What the hell was an endive?I soaped my hands at the kitchen sink, my attention diverted by the chart stuck to the refrigerator by a magnet and the sonogram photo next to it. It had been a week since the sonogram, but I still felt a shiver of awe when I looked at the baby Chloe was growing inside her.
“Hey.” Chloe strolled into the kitchen, dropped a kiss on the back of my neck, and unlocked the fridge.
“What are you still doing home?” I glanced at the microwave clock to verify the time. I had spent more time than I intended to out back on a special project. “Shouldn’t you be at the library for your sewing circle now?”
“Not going,” Chloe mumbled, her head in the fridge, her hips pushed back.
I dried my hands on the towel and swatted her ass, because it was there and I couldn’t help myself. She smirked at me over her shoulder.
“If you’re hungry, I can make you something,” I offered. “Are you feeling okay?” Chloe never missed a sewing circle, not evenduring the first trimester when she was throwing up breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
“I’m okay, I just want a little snack.” She closed the fridge and waved the container of hummus and bag of baby carrots—because according to Chloe, the vibes were off on full-sized carrots. I was morally opposed to baby carrots on the grounds that they were a marketing scam, but Chloe could squish my morals into whatever shape she wanted.
“Why aren’t you with your friends?” I asked again.
She pried the lid off the hummus. “Because I’m not sure if I have any friends left and I’m scared to find out.”
“Wait, what?” I scanned her face. I knew how much Chloe’s friends meant to her. “What happened?”
The look she gave me suggested she harbored doubts about my intelligence. “Youhappened, Steven. I don’t know if you realize this, but my friends are not your biggest fans.”
She took her snack to the table and sat down cross-legged. I followed her like a dog on a leash. “But you’ve been living here with me for four months. What’s different now?”
“We’re different. It’s one thing for me to live here temporarily because my only other choices are living with my parents or homelessness. It’s another thing entirely to live here permanently because I’m head-over-heels in love with you.”
“You’re head-over-heels in love with me?” I couldn’t stop a goofy-ass grin from spreading across my face.
“Yes. Which is wonderful but also does not bode well for my friendships.” She dragged a carrot through the hummus and popped it into her mouth with a loud crunch.
Her embroidered shoes laying by the back door taunted me. I felt sick. “I never asked you to choose.”
She stopped chewing and took a large gulp of water. “I know you didn’t. Neither did James. What difference does that make? I still have two people I dearly love who cannot be in thesame room together, and that means I have to make a choice.” Her face was soft when she looked at me. “I’m choosing you, Steven. I hope that doesn’t cost me my friends. But if it does…” She swallowed hard, heartbreak all over her pretty face. “I still choose you.”
“That’s not fair.” I wrapped my hands around the edge of the table hard enough to leave a mark across my palms. “I’m the one who screwed up. Not you.”
“Who told you life was supposed to be fair? Because I never got that memo,” she mocked. But then she reached across the table and wiggled my fingers loose one by one. “I’m not giving up on my friends. I’ll talk to James and try to work it out.”
I didn’t know what to say.Sorry I purposefully spooked your best friend’s horse and got her bucked off with bruised ribswouldn’t cut it.
Chloe unfolded her legs and pushed to her feet. “I told Amy I’d help her study after I ate something.” She rounded the table and dropped a kiss on my upturned face. “Don’t worry, okay? I’ll take care of it.”
Because that was what Chloe did. She took care of the hard parts. The messy parts. The parts no one else wanted to deal with.
Jesus fucking Christ. I was no better than her parents, letting her take care of things because it was easier, because she could. Why hadn’t it occurred to me that Chloe would be the one to pay the price for my mistake?
I had never once tried to apologize to James. I had decided it would be better for both of us to pretend we didn’t live in the same town and know the same people, so that’s what I did. Because I knew she couldn’t forgive me, so why bother trying? It was impossible.
The truth was, I simply didn’t want to. Not because I wasn’t sorry; I wassofucking sorry. But the broken little boy in mecouldn’t tolerate the idea of saying it out loud and hearing that it wasn’t enough. That nothing I did would ever be enough.
Maybe that was true. Maybe nothing I did would ever be good enough to earn James’s forgiveness. But I could live with that, as long as Chloe wasn’t punished for it. And her son…hell. I knew what it was like to not be loved. Chloe’s son could have the opposite of that. There were so many people in her life ready to love this kid. I sure as fuck was not going to ruin that for him before he even took his first breath.
He mattered so much more than protecting my own hurt feelings. Chloe mattered more. I refused to protect myself at their expense.
I mean, Christ. I hadn’t even fuckingtried.
I shot off a text before I could think better of it.
Then I grabbed my keys.
