“I didn’t kiss her. She kissed me. And the first thing I felt wasn’t her mouth on mine, it was panic that you got the wrong idea. That’s where my head was. Not on her. On you. It’s always on you.”
Tears slide down her cheeks as she stares at me, her chest heaving. The light from the hotel entrance catches the gold in her earrings, and the mascara smudged under her eyes, and she’s never looked more beautiful to me than she does right now, wrecked and furious and standing in a bush.
“I love you.” The words come out before I can stop them. Raw, unplanned, and completely terrifying. “I’m in love with you, Collette. I have been since the corridor when you cried on me in my hockey gear. I was in love with you when you fell asleep on my shoulder during that shitty movie you made me watch. I was in love with you when I woke up in your bed with your hair in my face and your body against mine, and I thought this is what I want every morning for the rest of my life.”
“Don’t,” she whispers, but she doesn’t move.
“I’m in love with you when you roast me on camera, and when you send me memes at two a.m., and when you eat cereal out of the box like a gremlin. I’m in love with the way you protect your sister, the way you stand up to your brothers, and the way you looked at me after the youth clinic like I was someone worth looking at.” My voice is shaking. My hands are shaking.Everything is shaking. “I tried to be your friend. I tried so fucking hard. But I can’t see that look on your face and pretend I don’t know what it means.”
The silence between us is deafening, just our breath and the distant sounds of the city, and my heart slamming against my ribs so hard she can probably hear it.
“You can’t say that to me.” Her voice is barely there.
“I just did.”
“You can’t.” She wipes her face with the back of her hand. “You’re not allowed to love me.”
“Too late, I do.”
“My brothers. The team. My job. Everything I’ve worked for …”
“I know all of that.”
“Then you know why this can’t happen.”
“I know why you think it can’t happen. That’s not the same thing,” I tell her.
“Fish.” She looks at me. The tears are falling again and this time she doesn’t wipe them away. “I can’t. I’m sorry. I can’t do this.”
The words land like a blade between my ribs. Clean and precise and fatal.This is it.This is exactly what I was afraid of. Putting everything on the table and watching her push it away.
“Okay.” My voice sounds like it belongs to someone else. Hollow. Flat.
“Fish, please understand …”
“I understand.” I take a step back. The cold air fills the space where I was standing. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize for being honest.” She sniffles through her tears, her bottom lip trembles, and she looks like she wants to reach for me. I wish she would, but she doesn’t. She wraps her arms around herself instead.
“Go home, Collette.” I say it gently because even with my chest caved in, I can’t be anything but gentle with her. “Get some sleep.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be fine.” The lie comes out, smooth and easy. The same lie I’ve been telling everyone my whole life.
She stares at me for a long moment, those hazel eyes searching my face for something, I don’t know what. She hands me my jacket and I take it, then she slips out and away from me. I stand in the bushes of a Manhattan hotel in a tuxedo that cost more than my first car, with another woman’s lipstick still on my mouth, and the taste of rejection sitting heavily on my tongue.
Right person, wrong time. Turns out it’s just wrong.
I wipe my mouth one more time, straighten my jacket, and walk back inside. Evan is at the bar. He takes one look at my face and doesn’t say a word. Just signals the bartender for two whiskeys and pushes one toward me.
“Don’t ask,” I tell him.
“Wasn’t going to,” he says quietly.
We drink in silence. And for the first time in months, I feel completely alone.
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