The Fragile Line: Part Three (The Fine Line #4)

by Alicia Kobishop

  ~Matt~

  “Bullshit,” I protested.

  She raised her brows as if I had just offended her. “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me.” My determination to put a stop to our pointless separation was growing stronger by the second. “I call bullshit.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You don’t want to stop. And neither do I. I’ve played by your rules. I’ve given you space for the last few months, and it’s gotten us exactly nowhere. That shit stops today.” With a sigh, I removed my palms from the wall and took her hands. Genuinely concerned, my voice softened. “So tell me, Pink. Why are you so dead-set on putting a stop to something we both want so bad?”

  “Because you have a girlfriend!” she shouted, her voice echoing in the stairwell. She yanked her hands out of mine and pushed me away. Hard. “Yes, I want you right now. I think that’s pretty obvious. And yes, I’ve felt completely empty since you left…I mean since I left you. I mean—shit! I know this is all my fault, okay? I fucked up. Again. Like I always do. But none of that matters now because I’m not going to be the other woman, Matt. I won’t be second best. Never again.”

  A laugh blurted its way out of me. I tried to hold it in, but she was so damn irresistible, and the ridiculousness of it all—as if anyone would ever be capable of being more perfect for me than her.

  “Why are you laughing?” She squinted, the hurt in her eyes physically squeezing at my heart. “Do you really think that little of me?”

  My shoulders dropped. “No. Not at all. I’m sorry, Chloe. I should’ve told you the second I saw you. But, you know, you do things to me. Things that make it impossible to think straight.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? Told me what?”

  “It’s fake. There is no Ava and me—we’re not really together. We were never anything more than just friends. I wanted to tell you, but it didn’t seem like the kind of thing to share over text, and you wouldn’t answer my calls. She’s in love with someone else.” I paused, wondering if now was the right time to say the truth that had been waiting to be exposed for months. Ah, fuck it. I was done waiting. Now was the best time. “And so am I.”

  ~Chloe~

  Did he just say what I think he said? He’s in love with someone? Someone other than Ava? My mind wanted so badly to believe that he meant me. That he loved me.

  But my heart knew better. Besides, loving me wouldn’t be fair to him.

  He took in my reaction, waiting for my response, but I couldn’t seem to form words at the moment. Everything that I had hoped for was literally right in front of me. Yet, not only did I want so much better for him than me, part of me couldn’t let go of the probability that I could be reading him completely wrong. Maybe it wasn’t me that he loved. Maybe he never loved me at all. Maybe now was the time for him to come clean, and me to face that harsh reality.

  He raised his brows, “Don’t even, Pink.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “You know what,” he said. “I know what you’re thinking, and you need to quit that shit right now.”

  “You have no idea what I’m thinking,” I said, taking offense.

  “Oh really?”

  “Yes Matt! Really! You’re not a mind reader.”

  “So, you’re not wondering who I love?”

  I pretended to laugh, but an awkward noise came out instead. Embarrassed at my gracelessness and the fact that he could read me so easily, my gaze focused on the floor. Now was the moment of truth. Was I ready? Keeping my eyes on the ground, I replied with answer to both his question and mine, “Nope.”

  He chuckled softly, “Look at me.” His fingers lifted my chin, forcing me to meet his stare. “I know how much the timing sucks, okay? Things with us moved too damn fast. Faster than either of us were ready for. But love never waits for the right time, does it? It just comes barreling into our lives, tearing shit up, messing with our plans, and making us crazy as hell. And we may not be ready for it, but I’m done pretending it’s not there. You might not want to know who I love, but I’m going to tell you. Chloe McCarthy, I’m so fucking crazy in love with you it hurts.”

  It was everything I wanted to hear and everything I had been afraid of. He was right, the timing was all wrong. I wasn’t ready. Even if we tried, I’d mess it all up, making things worse than they already were. So I tried to resist, for both of our sakes.

  “You can’t love me,” I pleaded. “I’m not—we’re not—we’re just not right for each other. We can’t pretend that’s not true and—”

  He placed his index finger over my mouth, shushing me. “Stop making excuses, Chloe. I know you’re scared. So am I. But we can’t let that stop us anymore. Look, I know why you left my house the morning after Christmas. I won’t lie, it fucking hurt when you left, but only because couldn’t make sense of it at first. The more I thought about it, the more I understood. And I get it now, because I’ve been there. I’ve been in your shoes. You don’t think you’re capable of being who you think I need, do you? And trust me, I know what it’s like to want to be a better person for the people you care about. That’s the only reason I fought every instinct in my body that told me to chase after you that day. You were doing what you had to do. You needed that, so I let you go.

  The thing is…I. Don’t. Care about that anymore. I know now that I was horribly wrong to watch you walk away the way I did. If you hear nothing else I say today, Chloe, please hear this. I want you. Not the you of tomorrow. Not the you a year from now. I fucking want the person you are today. And that doesn’t mean you have to stop trying to better yourself. It only means that you don’t have to wait until you reach your goals to allow yourself to be happy. To allow yourself to be with me. That’s what you just said back there, right? That you’re happy when you’re with me?”

  His audacity forced a single, humorless laugh out of me. Just as I was about to tell him that he had a lot of nerve to call me out like that—just as I was about to follow my normal routine of denying him, of rejecting anything that might actually give me a moment of happiness, I remembered something he said to me on more than one occasion. Do what’s right. And honestly? Nothing felt more right than admitting the truth to him right here. Right now.

  As the possibility of us being together sunk in, as I began to finally accept that giving an actual relationship with him a try might truly be what’s right for both of us, as the possibility of finally being happy again percolated in my mind, and as I prepared to confess how I really felt about him, every emotion that I had been keeping inside, safely under the surface began to bleed its way out.

  Nerves trembled in my fingers. Joy pushed against my eyes, stinging them, dampening them. Relief warmed my skin as anticipation raced in my heart, and all the while, hope swelled heavily in my throat.

  I never thought revealing something so tender could be so scary.

  I cautiously nodded, whispering, “Yes. I said it. And yeah, I meant it. Being with you makes me so happy, Matt. It makes me the kind of happy that’s—” I took a deep breath for strength and clarity. Once I found the right words, I looked him straight in the eye. “—that’s so fucking rare it quivers when you get too close, and breaks when you touch it. The kind that nobody on earth deserves, especially not me. You make me the kind of happy that’s so exquisite you don’t know if it’s real or if you’re lost in an immaculate dream.” A tear escaped, trickling down my cheek. “It’s the kind of ‘happy’ so perfect that when it dies, you wish you would’ve died with it because you know nothing will ever compare. I love you, Matt, and know it sounds messed up, but I’ve pushed you away because I want to be able to make you the kind of happy that you make me. You deserve that, and I just don’t know if I’m capable of it and that’s not fair to you. You need—”

  “Shut up, Chloe,” he took me behind the neck and pulled me into a hug so rich in acceptance that I could barely hold myself together. “I need you, do you hear me?” he embraced me tighter, affection radiating ou
t of him, filling my emptiness, muzzling my insecurity. As his strong arms held me close, and my quiet tears saturated his chest, he whispered, “You’re all I need, and don’t you dare ever fucking think otherwise.” He leaned back and cupped my cheeks, wiping my tears away with the pads of his thumbs. “I can’t promise you that we won’t have challenges. But I love you. And that means I promise I’ll never give up on us. Never, Chlo. Okay?”

  “I should be the one making promises, Matt. Not you.” He opened his mouth to object, but I cut him off. “I want this. I want you. I want us to be together. We’ve just gotten so off course, I don’t know how to get back. But I promise you that as of today, I’ll stop running. I’ll stop pushing you away. I can’t do that anymore. Especially after seeing you now. Like this. I don’t want to do that anymore. Being in your arms like this is all I want.”

  “Me too, Chloe. Me too.”

  He held me close, his embrace calming me, ceasing my tears. His body against mine felt so perfect, so right, that it made me realize that I never wanted to let him go again. Nor did I want him to let me go. After I had gained some composure, and leaned back and looked into his expressive eyes and asked, “So what does this mean for us?”

  He broke eye contact, briefly searching for an answer. I could tell when he found it because one side of his mouth curled up as he looked back at me.

  “It means there’s only one thing left to do.”

  “Okay?” I said, eyeing him suspiciously. “What’s that?”

  “Wanna go steady?” he teased, wiggling his brows, grin widening.

  I couldn’t stop the laugh that came out. I loved the way he could erase tension and make light of a situation so easily.

  “Only if you meet me at my locker every day after school,” I joked.

  He laughed, but it only lasted for a moment before reality hit us. It would be impossible for us see each other every day. He lived hundreds of miles away, bound to live there by a contract, and wouldn’t be able to move back home even if he wanted to. Did he even want to come back?

  “Hey,” noticing my distress, he leaned in and kissed my forehead. “We’ll figure it out, okay? I promise.”

  “Okay,” I replied. I believed him. I had no doubt that this very moment was a turning point for us. One that showed us both that we were ready to take the next step. We were ready to do whatever it would take to be together.

  A door from one of the floors above us opened, and a pair of footsteps sounded on the stairs, making their way towards us. The voices of two young women echoed against the walls. Their voices ceased as they reached us, the clunking of their shoes momentarily halting when they noticed a shirtless Matt holding me, his coat and t-shirt sprawled on the floor.

  Matt let go of me and turned to the women dressed in scrubs. “Nothing to see here, ladies.” He pointed toward the direction they were heading. “Move it along.”

  They rushed passed us, stifling their giggles, and as they opened the door to the floor below us, one of them said, “Isn’t that the guy from that car show?”

  The door slammed shut, and Matt dropped his head, shaking it, “Shit.”

  “She recognized you. That’s bad, isn’t it?” I said. I still didn’t understand the details of his relationship with Ava, but I trusted that he had a good reason for going along with it. “You’re not supposed to be with me…You’re supposed to be with Ava. They saw us together, Matt. What if they talk to the press? It’s going to mess everything up for you, isn’t it?”

  “No, Pink. It’s going to make everything right.”

  I gave him a quizzical look.

  He gave me back a confident smile that assured me he had very little concern for a rumor getting out about him being in a stairwell, half naked, with another woman.

  He gestured toward the door the women exited out of. “I’ll deal with that later. For now, I’m going to resist my urge to pin you against the wall and do what I’ve been wanting to do for the last three months, because when I finally do that, Chloe? When I finally touch you the way I’ve been wanting to—when I finally bury myself so deep into you that I’ll never want to stop—it’s not going to be done quickly in some public stairwell where someone could walk in on us at any moment.” He cocked his head in thought, “Although, remind me to do that with you another time. This time, though? It’ll be in a place where we can take our time and savor every moment together. It’ll be done in a place where nobody will be able to make us stop.”

  Oh God, that sounded amazing. His words had me reeling to a point where the only thing I could think about was how it would feel when we could finally make that very thing happen. So, I said the only thing I could think of. “When?”

  “Later. Tonight. For now, we’re going to do what we came here to do.” He took his coat off the floor and put in on, grabbing his t-shirt off the floor next. After zipping his coat up, he extended his hand and said, “FML, baby. Follow my lead.”

  And that’s exactly what I did. I placed my hand in his, smiling at how his use of our “code-acronym”, FML, made me feel like I could walk on clouds, and I let him lead me up the stairs, through the door, and past the nurse’s station to the waiting room where Gavin and Liv still…waited.

  Chapter Ten

  ~Chloe~

  Liv and Gavin weren’t the only ones in the waiting room anymore. A woman, whom I could only assume was Logan’s mom, chatted with them, smiling as would be expected in the event of her son waking up from his coma. As Matt and I made our entrance, their seemingly delightful conversation was cut short by the distraction of our approach. Gavin noticed us first, followed by Liv whose smile quickly faded at the sight of me. Logan’s mom followed their gazes toward us, and when she saw Matt, she gave him a genuine smile.

  “Hi Jen,” Matt greeted her as she stood to give him a hug.

  “I’m so glad to see you here, Matt. It’ll mean so much to Logan that you came home for him. And you’re just in time! Did you hear? He woke up this morning.”

  “Yes Ma’am, I heard,” Matt replied as she pulled away. “And I’m looking forward to giving him shit for the scare he gave us.”

  Jen laughed, “I’m sure he’ll appreciate that.” She turned to me, and extended a hand. “I’m not sure we’ve met. I’m Jen, Logan’s mom.”

  “Hi,” I removed my hand from Matt’s to place it in hers. “I’m Chloe. I’m—uh—” What would I tell her? Hi, I’m Logan’s ex-lover. The one who almost ruined his life…

  “My girlfriend,” Matt interrupted. “Chloe’s my girlfriend.”

  Wow. I loved the way that sounded.

  “Oh!” Surprised, Jen raised her brows. “Well, it’s very nice to meet you, Chloe. I can’t even tell you how happy it makes me to see that Logan has so many good friends to support him in times like this. Thank you for being here.”

  “Of course,” I replied.

  “Well, I’m long overdue for a shower,” Jen said to us all as she began gathering her coat and handbag. “Logan wants me to catch up on sleep, but I’m not quite ready to leave him for that long yet, even if he is an adult. I should be back in about an hour or two. They’re planning on doing some testing later…now is the perfect time for you all to take turns visiting him.”

  As Jen said her goodbyes, I turned to Liv, gauging her reaction to my presence. Her eyes were on me. She wasn’t smiling. But oddly, she didn’t seem pissed off either.

  When Jen left us, a long, awkward silence ensued, broken only by Matt clearing his throat and saying, “Gav. Coffee. Let’s get some.”

  “Dude, I hate coffee. Besides, I thought that’s what you were doing.” Gavin gave Matt a once-over, a coy grin forming on his face when he noticed the soiled t-shirt in Matt’s hand. “Oh. I see. ‘Getting coffee’ must be code for shenanigans. I’m all for shenanigans, but not the kind you two were clearly having.” He pointed back and forth between Matt and me, finally landing on Matt. “Well, not with you anyway, big-boy.”

  Gavin’s eager eyes turned to me a
nd he raised his brows as if to say “you on the other hand…”

  That’s when Matt fisted Gavin’s flannel shirt, springing him up from his chair and onto his feet with enough ease to make Gavin seem as light as a ragdoll.

  “Hey!” Gavin protested.

  “You’re fucking lucky we’re friends, dude. Let’s go.” Matt said, tugging at Gavin’s shirt again, then pushing him forward. “We need to have a conversation.”

  I couldn’t make out the words that Matt and Gavin said as they walked away from us over the pounding of my heartbeat. Being alone with Liv made me nervous as hell…at no fault of hers.

  Nope. Everything was my fault.

  “Look,” I said nervously, deciding to go all in and get it over with. “That day that you caught me at Logan’s apartment? Nothing happened. Nothing. I was so messed up and I made it look like something happened, but I promise you, nothing did. It was a huge mistake and I don’t even know what else to say, except that I’m so sorry for it, Liv. I’m sorry for everything.”

  She stared at me, silently taking in my apology. I felt like such an idiot for all the pain I had caused her and Logan.

  Needing to fill the silence, I continued. “I don’t even have an excuse for what I did to you—to him—except that I was going through a really difficult time and I wasn’t thinking clearly.” I sighed. “But I know that doesn’t even matter because it was so wrong. What I did was unforgivable and I regret it so much.”

  She bowed her head in thought. When she looked back up at me, the words she said damn near blew my mind.

  “It’s okay.”

  Jaw, meet floor.

  “Um. Wh—what?” I stuttered.

  “Well, it’s not okay, but if you’re looking for forgiveness…You’ve got it.”

  “Are—are you serious?”

  “Yeah,” she shrugged. “Logan forgave you, and I trust his judgement. I mean, I’m not sure we’ll ever be friends or anything, but I’m over it. Logan and I are solid, Chloe. He told me everything you said to him when you apologized to him. He explained what happened that day when I saw you in his apartment and I’m past it. I’ve been past it for a while. What happened that morning doesn’t affect me, especially now, considering everything that’s gone down in the last two days,” she smiled. “There are more important things in life to focus on, you know? There’s no reason this one mistake should affect you anymore either.”