Beside her, Sawyer let out a careful breath.“You’re in love with them.”
“Yes,” Chloe said, and saying it out loud was both a desperate relief and a crushing ache.“Yes, I am.Welcome to my fucked-up life.”
“Um.”Lou raised her hand like a kid in class.“Why is your life fucked up, exactly?”
“Because it’s hopeless, that’s why,” Chloe said and chugged her hot chocolate like it was whiskey.
Lou and Sawyer exchanged a look.“Because they don’t love you?”Lou ventured.
“Yeah, that’s not it,” Sawyer muttered.
Chloe swallowed the chunk of marshmallow she’d sucked up in the last gulp and shook her head.“I don’t know how they feel.”
“You didn’t ask?”
Chloe looked at Lou in disbelief.“Would you ask?”
“Yes.”
“She would,” Sawyer confirmed.“Ball buster, remember?”
“Well, I’m not that brave,” Chloe claimed.“And anyway, I didn’t get the chance.”
“What happened?”
She looked at Sawyer.“I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”
“Wherever you like.”
“Well, I was right in the middle of myoh shit, I might be in loveepiphany and trying to figure out how to tell Knox and Jesse that I screwed up our no-strings arrangement when my aunt—who’s also my boss—came in, put two and two together, and said me dating two men would be a bad look for her business and implied she might have to fire me.”
“That’s a lot,” Sawyer decided as Lou spewed hot chocolate beside him.
“She saidwhat?”Lou shouted.
“Easy, baby.”Sawyer patted her shoulder, his gaze steady on Chloe.“Then what happened?”
“Knox and Jesse got mad,” Chloe recalled.“And things got kind of loud.”
“I bet,” Lou muttered, yanking napkins out of the holder to mop the table.
“I walked out.”
Lou tossed the sodden napkins aside.“Good for you.”
“It doesn’t feel good,” Chloe confessed.“I probably am fired, and I don’t make enough from jewelry sales to pay my bills.”
Lou’s eyes narrowed.“You sell the earrings you make?”
Chloe looked at her.“Yeah.”
“Online?”
“Yeah.”
Lou tapped Sawyer on the arm.“Babe, phone.What’s your website?”
“Ah…” Confused, Chloe rattled it off, watching Lou’s fingers fly over the screen.“What are you doing?”
