Collide (Collide, #1)(114)

“To tell you the truth, buddy, when I first got here, no, I didn’t believe you,” she answered, looking to her watch. She brought her eyes back to him. “But now I do.”

“Oh, do you?” He smirked, almost laughing. “And why do you believe me all of a sudden, oh mighty queen, Olivia?”

She stared at him for a long moment and then moved across the room to grab her purse, coat, and scarf. She made her way over to the door and turned back to look at him. “Because even when you were at your worst after Gina,” she whispered, her expression pained, “you weren’t as…f*cked and tortured-looking as you appear to be right now.”

Swaying slightly, that smirk dropped from his face as he peered at her.

“I love you both. You’re my second brother, and she’s the sister I never had.” She let out a deep breath. “And it’s killing me to see the two of you hurting the way that you are.”

Tossing his hands through his hair, he perched himself on a barstool. “What do I do?” he asked, his voice low and his heart sinking lower. “For the first time in my life…” He hesitated and looked down to the ground. He then slowly brought his gaze back to hers. “God, for the first time in my life, Olivia…I don’t know what to do. She doesn’t believe me.”

Although he couldn’t see it from across the room, Olivia’s eyes glassed over. Looking back down to her watch, a timid smile crept over her mouth. “Then make her believe you, Gavin. You have less than twenty-four hours to change the course of both of your lives.” She slung her purse over her shoulder and opened the door. “I hope I see you there,” she said, stepping out into the hallway. Gavin watched as she poked her head back in. “Oh, and if you do decide to go get our girl, do yourself a favor and shave. You’re definitely a cutie, honestly, but I’m not digging the whole five o’clock shadow thing you got going on right now.”

Gavin let out a deep sigh. “Anything else?”

“Yeah, as a matter of fact, there is,” she replied, tapping her finger against her cheek. “Drop the whole jeans and sweatshirt thing you got going on, too. Love ya, my brother.”

Gavin shook his head and watched as she closed the door behind her.

Time.

Tonight, time wasn’t on his or Emily’s side. Staring at the clock on the wall once again, Gavin sat there for a few minutes. His mind was literally rocked from the conversation. He sat there for a few more minutes, trying—and failing—to make sense of everything spinning through his head. Though his unease of never being with Emily ever again grew, gnawing at his stomach, the thought of showing up, only to get turned down again, made him know that the decision he was about to make was for the better. There was no denying that he needed her. He needed her like the veins in his body needed blood and his lungs needed air. However, this time around, Gavin would rather suffocate than have to look Emily in the eyes and hear those venomous words again. No. He wouldn’t go tonight.

And, just like that, Gavin knew he’d changed the course of his and Emily’s lives forever.




Teetering. Though a few weeks had gone by, Emily was teetering a fine line between sanity and madness. She felt as though she was made of glass, and a small hammer—held in the hand of each man—was chipping away at her. She was sure that at any second she would shatter into a million jagged pieces. The larger pieces—representing Dillon—cut into her flesh. The smaller slivers—Gavin—stuck under her skin. Either way, both were slicing into her heart, leaving her a bleeding corpse of the woman she once was. She felt like she was watching herself from a distance—no longer in control of her thoughts, no longer in control of the path she was walking. As she stared at her reflection in the mirror, she couldn’t deny there was a small sense of relief that had washed over her once she’d arrived at the church to see Gavin hadn’t shown up—yet, her ache for him remained. A part of her knew she was being elusive. She was trying to fuse back together what’d been broken between her and Dillon, knowing a huge amount of their relationship had crystallized into dust. Still, she needed something to hold on to—and that something was a tiny glimmer of hope that she could bring her feelings for Dillon back to where they used to be.

She needed to fall back in love with him.

However, she had become a very good liar herself lately, playing into her own game of staunch resistance to the obvious. She now felt like the master of trickery because she knew that she was trying to delude herself into thinking that she’d be able to forget Gavin. Forget every stolen glance they had shared, every accidental brush of their flesh, and every moment they experienced together—right down to the second she knew she loved him. The force of will and string of lies she was trying to convince herself of would never be enough to keep her heart from splitting along the scars and stitches of the mess that was left. So tonight—as she stood staring back at the hollow shell of the woman she had now become—she wondered how far the delusion would get her into her marriage, wondered how long Gavin would haunt her every waking thought, and wondered how long she could fool herself.

Trying to compose herself, Emily tore her gaze from her reflection when Fallon walked into the restroom.

“Are you alright?” Fallon asked, making her way over to her. “Or are you still feeling nauseous?”