Chapter 5 5
CHLOE POV
Pain wakes me before anything else does. Not a headache something closer to an actual siege happening behind my eyes. Each heartbeat lands like a hammer strike against my temples. Somebody's opened the blinds partway, letting in exactly enough sun to feel like an attack. That's Kelly's doing, no question she treats blinds-up-by-seven like a personal moral code, though on nights that involved serious drinking, she compromises and leaves them halfway. I've stopped questioning it. If anything, her consistency has just made me worse at fending for myself.
A groan escapes before I can stop it, and I immediately regret that too. Whiskey. Why whiskey, of all things, when I know what it does to me? I keep my eyes shut, trying to block out the light and the nausea and the creeping certainty that last night involved a truly spectacular mistake. Something cold nudges against my hand.
"Drink. You need it."
One eye opens. Sam's standing over the bed, unopened water bottle extended toward me.
"Thanks," I croak.
I grab it, crack the seal, and gulp down way too fast nearly choke myself doing it. Doesn't matter. It tastes incredible. I don't stop until it's half gone.
"Slow down before you make it worse," Sam says.
"Already there."
"Figured as much."
I settle back into the pillows, sipping more carefully this time, and take stock of the disaster zone that used to be my bedroom. Clothes everywhere. My purse dangling off the desk chair. Two glasses on the nightstand I have no memory of touching. Rod must've come home with me probably talked me into "just one more" like he always does.
"Where's Rod, anyway?"
Sam doesn't answer right away. Something in his face changes.
"He take off already?"
The look he gives me could only be described as disbelief. He exhales slowly, then drops onto the couch at the foot of my bed.
"You don't remember any of it."
"Remember what, exactly?"
Pity settles over his features, and I hate it instantly.
"I don't" I start, but the sentence never finishes. Because it all floods back at once every piece of last night crashing down together. Austin. Cole.
The man I've loved for two years.
The girl I called my closest friend.
The person sharing my roof.
My grip tightens around the bottle until it shakes. "Oh my god."
Sam's beside me instantly. "Hey I'm right here."
"No," I whisper.
"Chloe"
"No." The tears break through before I can hold them back, my voice cracking down the middle.
He gathers me in, arms tight around my shoulders while I press my face against him.
"You're going to be okay," he says quietly. "Neither of them was worth what you gave them."
Drunk, I'd had clarity of a different kind pure fury, pure ache, and one single-minded goal: burn it all down and make sure Cole watched every second of it.
Sober, though, the hangover strips away whatever numbness the alcohol offered. The betrayal isn't blunted anymore it's razor-edged, working its way through every part of me until it's the only thing I can feel.
He cheated. With her. The one person I trusted with a spare key, a shared lease, every secret I own. She knew about every fight Austin and I ever had, every time he told me he loved me, every intimate corner of a relationship that apparently meant nothing.
How long had the two of them been laughing about this behind closed doors?
How long had he been lying straight to my face without flinching?
I press my palm flat over my sternum, as if that could hold anything together.
"Hey, you." Kelly's leaning in the doorway now, and her face tells me she already knows.
"Hey," I manage.
She comes over, sits, takes my free hand in both of hers. "Say the word and I'll have her stuff on the curb within the hour." Her chin tips toward the hallway. "Never liked her, if we're being honest. Always seemed a little too perfect."
A small, cracked laugh slips out of me despite everything.
"I just need time. To sit with this."
Her whole face softens.
"Take it. However much."
No arguments, no pushback just her hand squeezing mine.
"I mean it. All the time you need."
A beat passes before Sam clears his throat. "So, um."
I eye him warily.
"Worst possible timing, I know, but" he winces "your brother's out in the living room. And he is not calm."
My stomach drops. Alfred.
It all comes rushing back how far I'd let things go, how little I'd cared about consequences in the moment, all in the name of hurting Austin. And my brilliant idea, apparently, had been kissing the one man Alfred simultaneously trusts with his life and threatens on principle.
Mason. Hayes. Of course.
I drop my head into my hands. "What did I do."
Kelly clears her throat, hesitant.
"So, funny thing"
I peek out from between my fingers.
"You and Mason are basically the top story on the gossip site right now."
A groan tears out of me.
"Tell me you're joking."
"Not joking."
"Please be joking."
"Extremely not joking."
I fall backward and drag a pillow over my whole face. There's nowhere to hide from this by tomorrow the entire campus will have decided I'm just another name on Mason's list, and worse, that I cheated first.
Wonderful. Just wonderful.
"It'll die down," Sam offers, not sounding convinced himself. "Give it a week, tops."
A pause.
"I mean it's Mason. There's a new name attached to him practically every other week."
Kelly cuts in before he finishes. "Except she's literally his best friend's little sister, which kind of" She stops herself, glancing at me. "complicates the whole 'it'll blow over' theory."
"Kelly."
"What?"
"You're supposed to be making me feel better right now."
"I was! Truth just came out first."
Bless her completely filterless heart.
Sam shrugs. "She's not wrong, though."
I glare daggers at him. "Not the support I need right now."
"Fair, sorry." Hands raised. "I just mean when you said you wanted to 'blow shit up' last night, I assumed that meant getting Alfred to tank Austin's standing with the team somehow. Not walking over and kissing the guy in front of everyone."
"Can we not, right now?"
Nobody answers that. I fumble for my phone on the nightstand and check it. Twenty-seven missed calls from Austin. Sixteen texts, unread and staying that way.
I flip the screen face-down without opening a single one not ready for whatever version of an explanation he's prepared. Slippers on, I force myself upright despite the fresh throb it sends through my skull.
"Where are you off to?" Sam asks.
I straighten my spine. "Going to deal with my brother."
Kelly and Sam exchange a glance I don't particularly want translated. If Alfred's really as furious as Sam's implying, this headache is about to feel like the easy part of my morning.
