Page 96 of Sweet Chaos
There was no point in having this conversation again. We’d already gone over it in detail. And there was nothing she could say or do to make it better. Even if I hadn’t seen them all cozy on the beach, the fact remains that what we’d done was wrong. No amount of justifying it could make it right. A part of him still loved her, and I don’t care how many times he denied it, I saw it with my own eyes.
I didn’t want to be his second best. His consolation prize. He couldn’t even tell me he loved me.
There was only one thing left to do. I needed to leave. It would be too hard to stay in this town. Everywhere I went, I’d take the risk of running into him. Everywhere I went, I’d be reminded of him. It would be too hard to see him, longing for him yet knowing that I couldn’t be with him. All of my memories of Dylan, from the time I was eleven, were in Costa del Rey. And I think that’s what made this so much more painful. I hadn’t only lost my boyfriend tonight—I’d lost the life I so desperately wanted.
For ten years, Dylan had starred in all my dreams. He’d been my wish on every star. My knight in tarnished armor. My Romeo. For a little while, I had even deluded myself into believing that he was not only my past but that he’d be my future too.
My mind was made up. I needed to get away from here. Away from him. I grabbed my phone from the coffee table and scrolled through my emails, pulling up the one from the international volunteer organization that I’d contacted back in November.
“Nic?”
“Hmm?”
“Don’t hate me, k?” I asked, typing out an email to let the organization know that I was ready and willing to go anywhere they needed me. The farther away the better.
“I could never hate you. What are you talking about, bitch? You’re my bae.”
“And you have Cruz. And your friends from work. That girl with the purple hair,” I continued. “What’s her name?”
Nic bolted upright, her drink spilling over the rim of her glass as she slammed it down on the coffee table. “No. No. Nuh uh. Don’t you dare.”
She lunged for my phone, but I pulled it away and hit send before she grabbed it from my hand.
“What have you done?” she asked, staring at my phone screen then at me. She opened her mouth to speak just as a knock sounded on the door. “If that’s him, I’m going to kill him.”
She flew to the door and flung it open so hard, it banged against the wall. I slunk lower in my seat and chugged the rest of my margarita, tuning out whatever Nic was saying to Dylan. Not that I’d looked to confirm it was him, but I wasn’t surprised he’d turned up here.
“I need to talk to her.”
“No.”
“Step aside, Nic, and fucking let me in.”
“If you wanna get to her, you’ll have to get through me.”
“Just let him in,” I said, feeling weary. “Might as well get this over with.”
“Get this over with? The fuck does that mean?”
“It means we’re over. We’ll say our goodbyes and move on.”
“We’re not over. I love you. I’m in love with you. I fucking love you, Scarlett. Only you.”
I’d waited so long to hear those words. It felt like I’d been waiting half my life for him to say that to me. But now that he had, all I wanted to do was cry.
I set my glass on the coffee table and walked out of the living room, down the hallway and into my bedroom. He trailed after me, closed the door behind him and turned on my table lamp.
I flopped down on my bed, not sure why I’d come to my bedroom. I just wanted to fall asleep and wake up and have this whole thing be a bad dream.
“Did you hear what I said? I love you.”
“I heard you.” I reached up a hand and ripped the fishing wire off the wall, dragging all my photos down with it. “You see all these photos? These are my memories. My happy memories.” I drew my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. “We’ve destroyed too much, Dylan. You asked me not to let you ruin this. Ruin us. But we’re ruined. We were from the start. How could we have ever expected to make this right?”
He sat on the edge of my mattress and angled his body toward me. “We’re right. You and me.”
“I saw you with Sienna, Dylan. I saw you kissing her. I saw the way you looked at her. You’re still in love with her.”
He scrubbed his hand over his face. “I’m not in love with her. Whatever you think you saw…” He stopped and took a deep breath. “It wasn’t what it looked like. I didn’t kiss her. She kissed me.”
