Emancipating Andie (23 page)

Chase pulled back slightly so he could look in her eyes, and immediately her hands came to the sides of his neck. Their mouths were only centimeters apart; he could feel her breath on his lips, taste it on his tongue.

“I know what I said, Andie,” he murmured. “But I can’t let you do this. I won’t let you be spontaneous this way.” He brought his hand to her cheek, brushing the hair away from her face, their noses touching. “I want you to go after what you want, but not if it’s something that’s going to make you feel guilty. Not if it’s something that will make you disappointed in yourself.”

She pulled back slightly and stared up at him with those eyes, eyes that hid nothing, eyes that were chocolate and caramel and innocence and sex, and he could see the hurt behind them, the doubt he had instilled there with his words, as if she didn’t believe that was the real reason he turned her down.

The hurt in her eyes was the final blow, shattering the last of his self-control.

He took her face in his hands, his eyes locked on hers. “I want you. You have
no idea
how much. I have wanted you since the second I saw you in that wine cellar.”

She closed her eyes, and he leaned in and touched their noses again. “But not like this. Not when it would be something we’d regret. I won’t do that to you. Or to him. I can’t.”

He heard her make a tiny sound, as if she were trying to contain her emotion.

“Andromeda,” he whispered, and she stilled, her breath catching in her throat.

He lifted his chin then, pressing his lips to her forehead, holding them there for what seemed like forever, as if he would lose a piece of himself once he broke contact with her.

And as he slowly pulled away from her, that’s exactly what it felt like.

He stood from the bench and ran the backs of his fingers down the side of her face before he turned and walked toward the door. A tiny piece of him was hoping she’d stop him, hoping she’d put up a fight, give him an excuse to break the rules.

But the only sound was the door opening and closing, and his footsteps as he walked farther and farther away from the place he wanted to be most.

Chase got to his car, the onslaught of emotions he had felt only moments before replaced by an eerie numbness. He started the car and pulled out of the parking lot, driving aimlessly, turning on and off of roads that meant nothing to him.

He didn’t want to go home. But he knew he couldn’t go back.

He needed to go somewhere. Anywhere.

His loyalty to Colin should have been enough to prevent this. All of it. His feelings for Andie, his constant thoughts of her, his undeniable need to be near her. It should have been enough to stop him from going to her tonight. It shouldn’t even be a question in his mind, he realized. It shouldn’t be something he had to fight with himself over.

But it was.

What did that say about him, that his feelings for his friend’s girlfriend were proving to be stronger than his loyalty to that friend?

He sped onto the highway, his subconscious taking the reins. He hadn’t even realized where he was going until he was almost there.

By the time he arrived, nearly an hour had passed since he had left Andie, although it could have been seconds or days; time ran together, an insignificant blur to him.

Chase pulled up to the darkened street and cut the engine, twirling the keys between his fingers before he took a deep breath and exited the car. He knew it was closed, that the gate would be locked, but he also knew that the stone wall around it was low and easy to climb on the left side.

He approached it quickly, his breath visible before him in the darkness, and he placed his hands on top of the wall; with a quick jump, he was up and over the side, walking briskly through the uncut grass, his hands thrust in his pockets. His eyes struggled to adjust to the darkness, barely making out the shapes of things as he passed, but he knew his way around this place better than he would have liked.

Finally he stopped, staring until his eyes could just distinguish its outline. He stood there for what seemed like forever, his eyes focused on the arch of it; the only sound was the rustling of the remaining leaves in the trees, and the low, distant hissing of cars on the wet asphalt.

Slowly Chase dropped to his knees, feeling the soil and the pebbles and the grass beneath his jeans. It had been too long since he’d been here.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been around in a while,” he whispered, leaning forward and resting his forehead on the cold, rough stone; almost instantly, he felt the familiar quivering of his chin.

This time he wouldn’t even attempt to fight it; he’d had enough of trying to inhibit his emotions for one night. He felt his eyes begin to well, and at that moment, he welcomed it. He wanted it. He wanted to drain himself of every single emotion that fought for control in his chest until he felt empty.

There had only been two women in Chase’s life who truly meant something to him, who made him want to be a better man.

One of them lay beneath the headstone in front of him.

He exhaled heavily, his head still resting on her grave, and as he closed his eyes, he felt two trails of heat rush down his cheeks, a sharp contrast to the cold air.

Because as much as he wished it wasn’t true, he realized that the other was just as inaccessible.

.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN

“E
very thing in my life that once seemed so significant suddenly felt extremely trivial. It was as if every thought, every feeling, every experience I had before this was just practice for this moment. All at once, the world around me felt real. And for the first time, so did I,”
Andie typed, stopping to take a sip of her iced tea before she put the glass down and continued.

In another chapter, she would be finished with the novel.

It had been two weeks since Chase came to her apartment, two weeks since they sat on the piano bench in each other’s arms. Ever since that night, it felt like she was overflowing. It was as if her fingers couldn’t move fast enough to record all the words in her head.

She wasn’t sure how long she sat there after he left that night, and she honestly couldn’t remember a single thought that went through her mind. All she knew was that one minute she was sitting immobilized on the piano bench, and the next she was sitting cross-legged on the floor, her laptop on her thighs and her fingers flying over the keys.

She wrote for three straight hours that night.

And in the days that followed, it was much of the same. It was like some undisclosed, limitless resource had been tapped; if she wasn’t at the restaurant or with Colin, she was writing.

The only thing more prolific than Andie’s composing was her desire to talk to Chase. So often she found herself wanting to call him, to tell him, to thank him, just to hear his voice again. But for all of the times that desire consumed her, she only allowed herself to contact him once. It was the night she realized that she was only a few chapters away from finishing the book, and she had sent him a text, asking him if he would read it once it was completed.

He had answered her almost immediately, saying of course he would, that he’d be honored. And that was all the contact she’d had with him.

Andie no longer fought her thoughts of him; she embraced them as part of her daily routine, welcomed them as the obvious muse that had re-inspired her.

The door to the back room of the restaurant opened, and Andie’s mother came through with a box in her arms. A few weeks ago, Andie would have jumped to hide what she was doing, but today she kept her eyes on the screen, her fingers clicking away at the keys.

“Hi sweetheart,” her mom said, placing the box down and grabbing a box cutter from one of the drawers.

“Hey,” Andie said, smiling up at her for a second before she resumed what she was doing.

It was quiet for a moment, the only sound being the clicking of the keys, until her mother said, “Whatcha doing over there?”

Andie smiled. “I’m writing.”

“Oh yeah?” her mom said, her brow raised and her eyes focused on whatever was inside the box she had opened. “Writing what?”

“Just…a story I’ve had in my head for a while.”

Her mom looked up at her for a second and smiled. “Good for you, sweetheart. You always did have a way with words.” She reached in and pulled two jars out of the box, turning to place them on a high shelf on the other side of the room.

Andie looked up over the screen and watched her move back and forth, pulling items out from the box and stocking them on the appropriate shelves as she hummed to herself.

Her fingers stopped for a second as she thought about her mother, trying to picture her when she was young, trying to imagine what made her smile back then, what made her think, what she was afraid of, what she wished for.

She wondered if it was this.

“Hey, Mom?” Andie said, and her mother glanced over her shoulder as she stood on her toes, putting things away.

“Hmm?”

Andie paused, thinking of how she could phrase it, and finally said, “What did you want to be when you grew up?”

Her mother laughed softly, turning around and placing her hands on the small of her back, arching and twisting as she stretched. “Wow, it’s been a while since someone’s asked me that.” She straightened up, adjusting her shirt. “Well, when I was a little girl, I wanted to be a queen,” she said, and Andie laughed. “But when I realized that wasn’t going to pan out, I wanted to be an obstetrics nurse.”

“Really?” Andie said, taking her hands off the keyboard and turning to face her mom fully. “I never knew that.”

She nodded. “When I was a teenager visiting my family in Greece one summer, we were at a festival and a woman went into labor. She ended up delivering right there in the grass, next to one of the stands, and I remember thinking it was the most incredible thing I’d ever seen.” She smiled to herself. “And I just thought, wow, this would be an amazing thing to do everyday, to help bring life into the world.”

Andie watched her as she looked at the floor, the soft smile remaining on her lips before she took a breath and looked up, reaching into the box again.

“Then why didn’t you do it?” Andie asked, and her mother shrugged nonchalantly.

“Things change.”

“What changed?” Andie asked.

“Well, for one, I met your father,” she said before she turned and placed the last items on the shelf.

Andie lifted her brow. “Dad didn’t want you to be a nurse?”

“No, Dad would have supported me, of course. I guess I just wanted different things after I met him,” she said, flipping the empty box over and cutting the bottom.

Andie pulled her bottom lip between her teeth as she nodded slowly. Maybe a few months ago she wouldn’t have been able to understand that line of thinking, but now she knew all too well how meeting someone could change the way you looked at the world around you, or even the way you looked at yourself.

“What made you want to marry Dad?” Andie blurted out, startled by her own question.

Andie’s mother flattened the box and slid it on top of the pile of cardboard that was waiting to be recycled. “Your father is a good man,” she said.

“I know that,” Andie said, “but I mean, there are a lot of good men out there. What made you want to be with
him
forever?”

She stopped, looking at Andie for a second as if she were trying to read her before she walked to the table and sat down on top of it, facing her daughter.

“Your father is an intelligent, kind, and honest person. When I met him, I knew he had a good head on his shoulders, that he was responsible. That he would be a good partner, a good father, a good role model, that he could provide for a family.”

Andie stared up at her, waiting for her to continue, but she said nothing else. Her mother could see that Andie was dissatisfied with her answer, that she wanted there to be more, and she smiled softly, shaking her head.

“What have I always told you, Andromeda?” She leaned over, playfully tapping her daughter on the forehead with her finger as she said, “
Na agapas me to kefali sou, kai tha eisai asfalis
. Love with your head, and you’ll be safe.”

“Love with anything else, and you’re in big trouble,” Andie finished in stereo with her mother, causing her to laugh. She brushed her daughter’s hair behind her ear before she stood from the table and turned to walk back out to the restaurant.

“What about your heart?” Andie said.

Her mother stopped just as she reached the door, turning to look back at her.

“What about if you love with your heart?” Andie asked softly.

She stared at a daughter for a second before she crossed the room to her, placing her hand on the side of Andie’s face. As she looked down, she smiled softly, and Andie could have sworn there was a hint of sadness behind it. She leaned down and kissed the top of Andie’s head before she turned and walked back out to the restaurant, saying nothing.

Andie fell back in her chair, the force of her sudden epiphany hitting her like a tidal wave.

It was like the world had just righted itself in front of her eyes.