She jerked her head back slightly, looking somewhat wounded. After a stunned second she closed her eyes and took a small breath before opening them, trying to straighten her expression.
“Does it hurt?” she asked gently, reaching out to touch him.
Chase moved his head out of her reach as he put the pizza back on his eye. It bothered him that she had given him a free pass for that last comment, that she was being so kind to him right now. He deserved to suffer a little.
“It’s just a black eye, Andie. Believe me, he’s hurting much worse than I am.”
She dropped her hand back to her side, lowering her eyes. “You hit him?”
“No, I didn’t hit him,” he scoffed. “We both knew I had this coming. He had every right to do this. Why the hell would I hit him?”
“I just thought…you said he was hurting much worse than you.”
“Yeah, I meant because his heart just got ripped out of his goddamn chest by two people he trusted. Not really something a frozen pizza can take care of.”
She dropped her eyes again, and Chase saw her chin tremble. “I didn’t mean for this to happen,” she said, her breath catching before she added, “I’m a terrible person.”
He laughed humorlessly at the very sentiment he’d been chastising himself with for the past half hour. “Well then, we really are a match made in heaven, aren’t we? He should be thanking his lucky stars he’s rid of us.”
Andie lifted her eyes to his; there was a hint of anger behind them, warring with the hurt that had been swimming there since she’d realized Colin had done this. She shook her head slightly before she whispered, “What is wrong with you?”
He laughed softly before sighing. Did she really not know the answer to that?
“The same thing that was wrong with me the night I met you in Justin’s wine cellar, and that first morning we drove to Florida, and the night I offered to give you a piano lesson. The same thing that will be wrong with me tomorrow, and next month, and next year.” He took the pizza off his eye and turned toward her, his voice impassive. “I’m an asshole, Andie.”
She stared blankly at him until he turned away from her to look back up at the ceiling again, and Chase felt the couch dip as she stood.
“Yes, you are.”
He closed his eyes and brought the pizza back to the swelling, and he heard a slight rustling sound accompanied by footsteps; his door opened and then slammed shut, and Chase listened as the clicking of her heels in the hallway faded away until there was nothing.
This time, Chase didn’t have the luxury of being oblivious to time; he felt every second, every minute that passed after the door closed behind her.
It was seven minutes of deep breathing before his heart rate slowed and bordered on regular again. It was ten minutes before the pizza had thawed completely and the wrapping started to come apart in his hands, and it was another five minutes before he even gave a shit. After he’d gotten rid of the soggy mess that remained, it was twelve more minutes of cursing the clusterfuck of a self-fulfilling prophecy that had destroyed this entire evening. He had been so bothered by the fact that Colin called him out for being a prick that he turned around and acted like one to the person who deserved it the least.
Chase was sitting up on his couch now; the throb behind his eye had diminished some and his thoughts were much clearer than they had been a half hour ago. He just kept wishing she hadn’t shown up at his place when she did. If she had come now, he wouldn’t have been such a snarky, insensitive jerk. In his current frame of mind, he would have been able to act like a human, to comfort her, to reassure her.
To take care of her, the way he promised her he would.
“Shit,” he mumbled to himself, running his hand down his face before he stood.
He had thought he wanted to be alone tonight, but as he stood in his living room looking over at his kitchen floor, at the grocery bags strewn where she had dropped them in the broken glass, he realized how badly he wanted her there.
With a heavy sigh he walked over to the mess in the kitchen. He was