Page 46 of Sweet Chaos
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 ofhim.
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. Theotherdaughter. Is this a vendetta or something?”
“Scarlett has nothing to do with it.”
Cruz gave me a skeptical look. “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 hersister.”
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.
Would it be better if I walked away? Hell yes. But was I going to? Ishould.
As it turned out, the universe had a sick sense of humor.
