just...needed to get that off my chest. What was it you wanted to tell me before?”
His expression saddened, and more than anything, I wanted to take him into my arms and hold him and tell him everything was going to be okay. That whatever I’d done, I’d find a way to undo it, but I didn’t. This thing we called “us” was a hell of a lot more fragile than I’d thought, mostly because I was too much of a coward to give it a name--and now, it was too late.
My heart railed against the thought, regardless of how everything was panning out. I felt like a car wreck in slow motion, just waiting for the crash.
The way he was chewing on his bottom lip and refusing to look me in the eye didn’t bode well. When he finally spoke, his voice was low and steady, like he’d rehearsed what he was going to say long before this conversation had even begun.
“I think we should take a step back.”
There it was. I should’ve seen it coming. Maybe I would have, if I hadn’t been too focused on my unrequited feelings to bother thinking about the one person I’d promised to care for and shelter.
“Oh.” It felt like I’d been punched in the gut, so that was all I could get the air to say for a few seconds. The protests were piling up on the tip of my tongue, each one as selfish and entitled as the next. Instead, what came out was, “Okay. Can I ask why?”
“It’s just something I’ve known for a while, even if I wanted to believe it could work. That we could be…” He trailed off, his body language still clearly meaning to keep as many physical barriers between us as possible. “I do love you, Raf. I always will, and that’s why I want to stop before it affects our friendship. I just don’t think either of us can be what the other needs, and I don’t want to lose you.”
“You won’t,” I said immediately. “Never.”
He smiled faintly, but it didn’t meet his eyes. Looking back, I had to wonder how many times I’d missed it. How many other signs had just flown under the radar while I assumed everything was fine, because it was Chaz, and Chaz was always fine.
Except, he wasn’t. And we weren’t, and now it was too late to fix any of it.
“Good,” he said in a soft tone that seemed to be hiding something else. “Um. I’ll see you back at the apartment?”
“Yeah,” I said, still too stunned to know what was on my mind, let alone voice it. I was still scrambling for something when I realized he was gone.
Instead of going back right away, I stopped off at a bar to get a few drinks in hopes of clearing my head. All it did was make things more jumbled, but the fresh air on the long walk back was decent enough.
When I walked through the door, the apartment was silent, so I assumed Chaz was already in his room. Then I saw it.
His collar was sitting on the coffee table, neatly fastened. I picked it up and tried to process the cold, heavy feeling in the pit of my stomach, but came up short.
And just like that, it finally sunk in. The realization I’d thought I had already come to accept.
It was over.
Chapter 19
Chaz
For the two days Dante and Cash were gone, I avoided the apartment as much as I could. Maybe Rafael did, too, but by the time I poured myself into bed, I was too trashed to notice. It was definitely a backslide, but it was better than the alternative, which was letting my head become clear enough to think about how much I fucking hated myself.
Just not quite enough to keep pretending.
At least being sober for a while made it easier to get drunk, and as long as I stayed that way, I might stand a chance at getting through the rest of the tour. And hell, if I didn’t, I’d be easy enough to replace. They’d already proven that.
Alicia’s words kept rattling around in my head, and maybe it was just all the brain cells that had lost their lives in the interim, but they kept sounding better and better.
I didn’t give a shit about going solo, or the money, but the prospect of being away from it all? That sounded pretty damn good. I didn’t know if I could keep doing this.