Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 79853 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79853 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Sam nods. “I guess we’ll catch up tomorrow.”
Wait, what? I know I wasn’t overly obvious about inviting him over, but I thought the message was clear enough. No, I don’t want to sit at the table, but yes, let’s go home so I can change and talk. Why can I write my characters flirting but fail so miserably in real life at it?
“Oh.” I unzip my little purse and put a twenty on the counter, giving Sahil a little wave. I take one last look at Sam’s beautiful blue eyes. “Don’t worry about it. Tell Rory I said hi.”
Chapter Twelve
Sam
“What the fuck was that?” Mason elbows me hard in the ribs as soon as Lauren and her friend Paige step away to use the bathroom.
“What?”
“That.”
“What is that?” I shoot back, annoyed more at myself than at Mason. I know exactly what he’s talking about.
“Have you been doing the drugs meant for your patients and it’s caused brain damage?”
“Yes, Mason. I do drugs during surgery. Half my patients are actually awake and screaming.”
“I’m honestly a little concerned,” he says seriously. “Chloe just invited you to spend the night with her and you turned her down.”
“She did not. Chloe and I…we’re…we’re not like that.”
“But you want to be,” Mason shoots back. “Don’t you?”
I’ve never wanted anything more in my life, and seeing her again only reaffirms how much I do. She’s gorgeous, obviously, but there’s so much more to her, and I want to get to know each and every layer of her complexity. Even as kids there was nothing simple about Chloe, and she thought it made her undesirable or too much for someone to handle.
I wanted to handle her then, and I’d give anything to handle it now. Chloe is one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met. She’s passionate and driven, but has a heart of gold. We haven’t spoken much, so there’s a chance I’m wrong here, but it doesn’t seem like the fame and money changed her, which is impressive on its own. That sort of thing can change a person for the worst.
It doesn’t matter how much I want to be more than friends with Chloe, there’s no way she’d want to go there with me. I betrayed everything we had between us, and I regret it each and every day.
I should have told everyone to shut the fuck up. To stop laughing at my friend. My best fucking friend.
I should have run after her a hell of a lot faster than I did.
By the time I got outside, she was gone, and after half an hour of looking for her, I went back to the house to get my phone. The first call went right to voicemail. I hung up, did shots, and then called again. The world was spinning, and I couldn’t get the look on her face out of my head. It wasn’t the embarrassment of showing up dressed like she just stepped off the set of Pirates of the Caribbean…no, it was the heartbreak reflected in her eyes.
“We’re friends,” I say, blinking a few times to try to shove the memories back. “Or we were friends.”
“Why’d you stop being friends?” Mason asks, and we go over to the table. My pulse speeds up a bit, and I wait a beat before answering, seeing if this is Mason’s way of testing me. I said we drifted apart. That going away to med school was the reason.
“We went to different schools.” I slide into the booth and grab a menu. “She had her own friends and I had mine.”
“Yeah, but you two always did and that never made you stop being friends before.”
I shrug, concentrating too hard on the menu. I can feel Mason’s eyes on me, but he doesn’t say anything. He can be a little shit more times than not, but he knows when to stop. Well, sometimes.
Everyone in my family has to know I’ve had on-and-off eyes for Chloe throughout our relationship. The timing was never right.
“She’s single,” Mason goes on. Apparently tonight isn’t one of those rare times when he knows to shut the fuck up.
“How do you know that?” I look up from the menu and see Mason holding his phone. “Are you internet-stalking her?”
“Doing a quick Google search isn’t stalking, plus she posted this on Valentine’s Day.” He shows me a photo of Chloe dressed like an elf, posing with a gray horse. She looks like something right out of a fantasy movie, ethereal and incredibly sexy without showing a lot of skin. The caption on the photo reads, “The only man I need! The best part is he let me pick out my own V-Day gift. ;-)”
“That was from February. It’s August now,” I counter. “That doesn’t mean she’s single.”
“She hasn’t posted any photos of her with a guy since, and if you look through her history, she tends to post photos of herself with whoever she’s dating.”