‘What’s the point? Why bother?’
‘What?’
‘You just said it yourself. This was all going to come to an end after your event tomorrow. Why not wrap it up a night early?’
I grind my teeth together, hating what she’s suggesting, but also hating that she’s basing that off some throwaway comment I made. ‘Is that what you want?’
‘I can’t tell you what I want,’ she says, tone strangely measured. ‘But I know it’s not to be the other woman again, and that’s what I felt like tonight, Beau. It was just like with Kirk. I felt like I was standing on the outside of your relationship with Ash, realising that whatever we’ve got going on, you’ve got with her too.’ She swallows a big gulp of wine; my insides clench in fierce rejection of her statement, of the idea of her being an outsider to anything in my life. ‘But what does it matter, anyway? This is over, right? Of course you should go back to Ash, and whatever you two are.’
‘We’re nothing,’ I say urgently, my chest too heavy to think straight. I pace to the other edge of the window, then back, spinning around to face her properly. ‘We’re friends,’ I correct. ‘Good friends. She’s important to me. But there is nothing romantic going on with us; you sure as hell are not the other woman.’
‘Are you seriously that stupid?’
It hurts. It lands like a gut punch, all my childhood insecurities wrapping around me, strangling me, so I can hardly breathe.
She closes her eyes, her lower lip trembling. ‘That woman’s in love with you.’
I press my back to the wall, needing it to hold me upright.
‘You know it too.’
I shake my head, wanting to deny it. But the way Ash’s cry filled the stadium, her face when I came to so lined with worry. ‘I didn’t know that,’ I say, sipping my drink simply to have something to do. ‘Not until tonight.’
‘Maybe you just wanted to ignore it,’ Bailey says, as always getting right to the heart of me.
‘I thought she and I were on the same page. I tried to make sure of that.’
‘Like you and I are on the same page?’
Exactly,I want to exclaim triumphantly. But there’s something in the way she says it, something so laced with barbed rage, that I hold myself still.
‘What’s going on here, Bailey?’
She flinches.
I want to draw her into my arms and hold her there. I want to hold her hard against my chest and stroke her back until she stops clenching her lips.
‘Nothing.’
I put my beer down on the window ledge, a little more heavily than I intended, and brace my hand on my hip. ‘I can’t help it if I don’t get it.’
‘There’s nothing to help.’
‘You’re clearly pissed.’
‘I was surprised,’ she says. ‘I didn’t like how it felt seeing you with her. That’s normal. Not just because of what I went through with Kirk, but because you and I have been in each other’s pockets these last few weeks.’ She rolls her shoulders, half shrug, half attempt to ease tension in her neck. ‘But at the end of the day, you’re right. We’re practically living on borrowed time as it is, so what does it matter?’
Now it’s my turn to flinch. I hate the way she’s downplaying this like she doesn’t care, when I know she does. I just can’t quite put my finger on how to fix this for her.
‘I know how it looked, but trust me—Ash and I are just friends.’
Okay, not like that. Her whole face flashes for a second with the sheer force of her emotions.
‘No one who saw her fly across the arena could fail to see how she feels about you.’
The weight in my stomach explodes on a hammer blow of comprehension. The pressure I’m feeling is guilt. Guilt and responsibility, and, yes, worry.
The same realisation Bailey had has been unfurling inside of me for the past two hours.
