“So you tell me. What exactly have I gotten other than the standard Sawyer Chase fuck-’em-and-leave-’em treatment?”
He didn’t move, his face a damned concrete mask.
“I will give you one thing,” she said. She stomped over to the oven and, using a mitt, snatched the roast from the oven. “This is the best damned roast I’ve ever made, so do me a favor and thank your mother for me, would you? At least she did something for me.”
“I’ll do that.” He leaned to dig through the sofa they’d torn apart and came up with his jacket. “I’m sorry for wasting your damn time. Good-bye, Kelsie.”
“That’s it? No trophy for me for being the most screwed of all your playthings?” Even as she spat the words, she knew she was wrong. She knew there was more. But he didn’t want it, so it didn’t count. And she wasn’t about to fight for a guy who had only ever fought for the right to run.
“Yeah. That’s it.” He spoke quietly. Stared hard. Made it look so final. And over. “That’s all I am and all I do, or have you forgotten?”
“I haven’t forgotten anything, Sawyer. I have no idea how I ever will.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Me, too. Bye, Kelsie. It’s been real.”
Me, too? What the hell was that supposed to mean?
She didn’t get to ask. By the time she’d blinked through the tears that made the room swim and her glasses fog, he’d walked the short distance to the door. He left without a backward glance, slamming the door so hard, the wall shook.
The roast hit the door seconds later. Marmaduke trotted over to sniff it. Then, instead of digging into a very expensive cut of beef, he nudged it aside and sat by the door.
Whimpering.
When it hit her that Sawyer was really gone, Kelsie dropped to the floor and did the same.
Chapter Fourteen
By the evening of Jana’s bachelorette party, Kelsie hadn’t forgotten Sawyer, but she’d at least managed to push him from the forefront of her mind. Mostly. Sort of. Okay, so she thought of little else, but at least the logical side of her brain had come to the conclusion that the sooner she found something else to do, the better.
The problem was she didn’t want to do anything else.
She only wanted to do him.
Which had her thinking she needed to focus a little less on finding something perfect and a little more on living for the moment. Having an eye on her future was one thing…keeping both hands gripped on the wheel and being too terrified to look five degrees to the left was another. She’d been uptight her entire life, and as an adult that had made it almost impossible for her to have any fun. Sawyer made her realize how much she’d missed and that maybe she’d had her eye on the wrong ball the whole time. Unfortunately, that just took her right back to wanting him, but she’d live.
She’d have to.
Kelsie and Jana had never been close, but their dating brothers had given her an artificial sense of bonding. Maybe the same had happened with Sawyer, but that didn’t make her feel better. Not even as she watched her sister laugh it up across a very crowded club with her friends, celebrating a relationship and a new beginning while Kelsie mourned one that hadn’t really existed to begin with.
Yeah, that really didn’t make her feel better. She doubted anything could. Maybe she would have to make herself feel better. Maybe she’d have to try one of Sawyer’s tricks to get herself noticed, and with any luck she’d be able to forget about what’s-his-face, who hadn’t been able to get away from her fast enough. The fact that Jana had chosen the very bar at which Sawyer had introduced Kelsie to a dance floor was a sick twist of fate she chose not to examine, not that it was any great mystery. The club made the hottest-in-NY list thirteen weeks running, or so her sister had informed her, making it the place to be, and if not for a large party canceling their reservation literally moments before Kelsie called about the bachelorette party, they’d have been somewhere else. But no such luck. Although, the upside was she’d found someone willing to dance with her there once before, and odds were she could do it again.
She’d just begun a halfhearted visual tour of the crowd when Jana approached, giggling and unsteadily holding a shot glass. “You have to try this!”
Kelsie took the shot with absolutely no intention of consuming it. “You said you didn’t want to overdo it. Remember?”
“I’m fine,” Jana insisted. “The schrippers are here. You didn’t tell me there were schrippers!”
Kelsie needed a full ten seconds to decipher. “There aren’t strippers.”
Jana waved an unsteady arm at a group of guys now completely surrounded by Jana’s friends, none of whom Kelsie really knew. “They said they’d dance for us.”
Kelsie almost laughed. Unfortunately, it would be a long time before any of this was amusing. To Jana, she said, “I’m sure they will, honey. Just remember the photos will make it back to your future husband before you will, so behave.”
“Nah. He told me to have fun.”
“They never mean that.”
“What do you know? You’re shingle.”
Yeah, that was her. Shingle. As her sister tottered off to lie all over a guy who was not her intended, Kelsie realized single didn’t have to be a bad thing. It was definitely uncomplicated. Way less complicated than wondering if your bride-to-be was trying to cram her hand down some random guy’s pants, and she could only imagine what was going on at the bachelor party.
By contrast, being alone was just freaking dandy. And she might as well enjoy it. The next time she caught a guy looking at her, she took Sawyer’s advice and offered a slow smile, only somewhat awkwardly dragging her hand from her breast to her hip as she dropped her gaze to New Guy’s zipper. By the time she worked her way back up to his eyes, he was halfway over to her. What’s-his-face knew his shit.
The guy didn’t bother with introductions. No complications. Where had she heard that before? But he did take her hand and very nicely asked, “Want to dance?”
She hesitated, but no, she was doing this. “I’d love to,” she said.
And she did…right up until the moment she saw Sawyer sitting at a table situated against a wall bathed in shadows.
With a blonde in his lap.
…
Sawyer had been too busy staring at Kelsie to realize the blonde was on his shit until it was too late. But what did it matter? Kelsie had made it clear she was done with him.
So why wasn’t he over her?
And why did he want this woman off his lap…and that jerk’s hands off his girl?
His. Girl.
What the absolute fuck?
He’d dragged Ethan to the bar hoping to help his brother live a little and to get his own mind off Kelsie, and that had backfired in the worst way. He had no blessed idea how or why she would have ended up there, but he wasn’t going to sit around and wonder.
Not. A. Chance.
He stood, dislodging the blonde from her one-sided perch on his lap, and made his way closer to Kelsie. She didn’t look in his direction, and he wasn’t sure if she knew he was near. Which meant he had no idea if the show she was putting on was for him or for the asshat who had his hands in all the wrong places. Sawyer knew how those moves translated to the bedroom, so he couldn’t blame the guy, but that didn’t make him any less inclined to punch him in the face.
Fortunately, he didn’t have to. The song ended, and apparently whatever expression Sawyer wore was enough to make a claim, because the guy split. And before Sawyer could blink, some other guy was talking to her.
Fuck. On the cusp of breaking in and raising hell, Sawyer took a step back. And then another. And then he just watched her move, and he remembered when she was his.
Two damned days ago.
It felt like no time. It felt like forever.
It felt utterly fucking wrong.
Her moves now didn’t rival what she’d done to him their first night there, and that gave him a jolt of satisfaction that should have shamed him, but it didn�
��t. Instead, he saw her curves and the tease of her dress—a new one, he was pretty sure—and that took him back to the warmth of her skin. To the heat in her eyes when he’d spun her around and held her. She wasn’t wearing her glasses now, and to his surprise he kind of missed them. He missed her. He’d been the luckiest guy in the room, and he couldn’t offer her a thing. Because as much as he wanted to grab her, kiss her, and say he wanted all of his one-night stands to be with her, he couldn’t. He couldn’t steal this chance from her.
He didn’t know this new and unfamiliar side of himself. He didn’t know what it meant, or who he was. Just that loving her was a promise he couldn’t make.
And she deserved more.
So much for his plan to avoid getting hurt. She wasn’t even his girl, and losing her hurt like a bitch. Which meant he’d either been right about her deserving a better man or really fucking wrong about giving her up. But the result was the same.
He hit the bar and made sure his tab was clear, then—with a distant, dismissive nod to his bewildered brother—gave the area in which he’d last seen Kelsie a wide berth. Maybe she was having fun.
Maybe he’d just go home and drink.
Which was precisely what he was doing when someone buzzed his apartment an hour later. He ignored it. Ever since Kelsie had all but thrown him out of her apartment, he’d been mad at the world. He managed to get his work done without scaring the customers, but he’d blown off everyone else. Almost. He’d spoken to Liam, hoping he’d spread the word that he didn’t need an intervention, all the while grateful Crosby was too busy building a new home and business with Estelle to ride him about his attitude. And Ethan he’d just dodged, because he didn’t need to hear his sanctimonious shit. Tonight had been a mistake—no second opinion needed.
The buzzing didn’t go away, but Sawyer did his best to ignore it. After a good ten minutes, the noise stopped, only to be replaced moments later by a knock on the door. That, too, went unanswered. At least it did until the door swung open.
Ethan walked in, shutting the door behind himself like he planned to stay.
Sawyer glanced up, then quickly averted his eyes. “Who let you in the building?”
“Some woman on her way out.”
Sawyer rolled his eyes. Not a good idea when you’ve downed half a twelve-pack, but Ethan didn’t need to know that, either. The couple he’d had at the club were evidence enough. “Well, that clears it up.”
Ethan shot him a look. “It wasn’t Kelsie, so what do you care?”
“Point taken. Also, you’re an asshole.”
“Says the guy who dragged me to that stupid club then left me there. Thank you for that, by the way. Now when are you going to get off your ass and fix this thing with her?”
“When I run out of beer.” Sawyer swirled the liquid in the bottle, then held it up to the light. Almost down to suds. “And when she runs out of other guys to dance with.”
Ethan snatched the bottle out of Sawyer’s hand. “Consider yourself out.”
“Christ, man.” Sawyer snapped down the recliner’s leg rest, his every intention to stand up to his brother. But gravity shifted, so he thought better of that plan. Instead he glared. “Who elected you camp counselor?”
“Be straight with me, Sawyer. What’s going on?”
“She wanted a date,” he said.
“This was a problem?”
“She wanted a date on a yacht.”
Ethan frowned. “You’ve been like this for two days because she wanted to go on a yacht?”
“She didn’t want to go with me,” he said, conveniently leaving out the part where he didn’t do boats. It wasn’t as if Ethan didn’t know, but Sawyer wasn’t in the mood to be called out on that. “She wanted some picket-fence type who was ready to settle down.”
“So she broke up with you?”
“There was no breaking up. There was no together. It was me teaching her how to be irresistible to men.”
“Looks like you accomplished that.”
“Jesus Christ. No one asked you.”
“You don’t need to ask me. I’m dealing with your shit all day at work, so I’ve earned my right to an opinion.”
“All due respect, you’ve had one girlfriend your entire life, and it was perfect from day one. I’m so goddamned sorry you lost her. You have no idea. But you don’t know anything about what’s going on here. You’ve never had to fight a day in your life to make a woman believe you fucking loved her.”
Ethan’s brow cocked. “Are we talking about me or you?”
Sawyer glared. It didn’t send his brother from the room like he hoped. Finally he relented. “I don’t do relationships. I fuck, and I move on. That’s my life.”
“I’ve noticed,” Ethan said dryly. “I think we all have.”
“It’s not complicated that way. I hate complications.”
Ethan’s mouth twisted. “And Kelsie is a complication?”
“I don’t hate Kelsie,” he said, not really answering the question.
“Then what’s the problem?”
“She thinks I used her for sex.”
“And you didn’t?” Ethan scoffed.
“Fuck you.”
“God, you’re dense. Did you ever once say or do anything to make her think you wanted more than sex?”
Sawyer met his brother’s accusing eyes. “I did more than sleep with her. Does that count?”
“Does she know?”
Sawyer shook his head. “No, she doesn’t know. Because I can’t do it, Ethan. I can’t do it.”
“You can’t do what?”
“I can’t fucking become you.”
Ethan actually took a step back, and the apartment seemed to echo with the aftermath of the words.
“What,” Ethan asked tersely, “is so wrong with me?”
Sawyer threw out his hands and immediately thought of Kelsie. God, it was contagious. “You tell me,” he said to his brother. “Tell any of us. You’re not alive, man. You’re just…there. You exist, and we’re all thankful we have that much, but you jumped in the goddamned hole after Amy. And for what?”
By then, Ethan had his back turned. Quietly, he said, “You don’t love someone like that and forget.”
“No one is asking you to forget but think. You love hard, brother. Don’t you believe you should share that with someone else? Christ. Even Grady has signed up for some online-dating shit.”
Ethan turned around. “Yeah, well, Grady likes computers more than I do. And you’re one to talk. Has it ever occurred to you that you might have more to offer a woman than sex? As a matter of fact, maybe that’s your fucking problem. Maybe you just see women as a receptacle for your dick.” Ethan shot him a dark look. “Respect. Look it up.”
“I respect Kelsie,” Sawyer said. “Might have been the first time I ever went out with a girl and didn’t have sex with her on the first date. Or the second. And I’ve never even been on a third date, but we didn’t have sex then. Nope. Made it all the way to the fourth date—the fucking opera—before I even touched her there. So don’t tell me I don’t respect her, because I’ve never respected anyone more.”
Ethan gave a nod of approval in response to Sawyer’s babbling. “Good for you,” Ethan said. “Now does she know that?”
“What difference does it make? She’s done.” To Ethan’s raised brow, he added, “She asked me to leave, and she was probably right. I’m not that guy she wants.”
“I think you’re missing the point, brother.”
“Which is?”
“Whether you want to be the guy she wants.”
“I’m not.” When Ethan’s brow furrowed, Sawyer caved and told him the rest. “There’s a boat. I’m too afraid to go on the goddamned boat for her. If I can’t do that, how could I ever handle the big shit? The living.” He paused. “The dying.”
“Fuck, you’re morbid. It’s not that hard, Sawyer. You live, and you’re glad for every day you have. And you die, and you hope you lived hard en
ough to make someone miss you. And as for the boat, don’t do the boat for her.”
“Don’t do the boat for her?” That wasn’t what Sawyer expected.
“No, you dumb bastard. You do it for yourself. You do it because you finally figure out that’s the kind of man you want to be. Until you reach that point, you don’t deserve her. And by the way, get over yourself. You fell off a boat twenty years ago. You were wearing a life jacket, and you could see land. Are you really going to let that derail the best damned thing you’ve ever had?”
“Something touched my leg,” Sawyer said.
“Yeah, well, I think someone touched your heart. And I have a feeling she’d probably drag your sorry ass out of the river if you fell in… Although, at this point, I’m guessing she’d rather be the one who put you there to begin with.”
The room fell silent, Sawyer staring at the stain on the ceiling while Ethan stared at the floor.
After a long while, Sawyer broke the silence. “Ethan?”
“What?” Ethan’s eyes were troubled, and Sawyer had a feeling that had little to do with his shit and a whole lot to do with Ethan’s.
“Two things,” Sawyer said. “One, go get yourself a fucking life.”
“Two?”
“You tell anyone I went to the opera, and I’ll kill you.”
Chapter Fifteen
Kelsie exited the cab and stood on shaky legs. Deciding to attend the wedding alone had, just a few hours earlier, seemed badass. Now, it felt a little pathetic. It wasn’t even some great stint of maturity or growth. Just a simple matter of her not yet being over Sawyer, and arriving there on some other man’s arm wouldn’t be right.
She’d been at her sister’s beck and call all morning. As maid of honor, she should probably still be there, but her sister had discovered a small patch of stubble on her upper thigh that she’d missed while shaving, and a razor happened to be the one thing they hadn’t included in the countless boxes and bags they’d brought onboard the boat for the wedding. Even though absolutely no one would ever see Jana’s so-called humiliation, Kelsie was quick to volunteer to hit a drug store for a Venus.
She needed air. Not wedding air, but real air.
For Seven Nights Only (Chase Brothers) Page 14