Chance of the Heart (14 page)

“Sweetie, I’m so sorry.”

“What’s to be sorry for?” he asked thinly.

She hugged him, not even pretending like she bought his bull crap. “I don’t know what exactly was going on there, but I’m sorry. I hoped maybe I was wrong. He’s such a good guy. But...”

“Hey,” he said, pulling back to look her in the eye. “Don’t blame him. He stopped it, I knew the score. This sucks for both of us.” He refused to be
that
guy. He wanted his big sister to go kick the guy in the shin and call him a meany-head like she’d done for him twenty years ago when another boy picked on him the first day of kindergarten. But he should listen to the truth in his own words. He had definitely fooled himself and this is
exactly
why he had needed to keep his distance from Chance.

He’d wished, unkindly, for a half second that he’d been another woman and that he wore perfume to mark his territory because his cologne, even if it was in Chance’s apartment, wouldn’t be distinguishable enough from Chance’s to bother Caitlin. She wouldn’t know he’d even been there when she went to the bed with Chance and made love in the room Bradley had never even gotten to see.

“Bradley, go,” his sister said. “Before you go berserk.” He unlocked his Jeep and climbed in. “I’m going to wrap up here, thirty minutes tops, and I’ll head to your house. I just have to make sure my staff that’s helping…”

“No,” he said. “I’m fine. I’m just going back to the cottage to lick my wounds.” She didn’t look comfortable with the idea but he eventually got her to promise to just come by tomorrow.

“Okay, but tomorrow the kids are going fishing with friends and staying the night. Me and you, we’re gonna have too much wine. Invite Emma and we’ll just have a night in.”

“I don’t need a girls’ night.” And he hadn’t told Emma about any of this stupidity. He hadn’t wanted to hear her I-told-you-so any more than he wanted to hear his own. He’d had one swift kick in the balls too many for one summer.

He watched his sister disappear back to the party then started up his Jeep and headed home. If he cried like the biggest idiot that ever lived, it was just between him and the stars.

“What a damn mess,” Caitlin hissed when Chance met up with her again in the back yard.
Honey, you have no idea.
They split off from the friends she’d been speaking with, giving their apologies and getting some wolf whistles that made Chance want to scream.

“I know,” he grumbled. He’d just pulled his parents in the house to scold them. “I can’t believe they’d do that.”

“That wouldn’t have been okay even if we were actually getting married.” He agreed with her on that. Their hearts had been in the right place, but they weren’t usually ones to do something so...

“You’re telling me. I don’t know
why
they were that heavy handed. I don’t know what they were thinking. And now they’re upset that I’m mad at them but I could spit fuckin’ nails.”

“This is going to make things worse, you know that.”

“Should we just tell them?”

“After that?” She looked shocked he even suggested such a thing.

“Well, yeah. I don’t gotta come out, but they just embarrassed themselves. I told ‘em as much.”

“How’d you get ‘em to back off the house?”

Chance led the way back into the house, where his parents cast wounded looks his way as they marched through the kitchen and went upstairs to his old bedroom, now a guest room a florist shop had apparently exploded in.

“I told them we still had some talking to do, that you’d just gotten home. Then they went crazy asking if we were considering moving off and I said it would be our right if that’s what we chose.”

“Fuck me.” He stared at her, surprised. She’d never been one to swear much.

“Um. Yeah.” He shook it off. He realized just how little they actually knew each other these days. Hell, the only person who actually knew him at all was not here and he really wished Bradley was there.
Oh shit. Bradley.
The whole afternoon had been insane between their parents wrangling them for photos, having to change and set up for the party. He’d not had two seconds to say anything to Bradley. Not that he’d wanted to have that conversation over the phone.

But he hadn’t expected his parents’ extra special present throwing a huge monkey wrench into the whole affair. Now everything was so far beyond a mess he didn’t know where to start.

Come to think of it. He did.

“Look, I have to do something,” he said.

She chewed her bottom lip. “I don’t want to ask if your person is Bradley Heart, do I?”

“Then why did you just ask?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “This day needs to end.”

“Agreed. Look, I won’t do anything about my parents right now. They won’t go forward with the house, though. Not until we give them the thumbs up. But we need to figure something out.”

“Today’s not the day, though.”

“I’ll agree with you there. I really do need to go, though.”

“Of course. It’s started winding down out there, anyway, so I told my parents I was probably going to bed soon. I’ll just go to your loft.”

“You’re staying here?” He didn’t know why he was surprised. It’s not like she never had. Never
with
him, but she’d stayed at their house.
 

“Is that a problem?” she snapped.

“Fucking A. Can we
not
add a fight between us to this shitty night? If you really want to stay you’re more than welcome, but could you not add more shit to the pile by staying in my loft?”

She looked like she had something to say to that, but his limit had been reached and he had to get out of there. He’d said he’d help her out, and he meant it. He did feel he owed her. But he did not want her to be the first person to ever sleep with him in his bed in his loft.

He figured that’s when he’d first realized just how much he wasn’t in the relationship. When he and Bradley had gotten drunk that Wednesday in what was what they felt to be an unspoken end to their… whatever it was. They’d finished up his paperwork for the bank, then they’d hit that case of beer hard. It’d been another night of teenage memories and tales of their lives over the last few years.

When Chance woke early in the morning, he was curled on the couch with Bradley wrapped around him. He’d honestly grieved for the relationship they’d never have. He got up from the couch and watched Bradley sleep and realized he wished Bradley had been in his bed. He hadn’t ever even invited the girl he’d thought he may marry to stay with him in the year since he’d finished the loft. But Bradley, he wanted to see between his sheets.

He honestly couldn’t remember having slept in the same bed with Caitlin, aside from sharing a tent when camping with friends once or twice for Spring Break. It’d always been because he lived at his parents’ house. But once the loft was finished… Hell, that was after the last time Caitlin reminded him they’d been intimate.

He couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed any of this shit before. But why would he when he had never really tried to put much thought into life before? He’d just blindly walked forward and done what they said was done. Whoever it is that “they” is.

When he got to the yard, the crowd had definitely thinned, but there were still enough people there to say the party wasn’t officially over. He wandered around looking for Bradley, not knowing why he thought Bradley would even have stayed. He realized then he had left his phone in his loft when he’d changed clothes.

He finally breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Heather helping her catering staff, who’d mostly come to help serve the food since he and the mothers had done most of the cooking. But the sigh of relief was premature if her baleful gaze meant anything.

“Great,” he muttered as he made his way through a throng of drunks who all wanted to pat his back or shake his hand.

“Where’s Bradley?” He stood his ground when she clenched her jaw and told him not to worry about it.

“I
will
worry about it. I have to talk to him.”

“You’ve done enough. Let him shake it off. If you give a shit at all.”

“Heather! I don’t
just give a shit
.” He moved closer and spoke under his breath. “Heather, I think I love him and I’m pissed I have to say it to you first, but I need to know where he is because this whole thing is all messed up and I’m
not
back together with Caitlin…”

“And you’re rambling,” she said. Her eyes were wide. “I want to say go to him, but jeez. If you don’t know what you’re doing then I don’t know if you should…”

“Who
ever
knows what they’re doing, Heather?” He didn’t know where that statement came from, how he’d found any Zen in this moment. But it was exactly what they both needed to hear apparently because she nodded, pleased if still a bit uncertain.

“He’s at home.”

“Thank you!” He kissed her cheek and ran off. He went upstairs to his loft and grabbed his keys and his phone. He locked the door behind him, knowing if Caitlin wanted in she could get the key from his mama, but he hoped she’d give him that one last thing.

He called and left a message with his brother that he’d left, but their parents had apparently already gone to bed so no one would miss him. Everyone was too drunk or had gone home by that point. He considered calling Bradley but he’d not answer, Chance knew that much.

When he finally pulled up outside the lake cottage, twenty minutes later, he wasn’t sure how to even go about this. He felt a bit frantic, mind going a million miles per hour. This was the uncertain, the situations he usually fucked up. He’d never done anything like this.

Fuck it. He bound from his truck and knocked on the door. The lights inside were still on, but maybe Bradley had passed out on the couch. It’d been a couple hours since his parents pulled their stunt.

He knocked again and after a few curses on the other side of the door, Bradley swung the door open. “I told you to wait ‘til tomorrow, dammit!” Then he blinked bleary eyes, surprise obvious.

“What—” he started but Chance cut him off with, “I’m gay.”

A beat of silence.

“What?”

“I’m gay.”

“Okay,” Bradley said, slowly.

“I’m gay and I told Caitlin and I don’t know how to do this because I’ve never cared enough to actually try to fix it when I fucked up because it’s hard to fuck up something you don’t have to put effort into. But with you it’s different.”

“Woah. Woah,” Bradley said, holding a hand up.

“I’ve had a few drinks but not enough to be confused by that so you’re really going to have to slow down. Maybe you should go home, Chance.”

“No!” He stepped right up into Bradley’s space and kissed his frowning lips. They tasted of whisky. The good stuff, not cheap shit like Chance’s dad liked, for some reason God only knew. Bradley never fully relented, not until Chance put a hand on the back of his head, running his fingers through the soft, downy blonde hair back there. The kiss was soft and gentle, no tongue.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered against Bradley’s lips. “I’ve said that a lot today, and Caitlin had to hear it first but you’re the one I wanted to say it to.”

Bradley looked a little dazed. “Can I at least come in? Five minutes, then I’ll go if you’re still pissed.”

Bradley didn’t say anything, just stepped back. Chance pulled his Stetson off and clutched it to his chest as he tried to convey with his eyes how sincerely he meant the words he was saying. “I get that I’m not bi. I’m not confused. I’m just gay. It’s a long weird rambling story the way I realized it, some of the details might get on your nerves but—”

“For someone who’s not wanting to ramble, you’re still doing a lot of it.” Bradley’s slightly teasing tone gave Chance hope, so he forged on.

“I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, but like I told your sister, who does? I’m still not sure how to go about coming out. I told Caitlin, I
owe
Caitlin; at least some time to figure stuff out for another couple weeks. But I know more than anything, if you’ll have me, I can’t stand being with you but not with you.” He started pacing. “You’ve done me in. I can’t stop thinking about you. I ache, fucking ache, needing you. And it’s so easy to talk to you. And you
listen
. No one has listened to me in my entire life. No one made me think I was worth more than the status quo.”

He looked at Bradley, hoping all the adoration he felt was there in that look. “I guess I’m trying to do that thing they talk about in those stupid country songs where the guy puts it all on the table and hopes it doesn’t get thrown back in his face. But after tonight I’d totally deserve it.”

“Yes, you would.” Bradley’s dry tone made Chance wince. But his heart fluttered when Bradley stepped to him and placed his palm on the side of Chance’s neck, running a finger over his jaw.