Fighting for Love (Second Chances #4)(61)
Hayley wouldn’t make eye contact with me because she knew she was in the wrong, and in my mind I wanted to lash out and hate her for trying to ruin my life, but in my heart she was still the spunky Hayley I’d met and watched grow into an accomplished woman over the past ten years.
Matt waited for me by the door with Josh, who stood there wide-eyed and confused, glancing back and forth between me and Hayley. She still hadn’t lifted her gaze, even when she knew Matt was standing right there in the room, and why would she, knowing she made herself look like a fool.
Before turning and walking out the door, I glanced back at her one last time. “If you think you’re second best, then you might want to take a good look around. Sabotaging people to get ahead is bad, but doing it to the people who love you is one of the saddest, pathetic things anyone could do. If you want to continue to f*ck with me, then go ahead … because there’s nothing you can do that would hurt me more than the knowledge of you betraying me. That cut deeper than anything you could ever imagine.”
Hayley sagged to the floor and I stared at her for a few more seconds, watching her cry silently, before glancing over at Josh. “What’s going on?” he thundered.
Whether Hayley planned on telling Josh the truth I didn’t know, but I definitely knew it wasn’t my place to. “Josh, I’m sorry for barging in this morning. I’m hoping the issue Hayley and I have is just a misunderstanding. However, I’ll leave it up to her to decide.”
With those last words, I walked out the door with Matt by my side. Even though we knew who was responsible for helping Kyle, it still didn’t help because we knew that Kyle would keep pushing until he got what he wanted. He wanted Matt to fail so he could take back the title. I hated not knowing what was going to happen next.
THE RIDE BACK TO MY house was silent. Matt didn’t exactly know what to say to make me feel better, and I didn’t know what I wanted to hear. I was still in shock.
“What do you want to do today?” Matt asked. He turned the key to shut off the ignition and sat back, watching me nervously as if I was going to break.
I wasn’t going to break; I was far from it.
Sighing, I turned to him and said, “Don’t you need to go back home and train with your coach? I swear, he’s going to forbid me to come around if you start slacking.”
He scoffed. “Hey, I’m the one who calls the shots. I train when I want. How about we do something today, just me and you? Surely your boss won’t mind, would he? After all, you’re working on my article.”
If I had any qualms about taking off another day of work, they were just erased by the smile on his face. He had the slight indention of a dimple on his left cheek, which made his face look almost boyish underneath the rugged stubble he had yet to shave off. I loved it when he let the hair grow in on his face for a few days; it tickled when he’d graze it across my skin.
Running my fingers through his hair, I smiled. “What did you have in mind?”
He shrugged, his grin growing wider when the first sign of rain started to drop onto the windshield. “Do you have any bananas?” he asked.
“Bananas? What do you want to do with those?”
As soon as I said it, I felt like an idiot. How could I have forgotten about one of our favorite things?
“I think there might be a couple left in the kitchen,” I told him. “Don’t tell me you finally mastered the art of flipping pancakes. You kind of sucked at it when you tried making them before.”
Chuckling, he shrugged his shoulder. “I don’t know. I got kind of good at it over the years.” He pulled the keys out of the ignition and opened the door. “But if I suck, I know that you’re the expert so I can always watch you make them.”
The first time we skipped school together we were in the tenth grade, and we did something that ended up beginning a whole new trend for us; it even led us to our favorite song by Jack Johnson, “Banana Pancakes.”
The rain started to come down harder, so we both rushed out of the car and up the sidewalk to my house. Before we could get under the shelter of the front porch, Matt held onto my waist and pulled me to him, both of us getting drenched.
We stared at each other in the cool California rain, wrapped in one another’s embrace while everything continued to move all around us. Matt brushed his thumb along my cheek, to my chin, and across my lips before leaning down to press his own lips to mine. The rain tasted a little bitter and salty mixed in with the sweet taste of his tongue. The smell of his skin as I breathed him in was intoxicating, and I couldn’t see how I survived the last ten years without him.
“Do you believe in fate?” I whispered against his lips. “That two souls no matter where they are in life will always come back to each other if they were meant to be. Do you believe that’s true?”
Matt brushed the wet hair off my forehead and cupped my face in his hands, gazing down at me with a humorous twinkle in his eyes. “What is it with you and your philosophical bullshit? You used to ask me this stuff all the time.”
“Hey, I was being serious.”
Sighing, he rolled his eyes and held me tighter. “Okay, let’s see … soul mates. Before, I would’ve said no, I don’t believe in fate or soul mates. I think we choose our own fate, our own destiny, but with you standing here before me now it’s kind of hard not to believe in it. We just have to do it right this time because I don’t think fate’s going to give us more than a second chance.”