“No!” I scream out, partly because he’s coming for me and partly because he’s trampling the money on the floor. “Take your money and get out.”
Chase stops suddenly, completely stunned. His face is so full of hurt my eyes blur again with tears. Isn’t this one of the things I’ve been afraid he could do to me? “You’re kicking me out?”
I nod my head, “Yes.” I’m kicking him out because if I don’t he’s bound to touch me, and if he touches me, I just know how I’ll react. When he touches me it makes me weak.
“Avery, think about this,” Chase pleads with me and I squeeze my eyes shut, angrily willing the tears away. My eyes snap open as I sense him walking towards me once more.
I scream at him to, “Stop! Just stop. Stay away from me.”
“Avery,” Chase breathes as if something inside him is breaking.
I know I’m too angry. I know I’m too worked up about this. I’m blaming things on Chase that’s Ethan has done. I’m unloading on him all the baggage I’ve been carrying around and it’s not fair.
I take a deep breath, filling my lungs with air as I try to clear my head. I exhale it slowly between my teeth.
“Fuck,” Chase curses and shakes his head in disbelief.
“I need some time,” I explain to him, my voice cracking. “I just need some space to think.”
Chase rakes his fingers through his hair. “You don’t owe me.”
“Just go, Chase, please,” I say, and start to turn away. I don’t want to hear anymore. I’m quite convinced that right now there’s nothing he can say to placate me. I just need to cool down and I can’t do that if he’s trying to reason with me.
I don’t see it but I definitely hear Chase stomping back to the front the door. It sounds as if the very foundations of the building are shaking.
I sense him stop and I tense, afraid he’s going to ignore what I want. It’s not like I can physically make him leave.
“You gave yourself to me,” he says, suddenly reminding me. “You’re mine and I have every right to take care of you. I didn’t force you to give yourself to me, I asked.”
I spin back around to face him with my eyes wide but I can’t speak because I can’t breathe. I did give myself to him, how did I forget that? I can’t even explain it…
He yanks open the front door while staring back at me. “And because I’m not Ethan and I fucking love you, I’ll give you all the time and space that you need.”
He closes the door behind him and it’s not even a slam, like I would have done, he does it softly, carefully.
He loves me. He fucking loves me. The rest of the anger drains out of me and I sink to the floor, sagging to my knees. I’m so shocked, so completely blown away by everything that just happened, I just let him walk away.
Once he’s gone, once I hear his car roaring to life and his tires squealing out of the parking lot, I can’t help but start crying. I’m crying because I’m stupid. I’m so, so fucking stupid. What have I done? How did I let all this money shit make me so ugly? I got so swept up in the thought that somehow he was trying to control me, trying to manipulate me, I didn’t even really think.
I just kicked out the best thing to ever happen to me.
Chase
I know I'm not thinking clearly as I swing around a bend in the road close to my house and hear the tires squealing out as I push the peddle down hard. I blow past the street my house is on and continue to drive out of the city.
I keep my eyes on the road with one hand on the wheel and one hand on my cell phone. I keep hoping to feel my phone buzz because my music is so damn loud I can't hear the outside world. I need the noise, I need the loud because all these rambling, crazy fucking thoughts in my head just won't stop. I keep seeing those green eyes of hers tearing up and it's ripping me apart. I feel like some little bitch. I have never allowed myself to get this deep with a girl before.
I have seen my father and what happens when you allow someone to get that close. I have never felt like this, and what is so damn fucked up is that it hasn't even been some two year long relationship that has me all fucked up, it's only been a few weeks. I am completely fucking screwed. I didn’t lie to her when I said I love you. I was telling her the God’s honest truth.
That thought has me shaking my head. It’s completely true and I realize it’s really fucking sad. I have a year until I hit the big three-o, and I've said I love you to one person: My dad. Well, two if I count telling Avery in anger before I blew out of her apartment.
I'm not sure why I came here, I didn’t consciously choose it, but it's where I always come when I need someone to talk to. I pull up to my dad's house, and it's probably the best place I could end up. I need to get off the road before I get picked up for reckless driving. The last fucking thing I need right now is a stint in jail.
After I knock on the door, I just walk into the house and yell out for him. “Dad, it's me!”
“Hey Me, come on in!” he yells back.
I walk into the living room and see him sitting on the couch with his leg in a traction machine that bends and flexes to maintain his mobility.
“I fucked up,” I say and slump down in the recliner.
Dad immediately switches the television off and looks at my face. I guess I'm not hiding my emotions very well because he looks at me with some concern.
“Fucked up how?”
“I paid off Avery's college tuition for the rest of the year.”
I begin to ramble as I spill my guts out about Avery. I tell him everything. I feel almost like a man confessing to his priest. I tell him all about Ethan and his job offer and I tell him about how she has already refused to let me help her out.
“Did she ask you to do that?” he asks, referring to me paying off her tuition.
“No.”
“What was your reasoning then?” His eyebrows scrunch together while he awaits my answer.
“I wanted her to not be so damn stressed out about money. I didn’t want her to have to take a job she absolutely should not take.”
“So you went behind her back and paid her college tuition without her permission? You put her in debt to you?”
“No! I mean… well, kinda. She thinks it’s a debt she has to pay off, but I could give two shits about the money or if she ever pays it back.” I say, mad at him for seeing what I didn't, and at her for taking it as a stupid fucking debt.
“You told me yourself she doesn't come from money and that you think she is probably a pay day away from losing her apartment. She has wolves already circling her, and while you may have been doing what you did with the best intentions, she probably has never seen free kindness, except for her grandmother.”
“But I didn't do this as some way of making her beholden to me, I wish she could see that.”
“She probably does understand that, but you didn't tell her. Whether it was for a good reason, it doesn't matter to her, you broke her trust. Remember she has a wolf circling around her and trying to get her to do his bidding all the time.”
“Fuck.”
“Yep.”
I slump further into the recliner and close my eyes. “I fucked up, but I would still do it again. She shouldn't have to be stressed like that for money, and it’s not like I was going to use it for anything. I know I could be considered a rich boy, but I don't try to waste my money. I thought I was making a smart investment in putting money towards our future. She wants to graduate college so she can do something with her life and help people. I want to make her my one and only, and that old adage of happy wife, happy life...”
“Happy yes, but you probably scared her into thinking you wanted leverage over her.”
“So what do I do?”
“Well, son, I think all you can do is to stay true to your word, give her the space she wants and hope it works out.”
“Fuck.”
Chapter Nineteen
Avery
After pushing Chase away, I’ve had an epiphany: Chase Winters is too good for me.
It’s something I’ve been carrying around inside me since the night he rescued me but I was too afraid to acknowledge. I felt it that night he rushed over to pick me up for the date, afraid he wouldn’t like me for who I really am. But I allowed myself to get swept up in the fantasy for a little while. Even thinking about it now, it feels as if it was some kind of fairy tale. I let myself pretend that it could work, and that it was all real.
That a guy like him, who has everything going for him could like a girl like me…. a girl who has nothing.
So after I spend a couple of days feeling sorry for myself and crying because I’m such a dumbass who ruins all the good things, I stop my little pity party and accept Ethan’s job offer. This is the way it has to be. This is the way it was always going to be. Chase and I are from two separate worlds, cut from different cloth. We wouldn’t have worked. It’s almost better that I freaked out before we went too far.
Almost.
Today’s my first day of work with Ethan. I’m to be his administrative assistant and after hashing out the details last night through texts, I’m expected to be at his office by 9 am sharp. I hate being late so I arrive a few minutes early. Ethan’s office is located on the upper floor of a small business complex on the nicer side of the city. It’s a long bus ride to get here, but the pay is so good I’m hoping in a couple of months I’ll be able to save up for my own car.