“Yeah, I panicked okay. I’d just screwed my best friend's fiancé and I didn’t know what to do. It was a…”
“Mistake?”
“Yeah. It was a mistake,” I confirmed, feeling like there was a steel band around my chest.
“You know what?” Hayden asked as he rounded the counter, dropping into the stool beside me before grabbing the legs of mine and dragging me towards him.
“What?” I replied breathlessly.
“I thought the same thing—”
“You did?”
“I did. At first.”
Hayden widened his legs and yanked my chair even closer. When his hands settled on my thighs, we were face to face and I wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. He’d made sure of that.
Nervously I asked, “Wh-what do you mean?”
I hadn’t even realized what I’d done, until I felt Hayden’s calloused palm cupping my cheek. Trying to hide from the truth, I’d tipped my head forward and hid my eyes behind the curtain of my hair.
“I thought it was a mistake too, at first.”
“What do you mean, at first?”
I was lost. I needed him to spell it out for me.
“When I woke up alone and found you’d run out, I was pissed. I’m not going to lie. But once I got over that, I realized what we’d done. What I’d done. I’d slept with my fiancée’s best friend. I felt like I was cheating on her and I was the worst kind of scum there was.”
Ouch.
Just because I agreed with everything he’d said, didn’t mean it wasn’t hard to hear.
“It took some time, longer than I should admit to, and a conversation with my dad before I was able to not only forgive myself but realize that I didn’t do anything wrong. We didn’t do anything wrong.”
“We didn’t?”
Hayden mightn’t have thought we’d done anything wrong, but I wasn’t convinced. I’d spent every waking moment since I’d opened my eyes that morning, stark naked and wrapped in his arms, wishing I could take it back and undo it.
Lifting my chin with his fingers, Hayden forced me to look at his face. His eyes were soft and it caused the butterflies in my stomach to flutter. I’d been trying so hard to push aside all my emotions and focus on the facts but Hayden was making it very hard.
“No Skye we didn’t.”
“But I thought…”
“You thought what?”
“I thought you’d hate me.”
“I’d hate you? Why the hell would I hate you?” Hayden was shocked.
Fuck! Why was this so hard? When I glanced down at my notes, Hayden noticed what I was doing and picked up the napkin, scrunched it in a ball and threw it towards the trash can.
“You should hate me!” My frustration was bubbling. “I took advantage of you. I should’ve known better. I’m a horrible person.”
“You think you took advantage of me?” Hayden smirked and I couldn’t decide whether or not I wanted to slap it off or kiss him.
“You were grieving!”
