Page 15 of Setting Limits

“Uh, yeah, I didn’t really agree with you either,” he says as he rubs a hand along the stubble along his jaw.

“Don’t feel bad. In retrospect, I've been able to see how very, very wrong and selfish I was. Especially seeing how obnoxiously happy they are together.”

“Obnoxious. That is a good way to describe it.” He looks at the ground for a minute and smirks before shaking his head, like he’s running through an image or memory of them. When he looks back up at me, his face has turned serious. “Not that I’m not happy for them, that is. It’s just kind of…frustrating…when you don’t have that for yourself. It’s what everybody wants right?”

“Right. What about Claire, though? You guys have been together for a long time, haven’t you?”

“Ha! Claire and I are anything but a serious relationship. I was just in her room, but I wouldn’t be able to actually tell you where we stand at the moment. I don’t know; she’s not the girl for me but we have a history. She’s a good friend to just kill time with. We don’t, uh…we just hang out during the day, with the door open.”

I know what he’s trying to say without using so many words. He isn’t sleeping with her anymore. For some reason, it makes hope take root deep in my heart.

“What about you? Don’t you have a boyfriend of like a year or something?”Or something.

My eyes flash over to my phone, still face down on my comforter, before landing back on Wes. “Yeah. I don’t know. Things aren’t great. It’s hard being so far apart. I actually have a little empathy for what Shay and Lochlyn must have gone through.”

“I can’t imagine it’s easy. I know he had a hard time some days. They talked a lot at night, but there was a long stretch where they didn’t see each other and some nights he’d walk out of his room looking …defeated. I guess if she cried, it just made him hurt. He wanted to be there to comfort her and couldn’t.”

I look at the ground, twirling a piece of white-blonde hair around my finger. I feel a little self-conscious and guilty. Not knowing about the relationship meant I didn’t know how much Shay was struggling. I had noticed a bad mood for sure, but she had told me something about her boyfriend, John, transferring. It was a lie, of course, since she was dating Lochlyn. But the guilt extends even further to my being so against it to begin with that my best friend felt like she couldn’t be honest with me.

“I hate that she was all alone with those feelings.” My voice comes out quiet. I have nobody to be mad at but myself. Things may be better. They’re together, so we can all spend some time together again, but the guilt that eats away at me is still there on a daily basis. It’s never ceased, never lessened. They have no idea. As far as they know, I’ve moved on in typical Chelsea fashion, just thinking it was no big thing. But I worry this is one I’ll carry with me for the rest of my life.

“Hey.” Wes’s warm hand lands on my wrist and sends sparks igniting through my body. “You have to forgive yourself, Chelsea. They have, now you have to as well. Give yourself some grace.”

There’s some power Wes possesses to read me so easily.

“I’m just not sure I deserve it. You even said yourself, sometimes it seems like I hate Lochlyn. It had been like that for years. And then everything with Shay? I hurt both of them on top of believing things that were nowhere near true about mybrotherfor years.”

My head falls, and I cup my forehead with one hand. “I’m a horrible person.”

Without even realizing what’s happening, I find myself wrapped in Weston’s arms and pressed into his chest. My ear is right against his shirt and the steady thump of his heart, a warm, spiced scent overwhelming my senses. My arms loop around his waist as I relax against him.

We’ve shared the occasional hug, but this, this is different. This is intimate in a way. My whole body has relaxed and slumped against him, and for the first time, possibly ever, I feel truly at ease in a man’s arms. Like this is where I was meant to be, the place that I can be safe, be myself, not have to hold up the fallacies that I attribute to myself.

“You’re not a horrible person, Chelsea. You were in a difficult situation and were taken by surprise. Things may have been different all around if they had been honest with you from the beginning. And maybe things could have been different if you’d had a different outlook. But none of that matters, and you can’t dwell on the past, because you can’t change it. Next time you’re with them, really look at them. Because they’re happy, Chels. I see them together a lot, and they’re truly happy. There are no ill effects from anything that happened. Lochlyn never brings it up.”

His deep voice rumbles soothingly in my ears. It only adds to the calmness I feel. While all his words should be comforting, they’re not.

The simple fact is that I hurt the two people I love most and all for selfish reasons. They may have forgiven me and moved on, but I know all about deep cuts that leave a scar. My heart is covered in them. And this is for sure a situation that would leave a long-lasting scar.

“I gotta get going to class, but if you see or hear from Lochlyn, can you just let him know I was looking for him?”

“Sure.”

“It was nice talking to you, Chels.”

“It was really great talking to you too, Wes.”

The door’s almost shut when an arm pushes through it. “One more thing. Forgive yourself, Chelsea. Everybody else has.”

“I’ll work on it.” It’s definitely one of those things that’s easier said than done. How do I forgive myself for such atrocities? I know that villain lives inside me now. Will she come out again?

If she does, what sort of destruction will she rain down this time?

Chapter 10

Shay’sbeeninahorrendous mood for days. But today takes the cake. I’ve never experienced her so incredibly miserable, even in the time she and Lochlyn were apart. This is more anger than it is sadness. The sadness, I could handle, it made sense. But this anger, this irritation at life, I don’t understand. It’s so opposite of her usual disposition that I don’t know what to do with myself. And neither does Lochlyn.

It’s not until the three of us are in our dorm room on the roughest day that it reaches a breaking point.

---