: Chapter 15

The next week crawled, minute by minute. It was exotically hot. Everything in the city looked liquefied. The concrete. The buildings. The people. Kind of like The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dalí, with the melting clocks.

Tick, tock.

Tick, tock.

Had life always felt so hollow?

I made myself forget about the azaleas. About the bet with Chase. About myself.

I threw myself into work, sketching everywhere I could. The train to and from work. On the platform. In restaurants. On lunch breaks. Before bed. Work consumed me.

I sketched and erased and started over and laughed and cried over the DWD design, because it wasn’t just a design; it was my design. And sure, I’d designed many wedding dresses before, but there were always rules, laid out and crystal clear.

This spring our line is going to focus on sheath dresses.

This winter is all about ball gowns.

The lace collection will be mermaid-style.

This time, there were no rules to abide by. It was just me and the chaos teeming in my mind. It was the endgame. Kate Middleton on her wedding day met Grace Kelly in her carriage met Audrey Hepburn in her signature Balmain gown.

I tried hard not to think about Chase. I took Daisy out for longer walks, watching her chase Frank. I read the word of the day on Layla’s board dutifully, looking for telltale signs the nagging feeling that I was in the midst of making a terrible mistake was unfounded. I wanted to be there for Chase during this time. To be there for Katie and for Lori and for Clementine.

I even made a list of words Layla had hung up to try to sew them into a meaning.

Monday was regret.

Tuesday was relief.

Wednesday was chocolate (which, let’s admit it, played a huge role throughout my week as I tried to forget Chase).

Thursday was coward.

I decided not to check the board today. I was 70 percent sure Layla was being passive aggressive after I’d told her I’d run away from Chase after the engagement shoot, leaving him standing there, confused by my behavior.

To push away the Chaseness that’d been filling my brain, I went on two dates with Ethan. I was grateful for the distraction he provided. He was endlessly patient, caring, and full of stories about his work, his patients, and his time volunteering in Africa. On Tuesday, we went to watch a war movie. The night after, he took me to meet his friends at a bar. Finally, tonight, we’d agreed we’d go to a Thai place, then come back to my place for some wine.

Wine meant sex, and sex wasn’t something I was ready for with Ethan, seeing how Chase occupied every corner of my mind. A part of me wanted to take it minute by minute and just see how it played out. Maybe I would be in the mood. Maybe the wine would loosen me up, and we’d sleep together, and I’d realize that was all I’d really needed—a chance to be intimate with Ethan to feel connected to him.

Then why do I dread getting back to my apartment with Ethan in tow? Why does it feel like I’m on death row?

Ethan and I strolled to my building. I told him about my DWD project in detail.

“There will be a chapel train, and I’m thinking pleated sweetheart bodice that resembles a Victorian corset. Oh, Ethan, it’s going to be so pretty . . . ,” I gushed, noticing him stiffening beside me. I stopped right alongside him, blinking at my stairway.

It couldn’t be.

But that was exactly what I’d thought the first evening Chase had been waiting for me on my doorstep, luring me into his fake-engagement plan.

“I thought . . . ,” Ethan began.

I shook my head violently. Like there was something inside it I wanted to get rid of. There was. “You thought right. I told him to back off. Let me deal with this.”

I stomped my way to my door, feeling the anger coiling hotly in the pit of my stomach, blossoming, building up, and climbing up my throat. My entire body was buzzing with wrath. How could he? How could he do this to me again? Hadn’t I made myself clear? I didn’t want to see him. Had gone as far as admitting I had feelings for him just to make him take a step back. Was there anything more humiliating than admitting your unrequited feelings toward someone? That was the basis to every poem, love song, and angsty work of art in the universe.

How selfish could he be?

“What in the world do you think you’re doing here?” My voice came out high pitched, dancing on the verge of hysteria. Chase was still sitting on the stairway as I positioned myself above him. “I told you to take a step back. What is wrong with you?” I realized I was baring my teeth when Chase looked up from his phone, startled by my verbal attack. I froze.

He looked different. Disheveled and exhausted and . . . broken.

It was the broken part that undid me. I knew that look well. My father had worn it the entire year my mother had been dying. Really dying. It was still permanently inked into the place behind my rib cage. It was the hopeless look of someone whose fate had brought them to their knees.

My guard dropped. Armor clattering on the pavement at my feet.

“What happened?” I crouched down to Chase’s eye level, placing my elbows on his knees. My fingers were shaking as they held his jaw and tilted his face up. “Where is he?”

“Hospital.”

“Chase.” I wasn’t sure I was breathing. “Why aren’t you with him?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

I saw Ethan standing in my periphery, a lone candle, long and straight and unlit. He took the scene in. It scared me. How much I didn’t care what he thought, what he felt in that moment. Only Chase charted.

It was the first time I realized being Martyr Maddie was unsustainable, but perhaps being a good friend to those I cared about was something I could swing. I couldn’t protect everyone’s feelings.

But I would slay dragons for those who found their way into my heart.

“We need to go see him, okay?” I rubbed my thumbs over Chase’s cheeks. I thought I felt him nod. I took my phone out, scheduling an Uber to take us to the hospital he indicated his dad was in. After I was done, I turned to Ethan. “I’m so sorry.”

His head bowed. “I hope he gets better soon.”

“Thank you,” I whispered. Chase was too out of it to notice Ethan. I had to stuff him into the Uber. Wearing a ball cap, a hoodie, and a bored expression, the driver tried to make idle conversation about politics and the state of traffic.

“Your boyfriend looks trashed,” he said finally. “Too many drinks?” He pinned me with a look through the rearview mirror. “I don’t want no puking in my back seat.”

“He’s fine,” I clipped.

“So are you.” The driver grinned.

“I’m going to smoke your eyes like beef jerky if you as much as look at her that way again,” Chase groaned. It was the first time he’d spoken since we’d gotten in the car.

“Man, talk about jealousy issues.”

“We’re having a day,” I snapped, no longer caring about being polite, agreeable Martyr Maddie. “Mind keeping it quiet?”

“Sure. Sure.”

“Stop looking at her,” Chase warned again like a wounded animal. “Don’t even breathe in her direction.”

“You heard him,” I drawled at the driver, breaking out of my sweet shell.

The driver shook his head. “Jesus.”

Katie and Lori were already in Ronan’s hospital room, perched on a pastel-blue sofa that had seen better days. The antiseptic smell, bright, unforgiving fluorescent light, and morbid oldness that was glued to the walls made me nauseous. I hadn’t been to a hospital since Mom had died.

I hugged Lori and Katie as Chase collapsed on a seat next to his unconscious father’s bed. He closed his eyes, breathing through his nose.

“He had a heart attack.” Lori ran her fingers through Ronan’s thick white hair, frowning down at him. “The doctors said the heart attack itself was minor, but his systems are collapsing one by one. He is stabilized but not out of the woods. Grant is on his way.”

Chase didn’t react. He wasn’t completely there. I slunk out of the room in search of coffee and some snacks. I thought maybe Chase might want for me to give them some space before he responded to this piece of news.

I was punching buttons on a vending machine when Katie appeared next to me, hugging her arms to her chest. She was wearing flannel pajamas and a rich coat over them. It was the first time I realized it was freezing in the hospital.

“He hasn’t been sleeping,” she said. “Chase.”

I pretended to focus on the machine. The pretzel bag wouldn’t come out. It was trapped between the glass and metallic wheel. I tried giving the machine a shake, but the thing barely even moved.

“Fuck,” I muttered. I didn’t curse. I never cursed. Katie flinched.

“I think it’s been a week since he last had an actual night of sleep,” she continued. “I don’t know if it’s just about Dad.”

Was she saying what I thought she was saying? It couldn’t be. I figured Katie had known Chase and I weren’t really together the moment I’d told her about the cheating ex I’d caught. But why would she tell me Chase was losing sleep the entire time he and I weren’t in contact? The obvious reason, because it might be true, just never occurred to me.

“I hate this for him. For all of you.” I kicked the bottom of the machine, stifling another curse when I realized my toes had fared much worse than the machine. Dammit.

“Yeah,” Katie mused, studying me closely. “I thought you’d know. Seeing as you guys are engaged. You’re engaged, right?”

I whipped my head in her direction, realizing what it was. Confrontation. Seeing as Katie hated confrontation, I knew what was at stake here.

“Oh.” I pretended to smile. “I still keep my apartment. I was home all week to work on my latest assignment.”

“So that cheating story . . .”

“You should forget about that story,” I bit out. I was ripped apart by the idea Katie was going to discover Chase’s secret. That anyone would. “Forget it altogether, Katie. I love your brother. We’re together.”

It didn’t feel like a lie anymore. No part of that sentence. And that scared me.

I was feeling restless. Almost violent. I placed my hands on either side of the vending machine and began to shake it with everything I had in me, letting out a scream that had been lodged inside my throat since the day I’d first seen Chase in that elevator a year ago. The walls in the hallway shook with my cry. The floor rocked beneath my feet. And yet I couldn’t stop. I didn’t even want to try. It was so liberating to let it all out.

The lies.

The pain.

The ache of wanting something you knew was bad for you. That was always in front of you, dangling like a forbidden fruit.

I screamed and shook the vending machine until there was no more voice in my throat. The bag of pretzels finally relented, falling down with a soft clink. I bent over to grab it and set it on a tray I’d placed on a seat next to the machine. It had three foam cups of lukewarm black coffee poured straight from a day-old pot and sandwiches that looked downright inedible. I began to make my way back to Ronan’s room like nothing had happened. Like I hadn’t screamed. Like two nurses hadn’t poked their heads out of rooms, checking if everything was okay.

Katie followed me. “I won’t say anything,” she whispered.

“I have no idea what you are talking about.” The food and coffee were dancing on the tray, my hands shook so bad.

“The thing is . . . God, I don’t even know what the thing is. He seems happy when he is with you, and I think this part is real.” Katie swallowed. “I think it’s the only real part about him since him and Amber . . . and then after a few years, when he lost Julian too.”

I finally understood what Katie was saying. Why Chase refused to become attached. He hadn’t only lost his fiancée to his brother. He also lost his brother to the CEO title Ronan decided to invest him with. Everyone he loved wanted something, and when Chase didn’t relent, they were quick to turn their backs on him.

Even the person he’d grown up with.

Even the person he looked up to and saw as a big brother.

“What do you make of it?” I changed the subject, jerking my chin to the door we were approaching. Ronan’s room. “Did Grant say if this is . . . you know?”

The end.

Katie shook her head, folding her lower lip into her mouth. “You know doctors. They never say anything this way or the other.”

I did know doctors. And she was absolutely right.

After distributing the coffees, sandwiches, and pretzels, for which Katie and Lori were grateful, I pulled a barely conscious Chase by the sleeve. “You’re going to take a nap. Now.”

“I’m waiting for Grant,” he said icily, but he lacked that Chase Black frostbite that usually came with his tone.

“No, you’re not. Once Grant arrives, I’ll talk to him myself. If something important happens, I’ll wake you up. Otherwise, you need to sleep.”

He shook my touch from his arm, but I grabbed his elbow, tugging hard. His gaze slid up to mine. Whatever he saw in my face, he knew I wasn’t going to back off. Reluctantly, he stood up. I showed him to the room next to his father’s. I’d noticed it was empty when Katie and I had walked back with the snacks. I fluffed the pillows while he stood behind me awkwardly, watching. When he slid into the bed, I hesitated, then, knowing he was almost out of it, he was so drunk with exhaustion, I rolled the scratchy blanket over his body. He’d done the same to me when I’d been drunk in the Hamptons. Taken care of me without complaining about it once.

I was all but forcing myself to leave the room when Chase grabbed my wrist. The jolt his touch sent up my arm made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. My stomach dipped. It seemed monumental. Pivotal, even. The way his eyes, silvery like a sheet of ice, met my common brown ones. His mouth moved, and I dropped my gaze to follow it, too flustered to decipher his words. It was only one word. One I’d been dreaming of hearing for many months prior to our first breakup.

“Stay.”

“In the room, or . . . ?” In your life? I couldn’t breathe. I needed to breathe, but it was hard when I pinned all my hopes momentarily on his answer.

“In the hospital. Where I can find you.”

He looked so deliriously wrecked, with black-rimmed eyes, his skin hanging onto his cheekbones, like he’d lost weight overnight. I’d always wondered how you knew if you loved someone. I got my answer when he looked at me. I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that I loved Chase in that moment.

“I’ll stay.” I put my hand on his.

His eyes were half-closed, his throat bobbing like he was struggling to swallow. His lips looked dry, and I wanted to press mine against them. Crazy, crazy thoughts.

“You asked if I’m over Amber,” he croaked, his eyes drifting shut. The rest of him too. “I am. I don’t think I ever loved her. Not really. Not like I could love you.”

Thud. Thud. Thud. My heart was rioting in my chest.

“I didn’t cheat, but I wanted to. I fucking wished I could, Mad. Because you were there, and you were real, and if the bullshit with Amber, whom I didn’t even love, hurt like a thousand bitches, you had the potential to totally detonate my life. You were a weakness. I was so . . .”

So? I held my breath, waiting for him to continue. But he never did. His breaths grew more labored, until they curled into soft, drained snores. I put my hand on my heart to keep it from exploding.

I closed my eyes, willing myself to stop what I was doing. Romanticizing what we were. Forgetting every moment I’d loathed him. I heard Layla scoffing in my head about returning to my old Martyr Maddie patterns. Putting other people before myself.

A flash of Boyfriend Chase flickered on the screen of my closed eyelids like an old film.

Him leaning his hips into mine, his whiskey breath caressing my neck at a party. “Let’s dip. Everyone’s a loser, and you’re the only person I can stand, which is funny.”

“Why is it funny?” I whispered thickly.

“Because what I want to do to you has nothing to do with either of us standing.”

I opened my eyes. Closed them again.

Chase with his back to me, watching Manhattan from his floor-to-ceiling window.

“You’re a wolf,” I groaned. His back was so broad, so corded with muscles I had to remind myself he was mortal like me.

“You’re the moon.” He grinned, tipping his head back to look at the white crystal-like ball. “You drive me fucking crazy.”

I opened my eyes, feeling tears stinging my nose, clogging my throat. I closed my eyes again.

Chase and me lying on the grass, staring at the starless New York skies.

“I want to go somewhere else. Somewhere where you can see the stars at night. Somewhere pure,” I said.

I could hear Chase’s smile when he answered. “Weird that you mention it. I bought a telescope the other day for that exact reason. I can’t see the stars, and it is driving me nuts. But I don’t want to give up city life.”

It was classic Chase to dislike something about his life and bend it to his own will. It was classic Maddie to dislike something about my life and give up, throw in the towel, and start over.

Another tear slid down my cheek. I couldn’t help it.

Chase and me in my bed, Daisy at our feet.

“Ever feel like you’re changing?” he asked.

“Always,” I answered. “We’re always changing. We just don’t notice it because we’re on the move.”

“I don’t want to change.”

“I don’t think you have much choice,” I said softly. “If you don’t change, you don’t live.”

“Maybe I don’t want to live.”

“You know you do.”

He got out of the bed and started dressing.

My eyes fluttered open again. It was us he’d been talking about. I’d been changing him.

Chase and me on the Cyclone roller coaster. Coney Island. It wasn’t a romantic getaway. I’d convinced him to come with, because I felt like having an old-school candy apple.

“You’re not scared of anything, are you?” He grinned at me. Our car was the first one. It went up painfully slowly, an inch at a time.

“Almost.” Our car was shaking. So was my heart. I looked down to take his hand, but he clasped his fingers together in his lap. Closed off to me in ways he didn’t even know I wanted him to open up for me. “Almost anything.”

I opened my eyes for the fourth time, frantic. I remembered what had happened next.

We’d both fallen.

I spent the next hours trying to get as much information as I could from Grant. Dawn broke on the horizon when Grant finally said we should go home to regroup. I texted Sven I’d be working from home and went to check on Chase. He was sitting on the hospital bed, frowning at his phone. He’d been out cold for nearly seven hours.

Chase glanced up from his phone, looking delicious. His hair was messy, his eyes glinting healthily. He seemed to have gained back whatever weight he’d lost last night. The color was back in his face.

“You said you’d keep me in the loop.” His voice cracked, undoubtedly to his dismay.

I strolled into the room, taking a seat on the edge of the bed next to him. “Provided there was news,” I agreed. “I kept my promise.”

“Is Dad conscious?”

“Getting there. He’s stable, though.”

“What did Grant say?”

“He said Ronan will most likely pull through.”

“Fuck. Okay. No news, then.”

I swiveled my head, giving him a Really? glare. He grabbed one of my hands and put it in his lap. Another current ran through me. Like the Cyclone when it dropped.

“I’m buying you breakfast.”

“Thanks, I’m not hungry.” I didn’t want more one-on-one time with him. Knew I was now tipping over. Taking that Cyclone dip, after which I wouldn’t be able to turn my back on him again. I couldn’t fall in love with a man who promised to never give me everything I wanted from life: A husband, a wedding. Children. Love.

“Food is rarely about food,” he said. “It’s about comfort. It’s about sex. It’s about revenge and lust and anger. But food is never about food.”

I smiled tiredly at his observation. We heard a shriek coming from Ronan’s room. Both our gazes flew in unison to the direction of Katie’s roar. Katie wasn’t one to make a scene. Chase jumped from the bed and bolted through the door. I followed him. Katie, Amber, and Julian were standing in the hallway. Katie was panting heavily, her chest rising and falling. Her cheek was marred with red clawing marks, like she was so frustrated she’d tried to rip at her own flesh.

“You have some nerve! I can’t believe you, Julian. That’s a step too far, even for you.”

“I just did what everyone else around here was too chicken to do.” Julian sounded desperate, clutching Amber’s hand a little too tightly. Amber shook his touch off the minute she saw Chase and me. Her face fell when she looked between us. I realized we were holding hands. I hadn’t even been aware we were doing that.

“What’s going on?” Chase let go of my hand, placing himself as a buffer between Julian and Katie. Katie leaned forward and snagged a cluster of documents Julian had been holding, waving it in Chase’s face.

“Bastard brought a legally binding contract for Dad to sign, which puts him as an emergency CEO of Black & Co. He tried to slip into the room while Mom was away picking up stuff for Dad. I was outside making phone calls.”

“Now, before you get your panties in a twist—” Julian was in the process of swiveling toward Chase. Bad idea. Chase sent a sucker punch straight to his face. Julian staggered back, crashing against the wall. He held his nose with both hands, gasping for breath. “Asshole!”

Chase snatched the papers from Katie’s hands and ripped them to shreds. They rained at his feet, gathering around his loafers like snowflakes. Amber stared at him, wide eyed, her eyes rimmed with careful makeup and tears.

Julian dragged his back down the wall, still holding his nose. Blood trickled between his fingers, down to his shirt and the floor. “Feeling threatened, coz?” he hissed.

It was the first time I’d heard Julian referring to Chase as a cousin and not a brother, and I had a feeling it had been a long time coming. When I stared at Julian, such a perfect, one-dimensional Shakespearean villain in my eyes, I had to remind myself he had a life story too. That it was probably difficult to live in the shadow of your cousin, who was a decade younger, successful, gorgeous, and born into American royalty.

That Chase was seen as more talented, more capable, and more authoritative. And perhaps worst of all, that at least from the outside, Chase was unfazed by the fact Julian had stolen his fiancée.

Chase strolled toward him, smiling coldly. “Try to tamper with Black & Co.’s management one more time, Julian. I fucking dare you. And you”—he turned to Amber, who stepped back, clutching her diamond necklace with her three-inch nails—“keep him away from me if you don’t want to become a widow.”

With that, he took my hand and stormed down the hallway. I flailed behind him, trying to catch up with his steps.

“Where are we going?”

“My apartment.”

“Your apart . . . Chase, no.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

He stopped and turned around to me sharply. “Because,” he gritted through his teeth.

“Because?” I raised an eyebrow.

“I can’t sleep.” He spat the words out, annoyed.

“And?”

“And I can when you are there.” The rest of the words rolled out of his mouth grudgingly. “I don’t know how to explain it, nor do I want to. May I be graced with your presence so I can stock up on some sleeping hours?”

I licked my lips, staring at him.

“I will not try to sleep with you.” He raised a hand. “Scout’s honor.”

“For the last time, you weren’t—”

“I was,” he bit out. “For a year. Horrible time. And to this day, I misuse the knowledge of how to tie shit up.”

I stifled something between a groan and a chuckle. “Okay.”

He took my hand again, resuming his quest for a taxi outside, and I couldn’t remember a time we’d held hands so much since our stupid agreement had started.

The devil didn’t have to drag me down to hell.

I had come with him willingly.