Get a Life, Chloe Brown (The Brown Sisters #1)(60)
He turned, started walking again. His pace was easy to keep up with this time, but he didn’t take her hand. “Right. And what would the wrong idea be? That we even know each other?”
He was upset. He’d misunderstood her reasons. The impulse to apologize tugged at her gut, so strong it felt like the urge to vomit. She swallowed acid and knew, all of a sudden, that she should’ve introduced him politely and dealt with wrong assumptions later. But she’d panicked. How long had it been since she’d let herself care about someone new, even the tiniest bit? She had no idea how to handle things like this, no idea what the parameters were—she barely even understood what uncomplicated meant when it came to two people touching each other.
She had to fix this, without slipping up and saying too much, revealing too much. Her mind raced. Her throat tightened.
In silence, they reached the line of taxis, waiting under harsh streetlights that ruthlessly illuminated his brilliance, her mistakes, and probably every pore in her T-zone. Before he could grab a car, she blurted out, “What should I have said?” She tried to make her voice light, teasing. “That you’re helping me get a life in return for a website?”
He softened slightly, laughed gently. “No. No, I guess you couldn’t tell her that.”
She laughed, too, or tried to, but it sounded off. Her breaths were strange, sucking in air when her lungs already felt full, exhaling harder than was comfortable. “You’re my … my badboy tutor,” she quipped. Ridiculous. She was being ridiculous. He would hate that.
His smile tightened. “I wouldn’t say I’m—”
“Services including but not limited to illicit orgasms.” Services? Why did she say that? Why, why, why did she say that?
He looked like she’d just punched him in the stomach. But only for a second. His mouth was a thin, flat line when he turned away from her. “Right. Yeah.”
It was guilt that burned away her panic. She felt as if she’d been body snatched for the last ten minutes. She blinked hard and smoothed her hands uselessly over her hair. “Oh, Red, I didn’t mean—”
“No, don’t take it back now,” he said calmly. “You’re already confusing the fuck out of me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“And I’m pissed. Good talk.” He strode away from her toward a taxi, bending to talk with the driver, his voice low and tight. His anger seemed to surround him like jagged spikes. Or like knives she’d shoved into his back. She was a sad little mess and an absolute traitor. He would never stand beside her and call her no one, no matter how awkward the situation was. Self-imposed isolation had eroded many of her social skills, but for heaven’s sake, could she be any more of a … a twat?
Apparently, she could. Because she knew she needed to say something, anything, that would fix the mess she’d made and erase the new, stiff way he held himself. But all through the drive home, she remained painfully silent.
And then they were back, and he walked her to her door, and she gave him his jacket. He nodded, he left.
And she hadn’t said a word.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Red sat on the floor of his studio, the afternoon sunlight glinting off the silver buttons of his overalls. It was Monday and he was on duty, but he hadn’t been able to focus since yesterday morning—when he’d woken up to an apology text from Chloe that he didn’t know how to answer. Ever since, two very different cards had been burning a hole in his wallet.
Julian’s, of course. And Dr. Maddox’s.
The one in his hand right now, crisp and white and heavy as a brick, was the doctor’s.
His mother had given him this card six months ago and asked him to get therapy. He’d promised he would, but he hadn’t said when, and Maddox’s details had peeked out from behind his library card ever since, whispering that Red was a coward and a big baby and for God’s sake he needed to talk to someone. But he’d been coping fine without. Painting was his therapy and it always had been.
He looked to his right and his gaze fell on the canvas he’d essentially destroyed last night, vicious yellow-green worked into its surface so hard that it had ripped.
Maybe painting wasn’t doing the job anymore.
He raked his hands through his hair and laughed bitterly. All this, days of confusion and angry acrylic shades, because he couldn’t decide what to do about Chloe fucking Brown. He was supposed to see her this week, to check the progress on his website. They’d arranged the meeting last week, before everything had gone to shit. But then … well, everything had gone to shit. And now he was trapped in a familiar whirlpool of past and present, one he was starting to get really fucking bored with.
It went like this: first, he’d remember what Chloe had done. How she’d treated him like a dirty secret, like a giver of illicit orgasms—might as well borrow her words, since she’d put it so perfectly. And he’d feel sick.
But then he’d remember that she hadn’t looked pleased with her own knifelike phrase. She’d looked guilty. She’d looked miserable. She’d said instantly, unreservedly, I’m sorry, and when he thought about that, he was filled with the urge to give her a chance to explain.
Until Pippa forced her way into his head, with her tears and her clever words and her own gasping, weepy I’m sorrys, the ones that somehow turned him into the brute who’d started it all. The ones that always made him apologize for everything she’d done. His rational mind would say, It’s not the same. They’re not the same. That’s not even close to what Chloe was doing. But his chest would still feel tight and his hands would freeze when he tried to pick up the phone and call her.