Page 53 of Wish I Might
“Second chance,” he clarified helpfully.“You got any malt vinegar?”
“With Bailey?”Chloe asked, her eyes fierce.“You want a second chance with Bailey?”
“I do.”He said it calmly, but inside he was cursing a blue streak.If she spilled the beans to Bailey, he was fucked.
Or not fucked.Whatever.
“But you dumped her,” Chloe reminded him in a voice sharp enough to have several heads turning their way.“And you weremeanabout it.You threw herout.”
“I was wrong.”
“What?”
“I was wrong,” he repeated.“I was young and scared and I was mean and wrong, and—”
He cut himself off when she held up a hand.“What do you mean, you were scared?”
Taking a slow breath, because the only person he’d admitted this to up to this point was his therapist—and because Chloe was a lot scarier than Dr.Samuels—he ignored the hole in his gut, opened his mouth, and prepared to bare his soul.“She loved me so much, Chloe.”
If he’d expected that to garner sympathy, he was doomed to disappointment.Her gaze went sulfuric again.“I know.And youbrokeherheart.”
Though his own heart ached at the reminder, he continued calmly.“I loved her just as much, just as hard, and I didn’t know what to do with it.It had such weight, her feelings as much as mine.It just got overwhelming.”
“And your answer to that was to dump her?”She sneered.“Coward.”
“I was a coward,” he admitted, and almost smiled when she jerked in surprise.“When Kyle told me about seeing her behind the student union with Graham—”
“Another fucking asshole.”
He couldn’t disagree.“I just thought, well, there’s my out.And I was so relieved.”
“Relieved?”she echoed, steam all but coming out of her ears.
“For about a day,” he added.“Then I realized I’d thrown her away—thrown us away—because some asshole told me a lie, and I was too much of a pussy to face my own feelings.”
She jabbed a finger at him.“You knew he was lying.”
He nodded.That was something else he’d had to own up to in therapy.“Yeah.I took the easy out, Chloe.It’s the biggest mistake I’ve ever made, and I’ve paid for it.”
“Not enough,” she snapped with zero sympathy.“Do you have any idea what you did to her?She didn’t get out of bed for weeks.Didn’t go to class, barely ate.She almost didn’t graduate.”
The hole in his gut widened.“I know.”
“And now you’re, what, trying to make up for it by doing this…this…”
“Group project,” Jesse said helpfully.
“I’ll be damned if I let you.”Her face was flushed, her eyes blazing.“I’ll be damned.She says she’s over you, that it’s just sex and it doesn’t mean anything.But I know her, and you’re going to break her heart again, and—” She stopped abruptly.“Let go of me.”
He unclamped his fingers from her forearm—he hadn’t even been aware of grabbing it.“Sorry.I’m sorry.”He reached for his beer with a shaky hand.
She frowned at him.“What’s wrong with you?”
He sipped the beer to wet his suddenly dry throat.“You think she still has feelings for me?”
“Of course, she does.”Chloe shook her head in exasperation.“You’re the goddamn love of her life, but I’m not letting you break her heart again.”
He gulped the rest of the beer while hope, wild and dangerous, stampeded over his heart.
