We rode in silence after that, staring out the window and taking in the different kinds of people filing on and off the bus.
“Didn’t you have a golf thing this morning?” I remembered when Chase nudged me at the next stop.
“I did. But Dani worked her magic and got me out of it.” He followed me into the aisle as we departed the bus.
“I bet it drives her insane when you cancel something.” I could picture Dani’s face all red as she pounded at her laptop, adjusting the schedule.
“I’ve never had to cancel anything before. This is a first, and I’m sure she can manage.”
“You’ve never cancelled something like that golf or benefit thing before?” I paused on the sidewalk, no idea where we were or where we were heading.
“Nope.” His head shook once.
“Then why start today?”
“Because this is important.”
I fell in beside him when he started down the sidewalk buzzing with bodies. “Explaining what happened last night was more important than some golf fundraiser thing?”
He ignored the tint of sarcasm in my voice. “You. You’re more important than that. Or anything else.”
We stopped at a crosswalk, waiting for the light to turn. “Oh.”
Chase leaned in. “And that golf thing was a fundraiser to send some local rich kid on the pro circuit. Pretty sure the fellow rich golfers don’t need my help to make that happen.”
I jogged through the crosswalk with him, finally noticing where we were. My feet froze the moment they came in contact with the walkway running parallel to the beach. “The ocean.”
Chase eased me forward a little, moving us out of the way of the steady stream of runners, cyclists, and skateboarders. “Takes your breath away, doesn’t it?”
I breathed in the salty air, soaking in the chorus of the waves crashing into the beach beyond us. The dark blue speckled with orbs of silver from the sunlight above, the gentle breeze playing with the ends of my hair. All I could do was nod.
“Come on.” He turned down the sidewalk, waiting for me. “There’s a better view up here.”
A short walk revealed a massive pier jutting out into the ocean, and what looked to be a scaled-down version of an amusement park was situated on top. Early as it was in the day, swarms of people were roaming on and off the pier.
“Of all the places you could go, of all the ways you can get there . . .” I surveyed the scene as we crossed onto the massive pier. “You choose a city bus and a public place like this?”
Chase adjusted his hat a tad lower, his sunglasses having been shielding his eyes since we left the elevator at the hotel. “It seemed like the kind of place you’d like. You always loved the county fair every summer, and I think this is the coastal California equivalent.”
I smiled when I noticed the endless food options, reveling in the scent of deep-fried you-name-it. “I mainly loved sampling my way through as many food stands as possible. And riding the rides. Oh, and playing the games.”
Chase pulled out his wallet when he noticed the elephant ear vendor up ahead. “And petting every animal that would let you, and examining every flower entry, and posing in every wood cutout for a picture.” Chase lifted one finger at the employee, handing him a twenty.
“And you always hated the county fair.”
“I might have hated going with school or with my friends, but I loved going with you.” Chase handed me the warm elephant ear while the employee made change.
I did a slow spin, my smile growing with every game, ride, and flashing sign I saw. “What’s not to love?”
Behind his sunglasses, I could just make out his eyes softening as he stared at me. “Absolutely nothing.”
I tore off a chunk of the elephant ear as a distraction while the employee handed Chase his change. Chase took it and stuffed the extra fifteen bucks in the tip jar.
“What do you want to do first?”
“Done.” I held up my treat before tearing another chunk off for him.
He frowned. “No thanks.”
My gaze latched onto his forearms, looking ever so muscled and fine. “I’m sure they’ll have a protein shake and kale chip stand just up ahead. But if they don’t—”
This time when I held out the piece, he opened his mouth and let me stuff it in. “God, that’s good.”
“Flour, cinnamon, sugar, and fryer oil is always good.” I licked my fingers as we wandered down the bustling pier. “But there goes your eight-pack. Sorry.”
When I held up the next piece, he didn’t even hesitate.
“Eight-packs are so last summer.” He grinned at me as he chewed.
That image of him was so similar to the teenage version I’d fallen for, I experienced that giddy, love-sick sensation I’d spent two years drowning in.
“Now that we’ve crossed number one off on your list, what do you want to do now?” Chase angled us toward one of my favorite games—the balloon pop—but I held my line leading toward the end of the pier.
“I want to talk,” I said, not needing to say anything else for him to understand.
The grin vanished from his face. “Sure you don’t want to put yourself into a little more of a food coma before we have that talk?”
“I’m sure.” The next bite I took didn’t taste like anything at all.
Chase and I walked the rest of the pier in silence. The squawk of gulls, the waves beating the pillars, and the cacophony of noise from the rides filled the quiet for us.
I still had half of my elephant ear left when we reached the end, but my stomach wouldn’t tolerate another morsel. The crowd had thinned out since the amusements ended several meters back, so there was just enough privacy to bridge a delicate topic.
Chase didn’t seem to know where to begin, his expression creasing with frustration the longer words evaded him.
“Whatever you want to say or feel like you need to explain, it’s okay.” I swallowed the pressure rising in my throat. “We broke up ten years ago—we weren’t even old enough to vote when we were together. You lived your life and I lived mine. And even though we’re pretending to be back together . . . whatever this is between us . . .” My eyebrows furrowed as I was now stricken with the inability to find the right words. “You don’t owe me anything. Not even an explanation.”
Chase’s arms settled on top of the railing, his attention aimed at the horizon. “A woman came out of nowhere last night and announced to the world she was the mother of my child.” His jaw set when he saw my reaction. “I owe you an explanation.” His chest moved from the exhale that followed. “I owe you everything.”
I pinched off a piece of elephant ear and tossed it to the seagull hovering above us. “You owe me everything for what? Agreeing to be your girlfriend for six months in exchange for a million bucks? Or burning our steaks the night I tried cooking dinner before homecoming? Or maybe because I got us both detention for suggesting we skip sixth so we could make out in your truck?”
A sound rumbled in the back of his throat. “That was totally worth a week’s stint in detention.”
“I’m being serious,” I said, launching another scrap of dough at the persistent gull.
“So am I.”
“Chase—”
“I owe you everything for a million different reasons.” His head tipped toward me. “And I’ll gladly list every one if you think I’m not being serious.”
He must have read the look on my face as one of skepticism. “One, for you believing in me when no one else on the planet did. Two, for you buying me my first guitar when I couldn’t find two nickels to rub together hiding in the couch cushions. Three, when you stayed up all night refreshing my ice pack after my dad took a swing at me.” He took a slow breath. “Four, when you let me make the biggest mistake of my life that day I left you, so I could learn the most valuable lesson of my life as a result.”
The corners of my eyes stung, but it was from the wind cutting through the sides of my glasses. “What
lesson was that?”
His stare seemed to cut right through my glasses. “Having the love of a good woman is priceless.”
I shifted. “This coming from the same man who put a price on me pretending to love him?”
“And I’d let you name your price if we could just drop the pretending part.”
I turned around, leaning my back into the railing, my eyes drawn to the weathered planks at my feet. “Everything you’re saying is beautiful—a future number-one hit—but I really need to know if that woman was telling the truth last night.” My tongue worked into my cheek. I couldn’t understand why it was so important I knew if Chase had fathered a child with another woman, but it was. It seemed defining—for him, for us, for the future. “Why are you stalling?”
His throat moved. “Because I’m afraid the truth will scare you.”
My boot scuffed at the plank below me. “I’m stronger than you think.”
“Em.” Chase’s head turned toward me. “You’re the strongest person I know.”
I remained quiet, preparing myself for whatever truths he was about to share.
“That woman was lying,” he said, no preamble or closing remarks.
It took me a moment to respond. “How do you know?”
He angled toward me. “I know.”
“But how do you know?” My hands lifted. “Did you already run up a DNA panel on the little tyke and get the results back in record time? Do you have a picture book with the name and location of every woman you’ve ever slept with?” Words were flooding from my mouth, the volume dialing up with each one. “Did you double-up on contraceptives every single time you screwed someone?” Shoving off the rail, I spun so I was facing him. “How do you know, Chase?”
For all of my emotion, he was the picture of calm. One of his brows was peeking above his sunglasses as though he were waiting to see if I was done or only getting warmed up.
My arms thrust at him. “This is where you supply a response.”
He slid off his sunglasses, his eyes grabbing hold of mine. “This is the part that’s going to freak you out.”
“Why?”
“For a lot of reasons.” He stepped closer. “And I’m not sure you’ll believe me.”
Plucking off my own glasses as well, I asked, “Is it the truth?”
“Yes.” He didn’t blink.
“Then that’s good enough for me. You might have been a dick for leaving, but you never were a liar.”
Chase studied the space between us as though he were looking for a way to bridge it. “I know I don’t have a baby with that woman, or any woman for that matter, because . . .” His eyes narrowed as he concentrated on his words. “I haven’t been with anyone since you.”
His answer didn’t register at first. I was sure I hadn’t heard him right. “You mean you haven’t been with anyone since we started hooking up a few weeks ago?”
Chase exhaled, rolling his head a couple of times. “I mean I haven’t been with anyone since the day I left you ten years ago.”
My hand reached for the rail, steadying myself. “Chase, come on. I’m not dumb.”
“It’s the truth. You were my first, my only.” His gaze cut back to the ocean. “There’s only ever been you.”
Something was pounding in my head and my chest. I’d heard his words, but they refused to take root. “You’re Chase Lawson. You could literally walk into a gas station and find no fewer than three volunteers who would gladly let you have them in the women’s bathroom.” I blinked as I thought of the droves of young women who threw bras, numbers, and everything in between at him wherever we went.
“Yeah, but . . .” He slid the glasses back into place. “None of them are you.”
“Chase.” I didn’t know what else to say. His name was the only word I could conjure.
“There it is. My explanation.” The weathered boards creaked when he shifted. “Did I just destroy whatever chance we might have had to rewrite our ending?”
I wet my lips, not sure what I was going to say when my mouth opened. “I honestly don’t know what to think right now. I guess I just don’t understand why you’d crawl into bed alone for ten years when there were droves of women who would have been happy to warm it for you.”
His hands slid into his pockets as he studied the masses weaving around the pier. Then he looked at me. “You ruined me for anyone else. Being with you . . . anything else with anyone else would have been a disappointment.”
The wind was messing with my tear ducts again, so I settled the sunglasses back into position. “I came into this planning on six months of faking it with you. A couple weeks in and we were already blurring the lines by screwing, and now, you’re admitting all of this.” My shoulders rose. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything, remember? I was the one who had something to get off of my shoulders.”
The toe of my boot tapped his. “You’re the only person to ever describe ten years of celibacy as something you’re afraid to admit to the last woman you were with.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” He let out a deep breath, shoving off of the railing after a minute. “So what do you want to do? I’ve got a wallet full of cash so you can play, ride, and eat to your heart’s content.”
My shoulders relaxed with the change in topic. I needed time for this to all simmer, and Chase knew it.
“It’s still early,” I said. “You’ve got time to make an appearance at that golf thing and whatever else Dani had squeezed into the schedule for today.”
He’d begun shaking his head halfway through my response. “The day is clear. Wide open. The next place I have to be is the tour bus by eleven tonight so we can make it to San Francisco for tomorrow night’s concert.”
I hung my mouth open in mock surprise. “You mean you’ve got the next fourteen hours free to do whatever you want?”
“To do whatever you want.”
I felt my eyes light up. “How late do you think this place stays open?” In my head, I was already making my plan of attack. Rides, then food, then games. Repeat.
Chase roped his arm behind my neck, guiding us back into the fray. “Let’s close it down.”
11
“Only my parents know about the deal we made. And I might have mentioned it to Jesse,” I rattled off in the truck Chase had rented at the airport as we sped down a familiar gravel road. “Everyone else thinks we’re really together.”
Chase feigned a wounded expression. “And here I’ve been thinking we really are together.” His hand settled above my knee as naturally as if he’d been doing it for years.
“Hey. No professions. No promises.” I lifted my finger. “We promised each other one day at a time for six months. Then we can decide where we want to go from there.”
His hand slid a little higher. “So if I were to confess to you that I’ve never wanted anything more than I want you and that I will commit grievous crimes to remain the man who gets to make love to you . . . would that be a profession or a promise? Because it kind of feels like both to me.”
He only laughed when I swatted his arm. “Chase, come on. I’m nervous enough about this whole dinner with the entire hometown crew tonight. I’m worried I’m going to say something wrong or you are or the whole thing’s going to wind up in disaster.”
“Your dad still keeps his guns locked up, right?”
My face pinched together. “Yeah?”
“Good. That gives me a solid twenty-second lead from the time his patience runs out and he decides he’s shown enough self-restraint.”
He squeezed at my leg when I sighed. “Not helping. How are you not as nervous as I am about this?”
“Because everything is going to be fine.” Chase whipped the truck down a gravel street, knowing these backroads as well as I did. “We’re having a BBQ at your parents’ house and all of our old friends will be there. What’s so terrifying about that?”
“The fact that you’ll be in attendance,” I muttered.
>
“It’ll be fine.”
He ignored his phone buzzing in his back pocket. He’d been ignoring it for the last twenty miles. Chase was playing a show in Tulsa tomorrow night, but when everyone heard we’d be in town a day early, the plots for a get-together had been inevitable. My parents had insisted on hosting, and a couple dozen friends would be in attendance. We’d left the crew back in Tulsa, which was no doubt why Chase’s phone was blowing up.
Pete had a serious case of separation anxiety, while Dani was probably busting her bun having to reschedule this evening’s previously scheduled festivities.
“I could really use a drink.” I was bouncing in my seat the closer we got.
Chase’s hand secured me to the seat, drifting even higher up my leg. “Then let’s get you a drink, woman. Is that shady old dive still up here on the left?”
My head shook. “I can’t drink around you.”
“Why not?”
“Because of what happened. Because you don’t drink anymore.” I flicked the water bottle in his console. “Walking into some sleazy bar and doing a couple of shots in front of you is, like, the least supportive thing I could do.”
From the corner of my eye, I could tell Chase was staring at me like I was insane. “You can drink whenever, wherever, and however you want around me. Trust me. Waking up after the buzz wore off to find out I’d totaled a minivan belonging to a mom of four put me off the stuff entirely. You could shake a glass full of my favorite brand of whiskey and I’d have no desire to sneak a sip.”
Chewing at my lip, I shook my head. “I admire your discipline. I should stop drinking too. Give it up cold turkey.” My voice was all high and breathy. “Where did that expression come from, do you suppose? Cold turkey? How weird of a phrase is that?”
Chase hit the brakes, sending the truck squeeling in a cloud of dust. “I’ve never seen you so worked up.”
“That’s because I’ve never brought you home for the second time after the disaster the first time ended in.”
He twisted in his seat toward me. “You need to relax, Em.”
Fool Me Once Page 11