Wright Kind of Love, page 11
“I’m not making the same deal,” he argued. “I’m making the opposite. I’m saying enough is enough. I’ve put in my time. It’s irreconcilable. I cannot work with him every day anymore. Not if he wants to play games with my relationship.”
“So, you’re going to give up on your dream for me?”
“That’s not—”
“It is,” I snapped. “That is exactly what’s happening.”
“Harley.”
He reached for me, and I backed up. I loved him. I loved him so much. But I could not deal with this right now. I couldn’t be the scapegoat to his anger with his dad. I wasn’t going to be the reason for any of this. He’d have to confront it for what it really was eventually. And if I was the reason, then we had a bigger problem in our relationship.
His hand dropped, and he looked hurt at my retreat. “Why are you so mad about this?”
“The fact that you don’t know is telling.”
He frowned. “Don’t do that. Don’t act like I should be able to read your mind.”
“I always thought you could before,” I said softly.
“Normally, we are on the same page.”
“Yeah.”
He ground his teeth together. “I thought you’d be pleased that I didn’t give in to my dad.”
“Chase, I hate your dad. I hate my dad. I want them to both suffer. What I don’t want is for you to make decisions without me.” I sighed. “I thought that was the point of being together. We were going to do this together.”
“We are doing this together. That’s why I brought you to meet my dad.”
“And now, you’re quitting your job because of me. Don’t you remember when I got into Harvard?”
“What does that have to do with this?”
“You told me to take you out of the situation. To look at Harvard without you or my dad or anything. Did I want it? Was this how I wanted things to go? You said it was too important for me to decide that I wanted to stay in Lubbock for you. I needed to decide what I actually wanted.”
“Yeah but—”
“This is just as important.”
“I mean, of course I want to work at the company. That’s what I’ve worked toward my whole life.” He crossed his arms. “But I can’t do it under his stipulations. I’m not giving you up for that.”
I took a deep breath. He was still too upset to see what was right in front of him, and I wasn’t getting through to him. I wanted to stay. I wanted to talk all of this out. I probably could. I could bang my head against the wall until we were both blue in the face, but he wouldn’t see what I was saying.
“You’re going to regret it, and you’re going to blame me,” I told him, throwing his words back in his face.
He winced at the words. “So be it.”
I closed my eyes at those words. That wasn’t going to work for me. I’d wanted to be with Chase for so long. The last couple of months had felt like a fever dream. So much Chase time. Everything was perfect.
But his immediate reaction worried me.
A gross overreaction to something that I wasn’t sure Arnold could even enforce. And if Chase went through with it, one day, he’d blame me. Just like he’d thought that I would blame him if I didn’t take the time to decide if I wanted to go to Harvard. But I’d taken that time, and now he needed it as well.
I shook my head. “That’s not okay with me. You know what? I’m going to go stay with Bailey tonight.”
“What?” he asked.
“Just take the time to think about it, Chase. We went longer in the past.”
Then, I grabbed my purse off of the table and walked out the door. My heart constricted painfully as I got into my Kia and pulled away. Had I made the right choice?
All I’d wanted for the last three years was Chase Sinclair, and now, I was putting that all on the line. But I wouldn’t be the reason he ruined his life, and he didn’t seem to see what the problem was.
16
Harley
“Look what the cat dragged in,” Bailey said when I appeared at Whitt’s house later that night.
Bailey had been staying with Whitt and Eve since our housing situation had gone up in flames at the start of the summer. She was moving into a new apartment with friends from her program when the term resumed. But right now, that meant I was at my brother’s for the evening.
“Hilarious.”
“First, you kick me out of our house,” she said as she tossed the door open wide. “Now, you come crawling back to stay with me. I don’t know if I can survive this push and pull, Harley.”
“I love you, Bails. You’re fucking ridiculous.”
“I love you, too. You going to tell me what happened?”
“Are Whitt and Eve here?”
Bailey shrugged. “They were out on a date. They should be back soon. I don’t know. I’m not keeping up with them. It’s weird to be back.”
I could see that. Bailey had lived here her senior year of high school, but now, two years into her bachelors, she probably missed the independence.
“So, is this a chick flick and ice cream evening or a plot murder kind of evening?” she asked, heading toward the fridge.
I laughed. “How did you know?”
She shot me a look. “As if you’d show up here out of nowhere on a Saturday night. Weren’t you having dinner with Chase’s dad tonight?”
“Right.” I winced. “That happened. Well, I guess dinner didn’t happen.”
“Right. Ice cream or murder?”
“Ice cream.”
“Damn,” she said as she reached into the freezer and pulled out pints of Blue Bell. “I was hoping for murder. Next time.”
“There’s no one to murder.”
“Chase’s dad, I’m assuming, would be a good option.”
“He’s a dick.”
“Obviously. He preyed on my sister,” Bailey said. Eve had been one of Arnold’s earlier victims and he’d destroyed her life until she and Whitt had gotten together. “I despise him, and I can’t imagine you being able to tolerate someone like that.”
“No,” I agreed with a sigh. “No, we really did not get along. But I think more because I’m a Wright. Though you should have seen him with his baby mama.”
“Ew.” Bailey shuddered. “That could have been Eve.”
“Eve isn’t that stupid. I think this girl wanted a kid.”
“She trapped him?”
I shrugged, uncertain. Dayna had seemed nice and like she was doing the best with a bad situation. I couldn’t imagine wanting to trap Arnold Sinclair.
“Just an accident, if I had to guess. Though Silas is adorable. So, I can’t imagine she’s upset with how it turned out, except for who the father is.”
Bailey passed me a bowl of chocolate chip cookie dough and scooped out hers next.
“Yeah, can’t get much slimier. So, what did he say to upset you?”
“He said I was like Owen.”
Bailey waved her spoon at me. “Not Arnold. Chase.”
I bit my lip. “Why do you think Chase did something to upset me?”
She shot me a disbelieving look. “Because I know you.”
I took a bite of the ice cream and said nothing. How did I even begin to explain what the fuck had just happened? I’d been furious at Arnold, yes. He was despicable in every sense of the word. But I’d also expected him to upset me. I’d sort of prepared myself for his villainy. Owen had prepared me, to be honest. The way he’d treated Dayna set me on fucking fire, but was it anything worse than I’d expected? No.
But then Chase had gone and quit his job.
I stuffed more ice cream in my mouth. Fuck.
“That bad?” Bailey asked.
We flopped down onto the couch, and she flipped on Romancing the Stone. She was a sucker for ’80s romances, especially those with Jack Colton–esque characters. Like the time that Chase dressed up as Indiana Jones. My heart ached at the thought. I shouldn’t be thinking about him right now. It only made it all worse.
“I don’t know,” I said softly.
“You?” she asked, gobsmacked. “You don’t know? Come on. You’re, like, the smartest person I know. You know what he did. Spit it out.”
“It’s going to sound dumb.”
“If it was dumb, you wouldn’t be here.”
I sighed and spilled the details of what had happened with Chase after we got back. Bailey scoffed at first, but then as more and more of the uncomfortable truths spewed out of me, her disbelief diminished.
“Damn,” she muttered. “Well, at first, I thought, who cared that he quit? Fuck him. But I see your point of view.”
“It’s not stupid?”
“That you broke up with him because he’d quit his job over you?”
I nearly jumped out of my seat. “We didn’t break up!”
Bailey reared back with wide eyes. “Whoa there, smartypants! Take a seat. It sure sounded like a breakup.”
I shook my head. “No. I mean, I don’t think so. Oh my God, does he think we broke up?”
“Uh, I don’t know. Maybe you’re on a break.”
My heart raced ahead at that thought. “We’re not on a break! Stop saying that!”
She held her hands up. “Okay, okay. Breathe. I didn’t mean to freak you out. I don’t have words for walking out of your boyfriend’s house because you’re mad at him and telling him to fucking figure it out. What happens if he doesn’t figure it out, Harley Davidson?”
My stomach bottomed out at those words. I didn’t want to even think about that. I’d walked out, knowing that he needed time to reconsider his stupid decision. He couldn’t quit his job because his dad had said something mean about me. Like, that would never work in the long run.
I hadn’t meant we were breaking up. He’d done the same thing to me when I was debating about Harvard. And, yeah, I’d originally decided to go and leave him behind. He could make that decision, too. Would we break up then?
I wanted to vomit at that thought. Three years we’d been apart. Three years where I’d wanted him more and more each day that passed. It should have been easy to just say, Whatever. I don’t care about your decision. I could have stayed and pretended like it didn’t matter.
But it did matter.
All of it fucking mattered. He couldn’t give up on his dreams to be with me. That wasn’t ever going to fly for me. I’d chosen a different path that included him. A path I’d chosen not because of him, but for myself. He was going to have to do the same. He wasn’t stupid enough to not see the light.
“That’s not going to happen,” I told Bailey.
“Okay. I hope you’re right.”
“I want him to choose me,” I blurted out.
Bailey polished off her ice cream and then tucked her legs underneath her. “Hasn’t he already chosen you?”
“Yes, but this is different. He can quit. If that’s what he wants, he can quit, obviously. I don’t think he wants that. And I don’t want to be the scapegoat he uses later if he decides he fucked up.”
“That’s fair.”
“But what if he doesn’t come to that conclusion? I don’t know. What if he thinks it’s stupid?”
“That doesn’t sound like him, but if it does happen, then you have to decide what you’re going to do.”
My panicked expression must have been answer enough.
Bailey put her hand on mine. “What do you want to happen?”
“I want him,” I whispered. I set my ice cream down and came to my feet. “You don’t understand. Chase Sinclair is all I have wanted for the last three years. Now that I have him, the very last thing I ever want is for it to end. I want it to be forever and ever, amen.”
“Right. I was there, remember?”
“For some of it,” I said. “But I love him. I love him so fucking much that it hurts. I can’t imagine breaking up.” I choked on the words. “I can’t even say them. Oh my God. I can’t even think them. It feels like my insides are on fire at the mere mention. And at the same time, I can’t do nothing. Not when we spent three years apart so that we could make the right decision. Fuck, it doesn’t even make sense.”
“You’re just in limbo, and you hate it.”
“Yes,” I said on a sigh. “I hate the anxiety of not knowing what he’s thinking. But I don’t want to go to him. He has to come to me. He has to make the decision on his own. And then we can figure it out together.”
“That sounds like a decision.”
“Does it?” I asked helplessly. “It sounds like doing nothing.”
“Sometimes, doing nothing is the right option. You told him what you wanted and needed from him. You put the ball in his court. You can’t fix anything before he decides what he’s going to do.”
“I know.”
“But you hate it.”
“Waiting and not knowing? Yes, I hate it.” I shook my hands out. “I want him to just have never said that to his father.”
“What’s done is done. You can’t go back, only forward.”
“I know.” I sighed, sinking back into my seat. “So, sit and wait to hear from him?”
She grasped my hand. “He’s going to come to the right conclusion. He’s not that dumb.”
I laughed humorlessly. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.”
But it didn’t make me feel any better. I’d made the right choice, and it felt worse than ever. Being away from him felt like death. I wished that I could erase the entire night and get a do-over, but I couldn’t. And until I heard from Chase, I just had to sit in my discomfort.
17
Chase
I parked my Subaru outside of Annie’s house. She hadn’t answered any of my texts, which only happened when she was on shift at the hospital, but she’d told me earlier this week that she had the weekend off. Maybe she’d been called in anyway.
I could have called Kai.
I should have called Kai.
But part of me knew that only Annie could help me through the nightmare that was my current situation. The fucking hell I’d walked headfirst into.
With my hands stuffed into my jeans, I lurched toward the door and pressed the doorbell. It rang noisily into the confines of that giant Wright house. I’d only been here once or twice. Usually, if I saw Annie anymore, it was at my place because of the Wright problem within. But today was necessary.
The door slid open, and Jordan Wright stood before me with an arched eyebrow. He was in a button-up and slacks, as if he was about to throw on his jacket and head out to the office. But it was a Saturday in the middle of the summer. Where the hell would he be going?
“Hey,” I muttered.
“No solicitors,” he said and then moved to shut the door in my face.
I slapped my hand down on the door. “I just need to talk to Annie.”
Jordan sighed. “Must you?”
“It’s important.”
He released his grip on the door, and I pushed it all the way open, following him inside when he retreated into the depths.
“Annie, you have an unwanted visitor,” he yelled into the house.
“Thanks, Jordan.”
“Don’t thank me yet.”
I just shook my head at him. There was no point really. He was always going to be this way. In some ways, it was reassuring. Things would change; Jordan’s dislike of me would always stay the same.
Annie stepped out of the bedroom in scrubs. Her hair was mussed, and her eyes were bloodshot. She yawned. “What’s going on?” Her eyes snagged on me. “Oh, Chase, what are you doing here?”
“Did you just come off a shift?”
“Yeah. I got called in and spent the last twelve hours working an extra shift. I was about to shower and crawl into bed for some much needed TLC.”
“Whiskey instead?” I offered.
She narrowed her eyes. “What’s going on?”
“Need to talk to you. I tried to text, and you didn’t answer.”
Her eyes flicked to Jordan, who still hadn’t moved from where he stood in the living room.
He raised his hands. “I don’t have anything to do with this.”
“Can I shower first?” she asked.
“By all means. I’ll just hang out with your husband.”
She frowned and then pointed at Jordan. “Don’t kill each other.”
“You’re no fun,” he teased.
Annie pointed stronger. “Jordan Wright.”
He winked at her, and she just rolled her eyes, disappearing into their bedroom. A minute later, I could hear the water running in the bathroom.
Jordan turned to me then. “You said whiskey?”
I was wary but nodded. “That kind of night.”
Jordan headed to the liquor cabinet. “I’d ask if you have a preference,” he said, pulling out a bottle of Basil Hayden, “but I really don’t care.”
“Basil Hayden is fine,” I said.
“Pity.”
He passed me a glass of the whiskey and poured himself one as well. This was as close as Jordan and I had ever been to civil. Almost, dare I say it, friendly.
“Don’t stay too long,” Jordan said as he strode back across the room. “I had other plans for Annie tonight.”
Okay. Maybe friendly was too far.
“Noted,” I muttered, giving him a two-finger salute as he disappeared.
Fifteen minutes later, my drink was empty, and Annie had returned from her shower. Her red curls were wet and hanging past her shoulders. She’d replaced her scrubs with cotton shorts and a tank top. After I poured myself another drink, she grabbed the bottle out of my hand and set it back in its place.
“What’s up? You never come here,” she said.
“No, but I figured I should talk to you.”
“About?”
I glanced back to make sure Jordan was still out of earshot. “Harley.”
She sighed and sank into a seat at the bar. “What happened?”
“Harley and I were going to have dinner with my dad.”
Her green eyes rounded to the size of saucers. “Why the fuck would you do that?”
