My chest is tight. “A lot. Way too fucking much.”
“And you thought he loved you back?”
I pull the hoodie around me and cross my arms.
“He knew about my mom and that I’d grown up in foster care.”
I’m not sure why those words decided to come out of my mouth right then. Or the next ones:
“And that I never got to stay anywhere.”
I have the choky sensation of tears rising in my throat, behind my eyes, but I battle them back. I willnotgive him the satisfaction.
“What happened?” Chase asks quietly. “What did he do to you?”
His voice is steely. I think maybe if Zeke were here, Chase would hurt him. And I like that, just a little.
“The night he asked me to move in with him, I’d woken up with a nightmare. It didn’t happen a lot anymore, but sometimes. It had happened a few times when he was there. This time, he held me, and then he asked me to move in with him. He said, ‘That way, I’ll always be here. You’ll never have to wake up alone again.’ ”
My voice is shaking.
“You know what makes me the maddest? I’d known better foryears.It’s not that people are bad. They’re not bad, they’re justweak.They can’t keep their promises. They change their minds, they fall off the wagon, they give in to temptation, they get themselves arrested, they fall for someone cuter, younger, sweeter—whatever. But you’re an idiot if you think otherwise. That’s the thing. You’re an idiot if you think otherwise. I was an idiot.”
“Not all people.”
“All. People.”
“Liv, that’s not true.”
“All people make mistakes. All people are fallible.”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean—”
I talk over him. “He owned a small house, and I moved in there with him, and I remember when I was decorating, I remember thinking,This is it. I’m doing this for real this time. Permanent.I didn’t have to think about how I’d dismantle it for moving, or any of that.”
Chase looks stricken. “Liv.”
“It’s okay. I want to tell you the rest. Pretty soon after that—six weeks? Eight weeks?—I came to his office to surprise him with lunch and caught him kissing—like, passionately kissing—one of his coworkers. The worst part—I know this is crazy, but I swear, it’s true—the worst part was packing up my things. Not because the house was anything special, but because I’d beendumb enough to think it was mine.”
He’s never taken his eyes off my face the whole time I’m talking. Now he says, “You weren’t an idiot. You’re not an idiot. Trusting people doesn’t make you stupid.”
He puts one big, warm hand on my hair, slides it down around my jaw, and even though he’s wrong, I don’t argue. I lean into his touch. He drops his hand, brings the other one up, and pushes my hoodie off my shoulders. He pulls me into his arms. It feels unbelievably good, the heat of his bare torso soaking straight through my thin pajamas.
Also, he is like a wall of muscle, and I want to climb him. Parts of my body may actually already be climbing him, even though I have not directed them to do so. I say this only because my knee seems to have hooked itself up near his waist, and his hand is cupping my ass.
His mouth comes down on mine, hard and hungry.
“Mmm,” one of us says. Or both of us. It’s hard to tell.
He picks me up so both my legs are around his waist and carries me to the bed. We fall backwards onto it, me on top. Then he flips me over and covers me with the wall of muscle.
“Clothes. Off,” he says, although I don’t think it’s a command because he is busy removing them. While also kissing me everywhere. Eyes, nose, cheeks, throat, collarbone, ears—his tongue tickling, his lips catching my earlobe and sucking until I whimper—breasts, catching my nipples one by one and devoting himself thoroughly to them.
“Chase,” I beg. “I want you.”
He’s lining himself up when we both say, “Condom.”
He rolls for the night table.