Page 102 of Stealing Chances

“Scar—”

“No,” she said firmly, a shockwave of that pain I’d been anticipating bursting from her and slamming into me, gripping at my already straining lungs.

“Chase wants to be with me,” Samantha said confidently as I quickly shook my head, slashing my hand through the air as if I could physically stop her from speaking.

“You need to stop with that shit.” Keeping my hand out, I pointed at Samantha as I focused on Scarlet’s horrified face. “I tattooed you and Samantha on the same day—the sternum tattoos. Right? Hers was different. Bigger. More elaborate and went beneath her breasts. Because of that day and the fact that I had totouchher to complete the tattoo, she got it in her head that I wanted her. But you were right there the entire time; you saw what I was doing. I never actually fucking touched her the way she’s insisting I did.”

Scarlet just looked from me to Samantha, blinking slowly as if she was in a daze.

“I thought Brian was leaving the notes for me. I thought it was a joke until, a few days before my accident, Sam started saying all this shit that made me realize they’d been from her.Informedme she was my secret, even though all of that was news to me right then. Said she knew I wanted to be with her and knew you would leave me—cheat on me the way you’d cheated on Aaron. So, she was trying to make sure it happened.”

“What?” Scarlet asked, the word barely audible as she pressed a hand to her stomach. Her stunned yet condemning stare shifting to Samantha as I went on.

“She’d been telling you things to question being with me and to get it in your head that you might want to be with someone else—Brandon specifically.”

“Wait, what?” Brandon asked as a shocked breath ripped from Scarlet.

And I could see on Scarlet’s horrified expression and in her devastated eyes that Samantha had been doing exactly that. Maybe not in a way that Scarlet had ever realized until just then, but she’d been planting those seeds.

“All of it was to get you to leave me so she and I could be together because she’d created this entire damn thing in her head. And in the middle of that,” I ground out, my eyes narrowing on where LT was standing, still looking pleased with herself. “LT came out of the bathroom when I’d been stopping Samantha from touching me and took it as something it wasn’t. She’d already had an appointment set up with me that night and came in, wanting me todo something for her—preferablywith her—to keep her silent. When I told her she could fuck right off and that I hadn’t actually done anything with Samantha, she said you wouldn’t believe that, considering she’d seen it with her own eyes.” I let my stare drag back to Scarlet when I added, “You know LT. She had a really active imagination about whatcould’vebeen happening when she’d found Samantha in the kitchen with me.

“I didn’twantto think you’d believe either of them,” I went on, shoulders jerking up agitatedly. “But I couldn’t be sure when one friend was saying she saw it and your best friend had imagined an entire affair and couldn’t be convinced it wasn’t happening.” I gestured from LT to Scarlet, remorse dripping from me when I said, “So, I told LT to go ahead and tell you, then kicked her out of the shop, hoping she’d want to hold it over my head instead. Hoping it would give me time to figure out what to do.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me?” Scarlet asked, voice shaking as her eyes shone with tears. “I—” She gestured between Samantha and me. “Didn’t I walk in that day? I did!” Her head moved in a chaotic mess of nods and shakes. “No one said anything to me.Yousaid Chase was complaining about LT.” She threw the last accusation at Samantha, glaring at her friend as all that pain and doubt bled from her.

And that doubt...

Fuck, I didn’t know who it was directed at, but it terrified me more than anything had in my entire life because I couldn’t lose Scarlet.

“We weren’t ready for you—”

“There’s nowe,” I snapped, cutting Samantha off as my body trembled with the adrenaline and fear pumping through my veins. “There has never been anything between us. I don’t know how you deluded yourself into believing everything in the first place, and to pull all the shit you have been? Not just before, but recently? What were you trying to do? Scare your best friend on top of trying to make her leave me?”

“I wanted you to remember.”

“Get out,” Scarlet said, voice weighed down with all that confusion and pain, and those two simple words had my heart faltering.

But when I finally managed to look at her, Scarlet’s hatred was focused on the girl near me. “You’ve been there for me through everything,” she began, voice thick with emotion and grief. “I always thought you were trying to be a voice of reason. Wanting me to see both sides because you’d be fully in support of Chase one minute, and the next, you’d make it sound like you’ve always doubted him. And I never—God,” she cried out.

“You were just gushing over the news that Chase asked me to marry him again,” Scarlet went on. “Youjustasked me how we were going to celebrate, and all this time—” She swiped angrily at the tears that slipped down her cheeks, eyes narrowed in a lethal mixture of rage and devastation when she said, “You’re a delusional sociopath. You need help. But I won’t be there when you get it. Get the fuck out of my house.”

I glanced over when I felt eyes on me and found Samantha looking up at me as if she expected me to stand by her side. Defend her.

Leave with her.

A sneering laugh left me as I jerked my chin toward the entryway. “You heard her.”

“Chase—”

“Out,” I said through clenched teeth. “We’re going to have a massive fucking problem if you try to contact us in any way again. Understand?”

If it hadn’t been for the flash of anger in her eyes, I wouldn’t have known if she’d actually heard a word I’d said—took them astruth. Then again, I wasn’t sure what to think with Samantha anymore. She’d played a role so well for so long. Never letting anything leak out until she wanted people to see it.

“Take your cousin with you,” Konrad called out when Samantha finally turned to leave, never bothering to even meet Scarlet’s devastated and infuriated stare.

“You’re going to miss me,” Litany said with a dramatic sigh as she started following Samantha toward the entryway and came to a staggering stop when Scarlet grabbed her shoulder.

“I haven’t begun to fully grasp what Samantha was doing,” Scarlet began, voice a destructive mixture of hatred and sorrow, “but I know exactly what you did and what you tried to do.” Steeling her jaw when it trembled, she narrowed her eyes at LT. Head slanting slightly when she continued. “If you ever come near my fiancé or say anything suggestive to him again, I will remember that you tried to blackmail him into fucking you, and I won’t hold back. If I were you, I would stay far away from all of us. Take your fucking pink box too.”

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