Exes and O's (The Influencer, #2)(88)

“Does it matter? You’re here with Daniel.” Trevor is jealous. He cares.

“He only came to make up for ditching me. I—I told him from the get-go we were just going as friends.” I struggle over my words, unable to fully articulate my jumbled thoughts.

He levels me with a look. “Just friends? Really?”

My eye twitches. “How could you even think I’d do something like this to you?”

“Tara, I’ve listened to you talk about how much you miss that guy—ten different guys—for months. How was I supposed to know you weren’t just settling for me as a last resort, until Daniel pulled through?”

I blink, stunned from the emotional whiplash of the past minute. “Is that really what you think? That I was only into you because no other exes worked out?”

“I don’t know! You moved on from each of them just like that. It’s like you just—you just convince yourself you’re in love with everyone you meet.”

“So you think I’ve just convinced myself I’m in love with you?”

“How can I not?” He gestures a hand back toward the direction of the cocktail area. “That guy is exactly everything you’ve been looking for. Why would you settle for me?”

I toss my palms toward the trendy beaded chandelier dangling above us. “I’m not settling. Why are you twisting this to make it about me, when you’re clearly the one who has no idea what you want?”

“I do know what I want. I told you how much you meant to me on Friday night,” he says, his expression pained.

“How was I supposed to know you meant it? I got nothing from you while you were gone.”

A vein pulses in his forehead. “You’re the one who barely texted me. I’ve seen the texts you sent to your exes. Compared to what you sent me, it seemed like you didn’t want to talk at all. And when you actually did send me those pictures, you said you meant to send them to someone else.”

It takes a couple of moments for the realization to settle. Trevor actually wanted me to text him more? “I tried not to bother you because you said you wanted to go slow. I didn’t want you to think I was being clingy.”

“I wouldn’t have thought that. Slow or not, I still want you to be you, clingy and all.”

“The entire ex search, all you did was edit my texts, telling me they were too much,” I point out.

“But you weren’t with those guys, Tara.”

“It doesn’t matter. You’re still one to talk. You barely texted me yourself.”

“I sent you Valentine’s Day flowers, for Christ’s sake.”

I freeze. “What? You sent me flowers?”

“Roses,” he says. “You didn’t get them?”

Something pinches in my chest at the realization. The roses were from Trevor. Not Daniel. I didn’t have time to check the accompanying note because I’d just assumed. I never even considered they could be from Trevor. “I—I did. I thought they were from . . .”

“You thought they were from Daniel. Exactly.” He shakes his head.

“Trevor . . .” He doesn’t respond. A silence hangs in the air, like an invisible fog between us. “Don’t leave. We should talk about this,” I plead.

He gives me one last tormented look, his powerful arms pushing through the door. “Please, just go back inside.”

I watch helplessly as he leaves me behind without a second look. I’m tempted to pursue him, chase him into the cold air in my heels. I want to scream into the void until he comes back. I want to tell him how badly I missed him. That I’m desperately in love with him. No one else.

The other half of me is burning red, shaking with anger. Watching Trevor give up and walk away so easily catapults me to the night Seth officially ended things with me. Our relationship had deteriorated long before that night. And yet I held on to it like a life raft, regardless of the fact that it was punctured, dragging me down into the choppy sea. I begged for him to take me back for weeks, because I mistook wild emotional turmoil and dysfunction for love, yet again.

I wasted months trying to put the pieces back together, trying to pinpoint where things went wrong, and I don’t think I ever fully bounced back. I’ve been on a relentless search for love again, trying to prove to myself that I’m worthy of the fairy tale I thought I had, that what’s old can be new again. And what could avenge my damaged ego more than someone who once broke my heart coming back to me?

Maybe Trevor was right. There’s something cheapening about chasing all these men who don’t want me. Maybe I’ve felt more comfortable romanticizing my past, convincing myself all those toxic relationships were true love. Maybe that was more comfortable than moving forward.

But after Friday night, I’m now all too aware that I’ve spent my entire thirty years loving in the shallow end. It’s different with Trevor. It’s a hard-hitting gravitational pull in my very core, grounding me to the earth, filling in every last crater of my heart. The ones I never knew could be filled. The ones I never even knew were empty. It’s confirmation that a different kind of love—love in the purest sense of the word—is real.

And I might have screwed it up already.

Someone clears their throat behind me.

It’s Seth.