Stalking away, Van shoved his fingers through his hair, his chest heaving. Grant just stared at his friend.
“God dammit, you emotionally stunted son of a bitch!” Van raged, coming back at him. Pointing toward the exterior of the building, he shouted, “She just left here sobbing, Grant. She looked so goddamn broken. What the fuck did you do?!”
“Do you see what’s happening?” Grant asked gruffly, shoving his hands into his pockets and turning away.
“I see a woman that is somehow crazy about both of us—somehow loves both of us—running scared because you’re a jackass,” Van muttered, shaking his head. Grant swallowed hard. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t, not now, anyway. His own actions would make sure of that. He’d seen the tears tracking down her cheeks as she lay motionless against the desk. It had gutted him. Fuck, everything about her gutted him. Being around her, not being around her. Grant grunted when Van shoved his shoulder, spinning him back to face him. “What did you do to her?”
“I did what I told her I would,” he muttered. Guilt gnawed at his gut, making his stomach heave. He had hurt her. Deeply.
“You fucked her like you hate her,” Van snapped, shaking his head again in disbelief, calling him out. Fucker knew him too well. “Well, congratulations. Because she fucking believes it.”
“Like you haven’t fucked her again since we found her?” Grant deflected, muttering with a disdainful snort as he glared at his friend.
Van took a deep breath in and let it out just as slowly before turning and walking to the door. He stopped there, turning before he exited and said quietly, “No, actually, we haven’t had sex. She wanted to wait for you. She wanted it to be all of us again. So, yeah… Thanks for that.”
And then Van walked out of the office and down the hall, and the pleaded words she’d tried to convey to him came back to him. She had tried to tell him, and he hadn’t listened. Had been so convinced that she and Van had already… and his jealousy and rage had been too volatile, his ego too fragile to be willing to listen to her quiet pleas.
Fuck he’d made a mess of things. He’d been so damn angry, so hurt… he’d wanted her to know how it felt. Just how deeply she’d cut him to pieces when she left. Not that any of it made any rational sense. He had no right to be this fucking angry…but knowing that didn’t stop it from boiling out of him like a poisonous sludge. His rage was infecting everything around him, including Hope. Now he’d hurt his best friend, too.Fucking hell.
She’d let him treat her terribly. Used her, then tossed her aside like the condom he’d taken off and buried in the trash in the men’s restroom. When all he’d wanted to do was hold her, kiss her, make love to her. Slowly, passionately, tenderly. Reminding her just how safe she was with them, with him. But all he’d done is show her how much of a sorry excuse for a bastard he was instead.
Ten years was a long time to avoid emotional attachments. Ten years and a medical diagnosis that had turned his world upside down… until the moment he’d met her and everything had felt right again. For the first time in a decade, he’d been able to see a future, and not just next week, or beyond the next doctor’s appointment…
Most men didn’t get a prostate cancer diagnosis at the age of thirty-two. Despite the early diagnosis, rapid fire treatment, and nearly seven years of remission…he often wondered if he would ever feel normal again. Or if it would come back.
Hope had made him feel normal.Hopeful. Something had settled inside him, that constant anxiety that seemed to just live inside his chest at all times had quieted. For the first time in a decade, he’d wanted to wake up with her at his side every single morning, for whatever foreseeable future he was being granted. She could be his second chance in more ways than one.
And Van was right; it scared the living hell out of him.
Being vulnerable opened you up to too much pain. Too much heartache. She would leave once she knew the truth. All of his dark secrets. The unpredictability of the future. Just like Nicole had.
Grinding his teeth together, he shoved the thought away, but it was too late. Like a dam bursting open, those long-repressed memories resurfaced and threatened to drown him.
Chapter Eighteen
He was staring at his cellphone screen, willing a text to come through from Hope as he lay in bed, his right hand on his chest, a bag of frozen peas balanced on the back of it. He hadn’t bothered with bandaging his busted knuckles the night before, not that he’d come home. He’d slept in his car, outside of Hope’s sister’s house, just in case she needed him. Just in case she messaged and wanted him to come to her. Just in case…
But she hadn’t messaged, last night or this morning. Jade had come outside, wearing a matching set of sweatpants and cropped, zippered hoodie, her arms crossed over her chest. It was drizzling, cold and gloomy. She waited until he climbed out of the car, hunching her shoulders against the chill as it soaked her clothes.
“Van… you need to go home,” she said, softly, gently. Her eyes were kind, but he could tell by the tightness of her face that she was over the bullshit. He could only imagine the state Hope had been in when she got home the night before, and didn’t blame her sister one bit for not wanting him there. “She criedall night. She won’t tell me what happened, but I can tell… Van, whatever happened, it broke her. She just needs time, okay?”
He wanted to protest. Wanted to tell herNo, she neededhim. Not time. No, time… time was what she needed torun. And that wasn’t happening again.
“Just… tell her I was here, okay? Tell her I’m not giving up,” he whispered, glancing across the street at the small house. “I just found her, Jade… I can’t lose her again already.”
She had nodded, giving him a wilted smile, before she turned and hurried back across the road in the rain, disappearing into the house. He had finally driven home, not at all surprised to not find Grant’s car in the garage… so despite the early hour, he’d raided Grant’s bourbon.
Now, several hours later, a large glass of Grant’s favorite bourbon was sitting on the bedside table next to him. It was the third time he’d refilled it. Tossing the phone onto the mattress, he picked up the bourbon and took several long swallows of the amber liquid, relishing the burn as it went down. He was pleasantly drunk, but it did little to ease the ache in his chest.
The sound of the front door opening and closing alerted him to Grant’s arrival home. Heavy footsteps echoed through the empty condo, reminding him of just how empty their home was. More so now that he had gotten to experience Hope in it with him. He hated it without her.
A knock sounded on the bedroom door, though it wasn’t shut all the way. It swung open and Grant leaned his shoulder against the doorframe, hands shoved deeply into the pockets of his slacks.
“I realize I fucked up.”
“No shit,” Van mumbled, tossing back another swallow of the bourbon. The discoloration under Grant’s left eye gave him a perverse sense of pleasure. He flexed his fingers beneath the bag of peas, the frozen vegetables settling in the bag again with anaudible swoosh. He dropped his eyes, not able to keep looking at him through his anger. “You’re brilliant if you came up with that all on your own.”
The sarcasm in his voice was punctuated with the slight slur of his words from the alcohol. Grant sighed, pulling one hand from his pocket to rub at the back of his neck as he stared down at the floor.
