Page 22 of Sweet Chaos
Oh my God. I winced as the hurt flashed across Ollie’s face.Not cool, Dylan. Even worse that I’d been disloyal to Ollie by sharing that information.
“You told him about that?” Ollie shook his head, disappointed in me.
I hung my head. “I’m sorry.”
“Not like it isn’t true.” Nic rallied to my defense, firmly placing her in my camp. Ollie glared at her. She just shrugged and moved to my side, a loyal ally. I’d been stupid to think we could all go back to the way things used to be. The aftermath of my relationship with Ollie had divided our friend group. Gavin and Beck, of course, had chosen Ollie, and Nic had chosen me. Lines had been drawn, and even though we allactedfriendly toward each other, it wasn’t the same as it used to be, and it never would be.
“I didn’t mean to say anything. It just slipped out.”
Ollie snorted with disgust. Shoulders rigid, he turned and strode away. Torn between wanting to make this right and just letting him go lick his wounds in private, I hesitated a moment before I called out to him. “Ollie, wait.”
As if he hadn’t heard me, he kept right on walking.
Dylan wrapped his hand around my arm to hold me back. “Let him go.”
“He’s acting like a dick,” Nic chimed in.
“I can’t just let him go. I hurt him. I need to talk to him.”
Dylan released me and crossed his arms over his chest, clearly not happy with my decision. I didn’t look at his face. Didn’t want to see what he was thinking. Instead, I chased after Ollie.
When I caught up to him, I grabbed his arm to stop him and moved so I was standing directly in front of him. He rubbed his jaw, his eyes narrowed on something in the distance. “I never stood a chance, did I, Scarlett? It was always him.”
“What happened between us had nothing to do with Dylan. You know that.”
He laughed harshly. “Sure it didn’t. Why him? Of all the guys you could have gone for, why did it have to be him?”
Ollie made it sound like he and Dylan were mortal enemies, and I’d chosen the wrong side. When in fact, they didn’t even know each other. My eyes sought out Dylan. He was too far away to hear us, and he was talking to Nic, but he was watching me.
I returned my gaze to Ollie and considered his question.Why him?I’d asked myself the same thing so many times. It wasn’t something I could put into words. And even if I could, it wasn’t something I wanted to share with Ollie. “I don’t know.”
“I can deal with us not being together. I get it. I do. We’re better off as friends. I wouldn’t even have a problem with you hooking up with someone else. I’d get over it. I wouldn’t like it, but I’d be good with it because I want you to be happy. But I can tell you right now, he won’t make you happy. He’s fucked up, Smalls.”
“You don’t even know him. He’s not the same boy he was at seventeen.” But even if he was, it wouldn’t matter to me. I had crushed hard on that seventeen-year-old boy and it seemed that time hadn’t changed that.
“Alwaysdefending him.” He shook his head and exhaled loudly. “Just go back to him. But when he fucks you over, when everything falls apart, because it will… don’t come crying to me.”
His words, and the venom in them, stunned me into silence. Where was the boy who had once promised me that nothing, and nobody, would ever get in the way of our friendship? Our bond had been forged fourteen years ago when he taught me how to ride a bike because my parents were always too ‘busy’ and my sister told me to get lost and stop pestering her. He was there for me when Sienna used to kick me out of her room and slam the door in my face. When my father heaped praise on my sister and treated me like nothing I ever did was good enough.
And I was there for him when his dad stood him up on the weekends he was supposed to spend with him. I was the one who begged my dad to buy Ollie a drum kit for Christmas. It was all he had ever talked about. All he had ever wanted. But his mom couldn’t afford it. My dad said no because he was a stingy bastard. So, I sold my brand-new bike,myChristmas present to buy Ollie a drum kit and I didn’t care that I got grounded and lectured. It made Ollie happy, and that was all that mattered to me.
“Wow. Okay. Thanks for being a friend. Good to know you have my back.”
“Just returning the favor.”
“I always defended you, too,” I whispered. But he didn’t hear my words. He was already gone.
Tears coursed down my cheeks as I stood on the beach and watched him walk away. I wrapped my arms around myself, suddenly feeling the cold. He grabbed the blonde and pulled her into a kiss as if he wanted to show me how it felt to have it shoved in my face. It hurt, but not because he was kissing someone else.
Ollie and I weren’t kids anymore. We weren’t even on the same team.
Suddenly this party wasn’t so fun.
I turned at the sound of Dylan’s voice. His eyes searched my glossy ones and he brushed away the tears with his thumbs and tucked my wavy, windblown hair behind my ears, his touch so gentle, so unbearably soft and sweet that it made my chest ache. Dylan could be kind. But I also knew he could be cruel. Nobody was all good or all bad. Not Dylan. Not me. Not Ollie.
He wrapped me in his arms and it took me a few seconds to recover from my surprise and wrap my arms around his waist. I pressed my cheek against his beating heart and was reminded of the eleven-year-old girl who used to squeeze fresh lemons and limes and carry the ice-cold drinks to him when he was cleaning our pool. I didn’t know why I was thinking about that now, on a starry beach on a winter night ten years later. Maybe because of Ollie’s question. Why had I always seen something in Dylan that others didn’t? Why had I always believed in him? I couldn’t answer those questions. Half the time, he hadn’t even been nice to me. He’d never once said please or thank you. And yet, I knew deep down he cared.
“You good?” he asked, releasing me to assess the damage.
