HOW TO CATCH A BAD BOY

Chandler dropped his chin and breathed deeply. “Could you?”

“I don’t hold your past against you. Because it’s irrational and unfair, and you know it.” She said,

“That’s not what I mean.” He lifted his head, held her gaze, and the resolve Elena saw there chilled her to her core. “Could you overlook it if I told you that I showed up that night to take a shot with Emily?”

Words were gone. Her mouth was sand-dry at what that did to her.Property © NôvelDrama.Org.

He kept talking, quiet, dangerous words that did horrible things to her heart.

“If I told you that I thought about being with her, touching her, kissing her, and for even one moment, I was disappointed that I got you instead.”

She sucked in a startled breath.

“Yeah,” he said slowly, softly. “You couldn’t overlook it either. Because that look in your pretty brown eyes, baby. It feels like I just punched you in the gut, doesn’t it?”

Her eyes filled with tears, and she hated them. She hated that he was right. And for just a moment, one fleeting, fast one, she hated her sister for whatever she’d said, She hated Elijah for being inside the house, and she hated herself for not saying something when she’d had the chance.

Because Chandler was right. The thought that he might have had feelings for Emily, oh, it hurt. Even the idea of it made her bones freeze over, crack dangerously when she tried to breathe too deeply, like she might shatter from the inside out.

Point proven with stunning accuracy, Chandler exhaled slowly. “It’s good, though, you know?”

“What is?” she whispered. Her throat hurt from holding in tears.

“That she said something.” He looked behind her at the house. “I don’t fit here any more than I fit in my own home. This isn’t my scene, and I don’t know why I thought it would be.”

The pain Elena felt was staggering, and it threatened to buckle her knees, if she’d let it. “Don’t do this,” she whispered. “I see exactly what you’re trying to do, and I don’t believe you.”

“It’s the truth whether you want to believe it or not.” Chandler could hardly look her in the eye now. “We had a great time baby, and it’s probably best that that’s where we leave it.”

Her eyes dried, and her heart curled in on itself while a roaring, angry beast took over her head. “You are the biggest coward I’ve ever met.” She blurted out.

Oh, he didn’t like that. But if Chandler got to fling little darts at her, let them find purchase in her skin over and over, but she would not be the only one bleeding by the time they were done with this awful, insane conversation.

“Feel better calling me names?” he asked her.

“I’ve met children with more emotional maturity than you, Chandler Kendrick,” she told him.

He started nodding, pulling his keys out of his front pocket. “Good, get pissed at me, baby. It’ll make it easier for me to leave.”

“Don’t call me that,” she snapped. “I’m not a baby. I’m not some untouchable, pristine thing, and I will get pissed because I see an intelligent man who means a lot to me throwing away the possibility for something amazing because he’s too chicken shit to work past his problems.” She marched the final steps between them and grabbed his face with her hands. His jaw was granite hard beneath her fingers, that was how tightly he was clenching his teeth. “I’m not trying to make it easy for you to leave, Chandler, because I know that’s not what you really want to do. You felt exactly what I felt. You still do, and you are running scared at the first available chance.”

His eyes were zeroed in on hers, and for a moment, she thought he’d relent. He curled his hands around her wrists and carefully tugged until she had no choice but to release his face. Her hands fell when he let go, and quite strangely, she felt nothing the moment they did.

No anger. No fear. No pain. Inside her was a strange quiet, a sudden stillness that could only be self-protective clarity.

“I was a fool to trust you with any piece of me,” she told him. “Wasn’t I?”

He conceded that with a slow nod, and her hand itched to slap that placid mask off his face.

“Elijah is the trustworthy brother. Too bad he’s taken.” He smiled, and it looked cruel and cold, and she hated it. “I’m the one you come to for a good time, and I think you got that in spades.”

The ice in her bones hardened to steel, and she lifted her chin as she took a step back from him. “You should be gone by the time I walk inside that house because the second I do, I can’t be held accountable for what happens to you.”

He laughed under his breath, twirling his keys around one finger. “Not a problem, Miss Davis. Your wish is my command.”

This time, it was her showing him her back, and she hoped to hell that he didn’t see the tear that slid down her face when she did. The slam of his car door sounded like a gunshot, and she kept her pace even as she walked into the dark garage. Her heart uncurled painfully as she opened the door, and she found herself wrapped into Emily’s waiting arms.

She never heard the car leave because she couldn’t hear a thing over the breaking of her heart.

__________

“You can’t ignore me forever .” Emily’s voice said.

Elena’s nose stayed glued in her phone. She even refused to look up when Emily opened the door and walked inside her bedroom even though she hadn’t invited her inside.

Forty-eight hours after they’d driven home from Emily’s house-Elena in stony silence, Emily begging her to talk to her. At this point, Elena felt like she could in fact, ignore her sister forever. She’d never gone this long without a word to Emily.

But she was pissed. At her. At Chandler. At herself. And unfortunately for Emily, as she refused to leave, she became the most convenient scapegoat for that anger.

“Elena, come on,” she begged. “I don’t know how else to apologize, okay?

I’m sorry. You know I run my mouth sometimes, and I shouldn’t have said anything to him, but I swear, I thought he knew. I thought … I thought you knew that I knew.”