rolling her eyes. Her expression is soft and contained.
Tori can handle herself. She doesn’t need rescuing. She’s not some fragile woman who will be easily manipulated by Chase’s charm.
I tell myself all of that in the span of a second.
Then, he reaches across the tiny table and takes her hand.
The stupid normalcy of that gesture—just a hand, a casual squeeze—hits me like a punch. It isn’t the grab of a jealous ex. It isn’t the claim made by someone used to getting what he wants through sheer force of will.
It’s the softer proof of the thing I cannot un-see:
She lets him touch her. She lets him hold her.
For an instant I am ridiculous with fury and the kind of childish ownership that’s ugly and hot and stupid all at once.
My chest tightens. The air feels wrong. I can taste bile.
Dex sees it. Sees Chase’s hand holding hers. Sees the rage boiling within me.
“Leo?” he asks.
I should get a grip.
I should step back. I should walk away.
Instead, something in me—a possession that has nothing to do with logic and everything to do with the stupid human animal part of me—pushes forward.
“No,” I think. “No way. Not today.”
I take a step.
Dex squeezes my shoulder—an attempt to stop me—but the motion is meant to buy time. Meant to say, maybe think about whether you want to be that guy.
I shrug his hand off like it’s an afterthought. My strides carry me toward their table before my brain catches up.
She is not his to touch, I think. Not his to hold. Not his to love.
Then, as if a current snaps something into place, the thought that makes the rest of it honest and terrible slides under everything else:
She is mine.
Not in any legal sense. Not in some ownership logic that would make me ashamed.
In the blunt, aching way of needing someone so much it rearranges your insides: that small, private corner of me that stops at the name Victoria Foster and feels like home. She has woven herself so quietly into my days that I didn’t notice until the absence of her is a room too large to stand in.
Only I can touch her. Hold her. Love her.
And I do. I fucking love her.
By the time I’m within one table of reaching them, literally five steps away from ripping his hand off of hers and telling him to back the fuck off, I hear Chase say something that makes my entire world tilt like a bad ride.
“If you’d just come home, we can fix this. Together.”
But what freezes me in place is her answer.
It’s immediate. No hesitation.
“I’ll go back with you.”
The sound of those five words hollow everything out inside me. The syllables sit between them like a promise, maybe a surrender, and the joy on his face spreads like sunlight across a wet street.
She smiles at him in the way that makes him soft and victorious and sure.
The truth hits me like a freight train—she means it.
She chose him.
Him.
I exhale. My legs move—not toward them, but away—because I cannot stand there and watch that tableau any longer.
I came here to grab food and head back to my best friend’s office for an hour of uninterrupted bro time, but instead I find myself in the exact same position I was in just a few years ago.
In love with a woman who has chosen someone else.
She deserves happily ever after. And clearly, I am not it.
I slip back through the crowd toward Dexter. People brush past—a shoulder here, a backpack thud there—and the ordinary overcrowding of the restaurant gives me anonymity.
If she glances up from across the room she doesn’t catch me. She doesn’t see my face go blank. She doesn’t see the way my fingers curl until the knuckles go white.
Dex is waiting, our lunch in hand, eyebrows lifted.
“You okay, man?” he asks again, with the genuine concern of someone who knows you well enough to read the train wreck before it happens.
I don’t meet his eyes. I can’t. I rub a hand over my face because if I look at him he’ll know I am undone and I… I just can’t right now.
I let out a breath that sounds like a laugh and say the only thing I can at this very moment.
“Just get me the fuck out of here.”