Chase caught the sales associate eyeing him, the one who he’d seen talking to Brody. She turned away quickly and walked through an aisle between the racks of clothes.
“I’m sorry,” Mason said.
“I don’t need you to be sorry. You don’t owe me anything. We’re not together.”
“Okay. I can tell you’re hurt.”
“You could have just said you were with someone.”
“I wasn’t with him.”
Chase glared at him. “You invite everyone to your sister’s wedding?”
He looked around, seeming equally uneasy about having the discussion in public. He moved closer to Chase, who backed away quickly.
Mason’s eyes widened with surprise. “I told you I’ve done things since you.”
“But you made this big deal like you hadn’t been in any relationships.”
“We weren’t in a relationship. We messed around. He travels all the time for work. He’s in medical sales. There was never a chance of anything happening more than hooking up. I mean, we talked as much as two people do who have a regular thing, but it was never as more than friends.”
“It doesn’t matter what you say. This isn’t about you misleading me. Not really. It’s about having to adjust to the idea that you really were just being a normal human being all this time. Not sitting around pining over me. Which you shouldn’t have been, but I just… I never had to adjust to you being with someone else. You had plenty of time to see me with other guys. In some ways, I kind of liked not knowing the truth. I’m sorry.”
Chase said it, and he was.
“Why areyousorry?”
“I know I can’t expect anything else. It just reminds me that we really aren’t the people we were back then. And we’ve had these whole other lives that neither of us knows much about. And there’re obviously some things I don’t care to know about.”
“I don’t want you to feel bad. I know how it feels. Like betrayal. And even though I know I didn’t technically do anything wrong, it hurts me knowing it hurts you. And knowing what it feels like to be torn apart about something you don’t even feel like you have a right to be upset about, that’s something I’ve felt for a long time.”
“God, I want to fucking hug you and punch you right now,” Chase admitted. “Why does life have to be so fucking complicated? Thank you.”
“Now you’re thanking me? When you want to punch me?”
“It would have been easy for you to tell me to fuck off and that I didn’t have a right to feel the way I feel, which I don’t know that I do. But I appreciate you listening.”
Mason set his hand on Chase’s shoulder and pulled him over to a corner, blocked by a column. He pressed his lips against Chase’s. It wasn’t the sort of frenzied kiss that they’d shared during their fuck-sessions over the past few days. It was tender, and as Mason’s kiss intensified, Chase relaxed.
“Feel better?” Mason asked after he finally pulled away.
Chase chuckled, amused at how something as simple as Mason’s kiss could make him feel so much better. “A little.” He got lost in those steel-blue eyes as Mason set a hand on Chase’s face, running his thumb across his cheek.
Chase knew Mason cared about him. He could never doubt that, but he couldn’t change how much it hurt knowing that he was off sharing what they had shared with someone else.
It was a pain that he knew he deserved, but still a pain he wished would go away.
It would. With time.
Everything would heal with time.
That’s what he wanted to believe, but after everything that had happened to them—after the life he’d lived—he wasn’t convinced that was true. If it was, he would’ve already gotten over Mason.
* * *
It bothered Mason that Chase had been so upset at Macy's when he'd seen his reaction to Brody. All he wanted was to make him feel better, to pull him away, maybe into that dressing room to remind him of how much pleasure they'd shared over the past few days. But he could also tell that that was the last thing Chase wanted to do right then. Even as they drove back to the house, it was apparent by the way Chase gazed out the window, barely singing along with Emery to the song list she played on their ride back, he was still asking questions—questions that needed to be asked by both of them. Chase was right when he said they didn't know each other anymore. Not the people who they'd become, not the lives they lived in the eleven years they'd been apart. Still, it didn't change the fact that Mason wanted to know Chase—that he still felt that spark and still knew Chase was special.
He still loved him. He always would.
