Page 18 of The Promise Of You

“Did something happen to you?” I ask to cool down the moment. And also because I desperately want to know, so I can help her better. “Were you stuck in a closed space before? An elevator?”

Her eyes latch onto mine. “Nope.”

“Locked in the broom closet for being a bad girl?”

“Not literally,” she answers, missing the humor in my tone.

I give her shoulder and her hip a soft squeeze that brings her tighter against me. “Tell me.”

She takes a deep breath, her head rolling against my arm as she seems to look for answers somewhere on the elevator walls. Finally, she settles for a point on my shirt, and she starts worrying the button with her fingers. “Sometimes it feels like whatever I do, it’s never good enough. Or worse, it’s wrong. I try and try and try to please, to do the right thing, but I end up rejected anyway.”

My heart clenches. “We’re not talking about douchebag anymore, are we.”

“No.” The word barely comes out of her mouth.

My mind returns to my father’s words earlier, and I measure how lucky I am to have a family who loves me unconditionally. Despite all my fuck ups. Despite how I let them down.

Despite how I don’t deserve them.

How can anyone treat her the way they do? I don’t get it. I feel anger and something else I can’t quite identify taking ahold of me. “They don’t deserve you,” I say as I bend over to gently brush her lips with mine.

five

Chloe

“They don’t deserve you,” he says as he leans in for the whisper of a kiss.

His words mean more to me than the fact that he’s holding me in his arms, carrying me through the night, through my night. And that’s already more than anyone—anyone—has ever done for me.

So when he says that they don’t deserve me, instead of arguing like I normally would, I let it in. Hear it. Accept it for what it is—a measure of my value for this stranger, in this moment, just tonight.

The grip around my chest is no longer there. And god, I feel so good in his arms. Warm and safe and cherished.

“Are you comfortable?” I’ve been slouching on his legs for a while now, and he must be starting to feel stiff. “I’m feeling a little better, I could—”

His gives me a squeeze. “Stay here.” His eyes are pleading. “Unless you don’t want to,” he adds and starts moving.

I shoot my arm up his neck. “No. I like it here.”

He dips his face to mine. “I like you here too.”

My mouth opens, our breaths mingle again.

He closes his eyes. Rubs our noses together.

“Your turn,” I say softly against his mouth. “Why no girlfriend? Why the one-nights only?”

“I love women, don’t want the heartbreak.”

I try to ignore the plural, women, to focus on what’s important to him. “What heartbreak?”

“Losing someone.”

“So you had a bad breakup,” I prompt him. He’s not getting away with it so easily, not after what I shared with him. Not after how he talked to me about it.

“No. I caused heartbreak to my brother. He never recovered.”

My heart thumps hard in my chest, and it’s for him this time. How did he cause heartbreak to his brother? “Wh-what happened?”

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