“He came to see me,” I said after a few minutes of quiet chowing down.
Peyton eyed me over her nachos. “From the look on your face I’m thinking it didn’t go well.”
I snorted. “Not so much.” I shifted on my seat. “I jumped to conclusions. I let myself believe Chloe and that pissed him off.”
“I guess I can’t blame him,” Rosa said. “It would suck to have someone you care about assume the worst about you.”
“Yeah, well, I have good reason to!” Wetness stung my eyes and I wiped at them roughly, not wanting to cry again. “Look, I know it was a stupid high school dance and I should just get over it. But that really hurt me when he changed his mind!”
“Of course it did,” Peyton said. “You didn’t get to go to your prom, girl. Anyone would hold onto some resentment about that.” She reached over and squeezed my hand. “What I don’t understand is why you don’t talk to him about it.”
“He would just think I was being silly?—”
“That’s really not fair,” Rosa said. “You don’t know what he would think. By every measure I can see, this guy iscrazyabout you.”
“Yeah, so crazy that he completely disappeared the second his ex-wife showed up.”
“That sucks,” Peyton agreed evenly. “And you have every right to tell him it sucks and that you expect better communication if this thing goes forward.”
I sighed. “I don’t see how it could go forward. I mean, what was I even thinking? There are so many complications with this relationship.”
“Because of Andy?” Rosa looked unconvinced.
I thought about what Liam had said, about how Andy would never do anything that made me unhappy. If I was really committed to a relationship, Andy wouldn’t get in the way. I hadn’t had a good response for him then, and I didn’t have one now.
“And my job,” I added weakly. “I’m his kid’s teacher.”
From their expressions, they both thought I was reaching.
“Keeping things under wraps was really stressful,” I argued. “Sneaking around all the time, not being able to go out.” I remembered Liam’s whispered words that morning after our first night together.My dirty little secret.How sick I had felt, even knowing he was kidding. How much it made me think about Matt.
“I’ve been down that road before.” My words were sharper now, anger growing. “God, I can’t believe I let myself get involved in another sneaky relationship. It’s no different from Matt.” I snorted in derision. “I met him in a hotel room once, too. I thought he was being romantic and it turned out he was just trying to hide me from his wife.”
Rosa held up her hands. “Hang on a second. You don’t honestly think Liam is anything like Matt.”
I shook my head. “I’m not saying that. I’m saying the relationship was similar?—”
“And who’s choice was that?” Peyton asked. “Because I’m pretty sure you’re the one that didn’t want to be public.”
“I was trying to protect our careers?—”
“Bullshit,” Rosa said bluntly, and my mouth dropped open in surprise. Rosa was no pushover, but she was usually empathetic, especially with the people she loved. Unlike Peyton, who had zero filter, Rosa tended to be gentle in most interactions.
She wasn’t looking gentle right now. Her eyes were flashing at me in irritation. “You weren’t trying to protect your careers. There’s nothing in your contract that says you can’t date a parent. Maybe it doesn’t look great, but you could have been upfront with your principal and it would have been fine. Besides, Josie won’t be your student forever.” When I opened my mouth to argue, she held up a hand. “Secondly, your brother would never put tens of millions of dollars of his investment at risk by trading someone just for dating his sister. We all know this. Andy is the most brilliant, dedicated businessman I’ve ever met.”
She leaned across the table to me, eyes softening. “You didn’t want it to be public because you were afraid. Because you didn’t think it would last.”
“And that’s understandable,” Peyton added, her eyes steady on mine. “You learned pretty early in life how bad it hurts when the people who are supposed to love you leave.”
I groaned, covering my face. I hated to think that the baggage I held from my mom’s abuse and neglect still had so much control over me. But it was probably the truth—neither Andy nor I had ever been very good at trusting anyone else.
You think I would hurt you.Liam had sounded so shocked by those words. So…devastated.
And they were true. Ididthink he would hurt me, because I was still hanging onto bullshit from high school and I was too much of a coward to just talk to him about it.
And the worst part is that I ended up getting hurt anyhow. But it was my own damn fault, not Liam’s.
“Oh, God,” I muttered, rubbing my forehead. “I really screwed this up, didn’t I?”
