Sweet Chaos (Love & Chaos Book 2)

by Emery Rose

  I grabbed his arm to stop him from walking away. “What do you mean?”

  “You want me to spell it out for you?” He laughed harshly. “I can’t be your friend, Scarlett. I tried but I just can’t do it.”

  I stared blankly, not sure I’d heard him right. “But… what are you talking about? You can’t mean that.”

  “It kills me to see you with him,” he said, his voice strained.

  “Ollie. Don’t do this,” I pleaded. “Please. We can… I can… we’ll figure this out.” I scrambled to find the words that would turn this around but there were none. “I don’t want to lose you.”

  “I lost you a long time ago. You’ll live,” he spat out.

  My heart squeezed in anguish at the realization that this was really it. Ollie and I were going to end fourteen years of friendship in a dark corner of a dive bar. “Ollie, please. Let’s just—”

  “Let’s just what?” he seethed. “Let me put this in perspective for you. Give you something you can understand. I’ve been in love with you for as long as you’ve been in love with him. You broke my fucking heart, Scarlett. Everyone knew I was in love with you. Everyone except you.”

  “I’m sorry.” My words came out in a broken whisper. Ollie was beautiful, he really was. Talented. Funny. With a big heart. He would do anything for a friend. Any girl would be so lucky to have him. Falling in love with him should have been so easy. “I’m so sorry. I never meant to hurt you.”

  “Yeah, well, from where I’m sitting, you’d never know it.”

  This time when he walked away, I didn’t chase after him. There was nothing I could say or do to make this better. Blindly pushing through the crowd, my vision blurred by tears, I stumbled out of the front door and leaned against the brick wall for support. I took a shuddering breath, my heart in my throat.

  How could I have been so cruel? So careless with my best friend’s feelings?

  Not once, but twice I’d thrown it in his face. If I were Ollie, I would hate me too.

  I heard the door open and the music spilled out then it was muffled by the door closing. Dylan came to stand in front of me, his eyes flitting over my face, trying to read it. Shouldn’t be hard. I swiped at the tears on my cheeks, angry at myself and angry at him.

  “Happy now? Ollie’s out of the picture.”

  Dylan leaned down so he was eye level with me. “You think it makes me happy to see you sad?”

  My shoulders sagged, the weight of what I’d done pressing down on me. “How could I have done this to him? How could I be so horrible?”

  “You’re not horrible.”

  “Why did you insist on coming tonight?” The real question was, why had I let him? I should have put a stop to it. Should have told him no. Or at the very least, I should have kept my hands off him. That was the trouble with being with Dylan. Whenever I was around him, I couldn’t think straight and made bad decisions.

  I’d destroyed a friendship. What else would I destroy for Dylan?

  Five minutes later, Dylan pulled into the 7-Eleven and cut the engine.

  “What are we doing here?”

  “I’ll leave the keys in the ignition, so you can listen to music.” He gave my thigh a gentle squeeze, trying to reassure me that everything would be okay. “Be right back.”

  The door slammed behind him and I watched him walk into the store and head down one of the aisles like a man on a mission while The Neighbourhood’s “Sweater Weather” played from his Bluetooth speakers in the car.

  I slumped in my seat and took out my phone to text Nic but I wasn’t ready to discuss what happened with Ollie yet and I knew she’d pump me for details, so I tucked my phone back in my pocket and closed my eyes. All I could see was Ollie’s face. Ollie had been my first, my only one. Even that was tied to Dylan in a roundabout way, thanks to a conversation we had when I was fifteen.

  “Anyone ever fucks with you, you call me, understand?”

  “Yeah, sure. But I’ve never been fucked with or fucked.”

  “Keep it that way.”

  “You think I should stay a virgin forever, Dylan?”

  “Wait until you find someone who treats you right. Someone special. And don’t say the word fuck. It sounds all wrong coming out of your mouth.”

  I’d taken Dylan’s advice and I had waited for someone special. Someone I trusted with my heart. I chose Ollie, and he’d been so gentle, so sweet. But I’d broken his heart. My head fell back against the headrest with a thud and I banged it a few times.

  I hated myself right now.

  Dylan returned with two plastic carrier bags and stowed them in the back. I didn’t even ask what was in the bags. I didn’t say a word as he pulled out onto the road. Minutes later, he parked in the public lot by the pier and tossed a hoodie at me from the backseat.

  “Come on.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Something I want to show you.”

  “I just want to go home,” I said, weary and defeated.

  “And do what? Eat ice cream and watch 80s flicks? I’ve got a better idea. Come on,” he coaxed. “The view’s better where we’re going.”

  With a sigh, I got out of the car and walked alongside him, the sea breeze cooling my flushed cheeks. I shivered, threading my arms through the hoodie and zipping it up, annoyed with myself when I burrowed my nose in the cotton fabric, inhaling his scent. I needed an intervention. We followed the curved sidewalk past the pink stone benches on a grassy hill overlooking the sea and passed a group of teens doing skateboard tricks off the low wall, their wheels grating against the concrete.

  We stopped outside the front entrance of The Surf Lodge, and Dylan transferred both bags to his right hand and unlocked the door then ushered me inside and used his phone flashlight to guide the way.

  “Careful,” he said, giving me his hand so I didn’t trip over the rolled-up carpeting and debris littering the uneven floor.

  The construction crew had walked out halfway through the job and left walls partially knocked out and electrical wiring exposed.

  We climbed the stairs, Dylan leading the way, and I stayed close behind him. The hotel smelled musty, the sawdust from the construction work lodging in my throat and making me cough. When we reached the top of the stairs, Dylan flung open a door and ushered me onto a flat roof. I took deep breaths of the fresh sea air and trained my phone flashlight on the space, arcing the light across the bar spanning the far wall, tarps covering what I guessed were tables and bar furniture.

  Dylan dragged two Adirondack chairs over to the railing and set them up side by side. I took a seat next to him and looked down at the two bags at our feet.

  “What’s in the bags?”

  “Trick or Treat.”

  Despite myself, I laughed a little and rooted through a bag of snack food. Doritos, Twizzlers, M&Ms, a bagful of sweet and salty junk food. I knew he hadn’t bought them for himself. This was his attempt to try to make me feel better. I never would have dreamt that Dylan could be so sweet, but he was always surprising me.

  He flipped the lid off a bottle of beer with his key and handed it to me before he opened one for himself. “Thank you.”

  He nodded once.

  “It’s beautiful up here.” I leaned back in my seat that was sticky from the salty air, and took in the view of the ocean, a silver slipper of moon shimmering on the water, the sound of the waves crashing against the shore a soothing lullaby.

  “Yeah. It is. The first time I saw the Pacific Ocean… any ocean… I was sixteen. It was the only time in my life that the reality lived up to the dream.” Wanting to hear more, I waited, sensing that he was going to share a piece of himself with me.

  “Me and Remy wanted to learn how to surf. We taught ourselves to skateboard, so we figured we could do the same with surfing. So, one day we rented boards from Jimmy… Shane’s dad. He used to own a surf shop.” I nodded, acknowledging that I knew who Jimmy was even though I’d never had a chance to meet him.

  �
��He told us he’d teach us a few basics.” Dylan chuckled under his breath. “He brought us out here and made us practice on the sand. I was so pissed. I just wanted to get out in the water. But, for some reason, I stayed, and I listened to everything he told us. I think it was because nobody had ever taken the time to teach me anything. And he was just this cool, chilled-out hippie dude. Big on finding his Zen and shit.”

  I smiled, envisioning a teenage Dylan and an older version of Shane bonding over surfing. “Like Shane?”

  “Even more laidback than Shane. He always gave the best advice. Not that I always took it. But when I was in college, Remy was gone… Shane was gone… and I used to kick back with Jimmy, smoke weed, talk about life and shit.”

  “You miss him,” I said softly.

  “He was the best guy I’ve ever known. He got married on this roof. He told me that he wanted to buy The Surf Lodge someday and restore it. But he never got the chance.”

  I thought about his story. For Dylan, this wasn’t just an old hotel and it wasn’t about the money. He wanted to hang on to a piece of history, a piece of Jimmy, and one of the ways he could do that was by restoring The Surf Lodge. “This place means a lot to you.”

  He nodded. “But buying something for sentimental reasons is typically a bad business decision.”

  “I wish there was something I could do.” I stared at the bottle in my hand, once again reminded of how little regard my father had for anything but the almighty dollar.

  “Not your problem. I’ll figure it out.” He sounded so confident, but I got the feeling that he’d say those words no matter what the situation. “What happened with Ollie?”

  “He said he can’t be my friend anymore,” I said, my stomach sinking as the finality of those words hit me all over again.

  “He’s still in love with you.”

  My spirits sank even lower, and I tried to swallow past the lump in my throat. Had I really been so blind, so stupid that I hadn’t seen what was right in front of my eyes? A stab of guilt lay buried in my heart and I didn’t think it would ever go away. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Come here.” He patted his lap.

  Tempting but dangerous. Whenever I got too close to him, it only made me want more. I shouldn’t even be talking to him right now, not after what had happened tonight.

  “Why did you insist on coming with me tonight?” I asked again, my voice tinged with bitterness.

  “I told you,” he said, sounding exasperated that I would question him. “I didn’t want you to go to that bar alone.” His tone softened. “I wasn’t trying to fuck up your friendship.”

  I heard the sincerity in his voice but still. Maybe he hadn’t intended to fuck up my friendship but it had happened anyway. In my heart, I knew I had nobody to blame except myself. I’d let Dylan come with me tonight. I’d done nothing to stop him when he’d wrapped his arms around me. He hadn’t forced me to do anything, I’d encouraged it.

  I sucked.

  “I did a pretty good job of that all on my own.”

  He set down his beer, stood up and scooped me up in his arms like I was featherlight then sat down, holding me in his lap, my legs hanging over the arm of his chair, his arm around my back. I squirmed, trying to get away, my beer sloshing from the bottle and seeping into his hoodie. He held onto me and he didn’t let me go.

  “Stop fighting me. Just relax.” He rubbed his nose against the side of mine and kissed the corner of my lips. “Look up, Starlet.”

  I tipped my head back and looked up at the stars reeling in the sky. When I was a kid, I used to think they were close enough to reach up and touch. Now they looked so impossibly far away.

  “Do you still wish on stars?” he asked, bringing his beer to his lips.

  “No.” I searched for the brightest star and tried to remember when or why I’d stopped wishing on them. “Did you used to wish on stars?”

  “Never.”

  My gaze settled on him. He was watching the stars, his head leaning against the back of the chair, his throat exposed. I wanted to lick it. Bury my face in it. Instead, I took a sip of my beer. “Why not?”

  He shrugged one shoulder, eyes still on the sky. “Couldn’t see the point.”

  “What about when you blew out your birthday candles? Did you make a wish then?”

  “Nope.”

  “That’s just… really sad.”

  Dylan laughed softly. “You think?” I nodded. He squeezed my thigh. “Did any of your wishes ever come true?”

  “Yes.” You kissed me.

  “They say to be careful what you wish for.”

  “Maybe I should have listened to them.”

  His lips curved into a half-smile as if he knew what my wish had been. I didn’t know if it was good or bad that I’d gotten my wish. It had felt inevitable.

  In the moonlight, his edges looked sharper, his hair darker and skin paler. Like a black and white photo with all the color leached out of it. It was surreal to be here with him, sitting on his lap on the rooftop of a 1950s hotel on a starry February night. For so long, this had been my dream, my wish on a star, and now that it was happening, I wasn’t sure what to do about it.

  Be careful what you wish for.

  Twisting my body around, I reached for the bag on the ground behind my back. Dylan reached over and grabbed it for me, setting it in my lap. I ripped open a bag of peanut M&Ms and tossed a few into my mouth, offering the bag to Dylan. He shook his head no so I kept them in my lap for easy access to a sugar high.

  We lapsed into silence and drank our beers under the stars, the waves crashing against the shore our soundtrack, my cheek resting on his collarbone.

  It was my curse to fall in love with Dylan. Ollie was the first casualty, but I knew that if I continued, he wouldn’t be the last. By pursuing whatever this was with Dylan, I stood to lose a lot. Whereas what did he have to lose, really?

  My father would have gone after him anyway so that had nothing to do with our relationship. He and Sienna were over, so he’d already lost her. Remy, I knew, would always choose Dylan. She hadn’t even stayed friends with Sienna. What if I lost my job because of this? If Sienna ever found out, she would disown me. Was it worth risking everything?

  There were too many obstacles in our way, and there was no use pretending that Dylan could ever be mine. But whenever I was presented with a choice, to stay or walk away, I always did the wrong thing.

  “You’re thinking too hard.” He smoothed his hand over my furrowed brow and brushed my hair off my cheek, his hand gliding to the back of my head, angling it toward him. Our mouths collided, suddenly and all at once, and our kiss was hungry, filled with need and want and the tantalizing promise of more.

  We kissed until our lips were raw and swollen. The scruff on his jaw scraped my soft skin but I didn’t care. I kissed him like a junkie who needed a fix.

  Stars died and were reborn and my crazy heart changed its tempo, beating in time with his.

  The line between right and wrong had blurred and shifted, and all I could think about was chasing this heady, intoxicating feeling where everything was so wrong yet felt so right.

  Because of a kiss. Because of him.

  16

  Dylan

  “So… Woods wants to buy you out?” Cruz said, his voice low as the locker room door closed behind Raj, our software engineer. The trouble with using the gym in our office building was that everyone from our office used it too.

  “Looks that way.” I tossed my towel in my gym bag and pulled on a pair of black sweatpants and a T-shirt then sat on the bench to put on my high tops.

  “And let me guess… you said no.”

  I’d had a few more choice words but ‘no’ was the gist of it. Woods hadn’t called me personally, his lawyer had.

  “Meanwhile, you’re bumping uglies with his daughter. The other daughter. Is this a vendetta or something?”

  “Scarlett has nothing to do with it.”

  Cruz gave me a skeptical l
ook. “It just seems fucked up that of all the girls you could go for, you chose her. You know this can’t end well, right? Look what happened with you and Sienna. And this is her sister.”

  Like I needed a reminder. I slung my gym bag over my shoulder and we strode to the door. “They’re nothing alike.”

  “She’s not a bitch like Sienna was,” he acknowledged. Not sure if bitch was the right word for Sienna but I guess you could say I brought out the worst in her.

  I was no Dr. Phil but even I knew that our relationship had been toxic. She’d fed me lies and empty promises and I’d kept the relationship alive by punching inanimate objects, breaking shit or just walking away and leaving her to deal with her own bullshit. It got to the point where we couldn’t even be in the same room without her ending up in tears or screaming that I was an asshole.

  Yet every single time I left her, she had begged me to come back, to give it another try because ‘next time everything would be different.’ Where had I heard that one before? Why had we kept going back for more torture? Fuck if I knew.

  Here’s the definition of stupidity: Keep doing the same stupid shit and expecting different results.

  So yeah, I was over Sienna, but Scarlett was a different story. She was a challenge, and I’d never backed down from a challenge in my life. She was making me work for something I’d never had to work for before, and blue balls aside, it was not only refreshing, it was fun.

  Scarlett made me happy but more than that, I wanted to make her happy. It hadn’t been my intention to wreck her friendship with Shaggy Doo, but in all fairness, I hadn’t realized that he was still in love with her. Should have picked up on that the night of her birthday I guess. But come on, the asshole had cheated on her. What did he expect? It was naïve of Scarlett to think that they could still be ‘just friends.’

  Let’s face it, men were territorial, we staked our claim, and we didn’t want any other asshole coming along and pissing on our territory. Scarlett was mine now. In the sense that I wasn’t hooking up with anyone else.