Page 62 of Head Over Heels

I drag myself from the bed—mine, because Chase and I have been careful not to let Katie catch us sleeping in the same bed—pull a hoodie around me, and hurry down the hall.

Her door is open a little ways, and as I get closer, I hear something that stops me in my tracks. A second voice, interwoven with Katie’s still-panicked cries. Chase’s, deep and husky from sleep.

I stand in the shadows of the hall, listening. I can’t hear his words, only the rhythm and texture of them, soft and soothing. A sound you can wrap yourself in, and that’s what I do. I lean against the wall and wrap myself in the sound of Chase.

Katie’s voice quiets, more and more intermittent until I don’t hear her at all. Now I can only hear Chase’s voice.

What he’s murmuring, over and over again, isI love you.

If I were not me, and he were not him, and I were not leaving, I think it would be incredibly easy to fall in love with him.

The thing I’m learning is that there is a lot of Chase that no one knows. Everyone knows bits and pieces. But maybe now I know the most bits and pieces. And they add up to so much more than I’d thought. To this amazing man, with so many dimensions, who has worked hard to be the best person he can be, despite the forces arrayed against him.

“Jesus, Liv!” Chase says, emerging from Katie’s room and jumping a foot, startling me out of my reverie.

He’s wearing nothing but pajama pants. It’s a good look for him.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. I was just thinking. She was wrong. Thea.”

“What?”

“She was wrong to try to keep Katie from you. You’re a great dad. The best.”

He looks pleased. And embarrassed. He shrugs me off.

“Liv?” he asks.

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Who’s Zeke?”

My stomach lurches. “How do you know about Zeke?”

“Eve said I should ask you.”

Irritation twists in my stomach. Giving him too much power again. I wish she wouldn’t.

“He’s an asshole guy I dated a long time ago. He’s no one.”

“Well, if it’s no big deal,” he says lightly, “then you shouldn’t mind telling me about him.”

He takes my hand and leads me away from Katie’s room, down the hall and into his room. We stop inside the door. “Shoot,” he says.

I shrug. “Seriously. It’s nothing. I dated him after college. We moved in together. Pretty soon after that, I caught him kissing someone else. You see? Classic story of an asshole.”

“Were you in love with him?”

It is the last, the very last, question I was expecting Chase to ask. I hesitate, then nod.

“A little? Or a lot?”

“What does it matter?”

“It matters.”

I turn away. There’s a crack in the hallway paint that looks like the letterJ.

“Liv.”

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