For Seven Nights Only (Chase Brothers) (13 page)

At least until she started overthinking it, and once it was over, she’d have nothing to do
but
think. And remember what he said about her to his brothers. She wandered into the bathroom and took out her contacts. She felt a smidge of comfort putting her glasses back on, but the edge of clarity they provided wasn’t enough.

By the time they’d both reentered the room, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to cry or kick something. “Can I ask you something?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Sure.”

She studied his face, so playful and devilish and…warm. God, he was like
home
, only what would hers be without him in it? Empty. Cold.
Inevitable
. “How do we go backwards from here?”

His brow furrowed. “Backwards?”

“To being strangers. How do I forget what we’ve shared?” She was nearing tears, and she didn’t want that. She didn’t want to
care
. But she did care, and that pissed her off, not that he deserved it. He’d said from the beginning the only entanglements he did involved sheets. And now he wore that same guarded, pitying expression he had the night they met when she was flailing.

Back when he’d made a promise to help her find someone.

She’d never dreamed that someone could be him.

And it’s not
.

“Kelsie—”

“Sorry. I forgot. We haven’t shared anything. We’ve hung out. And we’ve fucked.” She let the words hang in the air, stupidly hoping he’d correct them. Soften them. But all he did was stand there and look stricken.

Well, that was something.

She reached over and snapped off the heat to the oven. “What, exactly, do you have against relationships?”

He looked at her for a long time before he responded. His voice meticulously even, he said, “My parents have been married for almost thirty-five years. It’s a little hard on the ol’ expectations.”

He couldn’t have been vaguer. Her mind scrambled to fill in the blanks, then she realized she didn’t need to fill in anything. The blanks didn’t matter. What did was that he wasn’t giving anyone a chance. He didn’t even
want
to try. “How are you going to find thirty-five years if your romantic life is nothing more than a series of one-night stands?”

“I’m not finished,” he said quietly. “My brother Ethan married his high school sweetheart. She died two years later of lymphoma. He was devastated. He still is. It’s been two years, and he’s still eighty percent zombie.”

Her heart ached at his words. “And with good reason. I’m sure that was absolutely a devastating loss. Most people don’t get married expecting less than forever.”

“Right. But how many people get it?” He pushed a hand through his hair, adorably tousling it. “Losing Amy destroyed Ethan. And the same thing is going to happen to whichever of my parents is here the longest.”

“Sawyer, that’s life. That doesn’t mean you run away from it.”

“I’m not running. I’m facing reality. I don’t want to end up in a bad relationship, and I don’t want to lose a good one. If I go down that road, one of those two things is bound to happen.”

“So being alone is the answer?”

“Sweetheart, I’m never alone for long.”

Cocky bastard. The words stung. Her fault for taking them personally, but she was
sleeping
with him. And she never once imagined she’d be with a guy who’d look her in the eye and remind her he’d have someone else in his bed soon enough.

What the hell was she doing?

Not falling for him. That’s what.

Fighting to keep her voice steady, she said, “So this is date six, I guess. I learned an alternate way to move furniture and figured out I still can’t cook.”

The hint of a smile disappeared before it had fully formed. “This wasn’t supposed to be date six.”

“Maybe it should be date seven. I mean, really, what else do I have to learn?” He opened his mouth, and she held up a hand. “Let me rephrase. You’ve given me a surprisingly decent cache of tips and advice. We’ve had a great time. I’ve learned a lot. In fact, Sunday morning I turned down a date—”

“Wait.
What?
” Something surprisingly akin to jealousy sparked in his eyes.

She shrugged, feigning nonchalance but secretly enjoying his reaction. “I was out walking Marmaduke when I ran into a guy I worked with on a job but couldn’t go out with at the time for professional reasons. That conflict is no longer an issue, so he asked me out.”

Sawyer’s eyes had darkened to a dangerous hue. “What did you say?”

“I said it was complicated.”

“It didn’t occur to you to say you knew just the date and time?” His voice was sour with sarcasm. Or was he mocking her?

Either way, his reaction angered her. “Are you
kidding
me? Don’t you think I should let the sweat dry after you’ve
fucked
me before I accept a date with someone else?”

“Jesus Christ, Kelsie. All you’ve wanted this whole time is a date with someone else.”

She wanted to yell no, that at some cruel, pivotal point something had changed. But that didn’t matter, because she sure as hell hadn’t changed
him
. Oh, he’d tolerated having sex more than once, saint that he was, but he was clearly ready for her to move on. He clearly wasn’t one to let the sweat dry. Silly her for forgetting it. “And you,” she said, “wanted sex. And you got sex, and well before the seventh date. You said yourself, you don’t go back for seconds, and I don’t want to cramp your style. People might start thinking you’re in an actual relationship or something. And with someone with
zero girlfriend potential
.”

His eyes burned dark and cold. “Yeah, heaven forbid anyone make the mistake of thinking I goddamned cared about you.”

Hot tears tore at her eyes, but she forced them back.

“I think you’re right,” he said as she stood there, dumbstruck because he’d mentioned her and caring all in one sentence. “Screw date seven. Screw
all
of this. You clearly don’t need anything else from me.”

“Oh, that’s interesting,” she said, suddenly angry all over again. “Because I don’t know what I’ve gotten except
screwed
. Dog park? Granted, I hadn’t thought to look for a guy there, but I would have eventually. I proved I’m a damn good dancer, handled the rock wall—and, I might add,
you
to your great satisfaction—and you braved the opera only to tell me my taste in men sucked and I should only go for guys like you. Then you take me to meet your family, but you didn’t let me talk to your
single
brothers. But you sure as hell talked to them, didn’t you? Because if I recall correctly, you told them I’m a total waste of time.”

Sawyer paled visibly, but he stood stoically, without saying a word.

As if he had a damned thing to say.

“So you tell me. What exactly have I gotten other than the standard Sawyer Chase fuck-’em-and-leave-’em treatment?”

He didn’t move, his face a damned concrete mask.

“I will give you one thing,” she said. She stomped over to the oven and, using a mitt, snatched the roast from the oven. “This is the best damned roast I’ve ever made, so do me a favor and thank your mother for me, would you? At least
she
did something for me.”

“I’ll do that.” He leaned to dig through the sofa they’d torn apart and came up with his jacket. “I’m sorry for wasting your damn time. Good-bye, Kelsie.”

“That’s it? No trophy for me for being the most screwed of all your playthings?” Even as she spat the words, she knew she was wrong. She
knew
there was more. But he didn’t want it, so it didn’t count. And she wasn’t about to fight for a guy who had only ever fought for the right to run.

“Yeah. That’s it.” He spoke quietly. Stared hard. Made it look so final. And over. “That’s all I am and all I do, or have you forgotten?”

“I haven’t forgotten anything, Sawyer. I have no idea how I ever will.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Me, too. Bye, Kelsie. It’s been real.”

Me, too?
What the hell was that supposed to mean?

She didn’t get to ask. By the time she’d blinked through the tears that made the room swim and her glasses fog, he’d walked the short distance to the door. He left without a backward glance, slamming the door so hard, the wall shook.

The roast hit the door seconds later. Marmaduke trotted over to sniff it. Then, instead of digging into a very expensive cut of beef, he nudged it aside and sat by the door.

Whimpering.

When it hit her that Sawyer was really gone, Kelsie dropped to the floor and did the same.

Chapter Fourteen

By the evening of Jana’s bachelorette party, Kelsie hadn’t forgotten Sawyer, but she’d at least managed to push him from the forefront of her mind. Mostly. Sort of. Okay, so she thought of little else, but at least the logical side of her brain had come to the conclusion that the sooner she found something else to do, the better.

The problem was she didn’t want to do anything else.

She only wanted to do
him
.

Which had her thinking she needed to focus a little less on finding something perfect and a little more on living for the moment. Having an eye on her future was one thing…keeping both hands gripped on the wheel and being too terrified to look five degrees to the left was another. She’d been uptight her entire life, and as an adult that had made it almost impossible for her to have any fun. Sawyer made her realize how much she’d missed and that maybe she’d had her eye on the wrong ball the whole time. Unfortunately, that just took her right back to wanting him, but she’d live.

She’d have to.

Kelsie and Jana had never been close, but their dating brothers had given her an artificial sense of bonding. Maybe the same had happened with Sawyer, but that didn’t make her feel better. Not even as she watched her sister laugh it up across a very crowded club with her friends, celebrating a relationship and a new beginning while Kelsie mourned one that hadn’t really existed to begin with.

Yeah, that really didn’t make her feel better. She doubted anything could. Maybe she would have to make
herself
feel better. Maybe she’d have to try one of Sawyer’s tricks to get herself noticed, and with any luck she’d be able to forget about what’s-his-face, who hadn’t been able to get away from her fast enough. The fact that Jana had chosen the very bar at which Sawyer had introduced Kelsie to a dance floor was a sick twist of fate she chose not to examine, not that it was any great mystery. The club made the hottest-in-NY list thirteen weeks running, or so her sister had informed her, making it the place to be, and if not for a large party canceling their reservation literally moments before Kelsie called about the bachelorette party, they’d have been somewhere else. But no such luck. Although, the upside was she’d found someone willing to dance with her there once before, and odds were she could do it again.

She’d just begun a halfhearted visual tour of the crowd when Jana approached, giggling and unsteadily holding a shot glass. “You have to try this!”

Kelsie took the shot with absolutely no intention of consuming it. “You said you didn’t want to overdo it. Remember?”

“I’m fine,” Jana insisted. “The schrippers are here. You didn’t tell me there were schrippers!”

Kelsie needed a full ten seconds to decipher. “There
aren’t
strippers.”

Jana waved an unsteady arm at a group of guys now completely surrounded by Jana’s friends, none of whom Kelsie really knew. “They said they’d dance for us.”

Kelsie almost laughed. Unfortunately, it would be a long time before any of this was amusing. To Jana, she said, “I’m sure they will, honey. Just remember the photos will make it back to your future husband before you will, so behave.”

“Nah. He told me to have fun.”

“They never mean that.”

“What do you know? You’re shingle.”

Yeah, that was her.
Shingle
. As her sister tottered off to lie all over a guy who was not her intended, Kelsie realized
single
didn’t have to be a bad thing. It was definitely uncomplicated. Way less complicated than wondering if your bride-to-be was trying to cram her hand down some random guy’s pants, and she could only imagine what was going on at the bachelor party.

By contrast, being alone was just freaking dandy. And she might as well enjoy it. The next time she caught a guy looking at her, she took Sawyer’s advice and offered a slow smile, only somewhat awkwardly dragging her hand from her breast to her hip as she dropped her gaze to New Guy’s zipper. By the time she worked her way back up to his eyes, he was halfway over to her. What’s-his-face knew his shit.

The guy didn’t bother with introductions. No complications. Where had she heard
that
before? But he did take her hand and very nicely asked, “Want to dance?”

She hesitated, but no, she was doing this. “I’d love to,” she said.

And she did…right up until the moment she saw Sawyer sitting at a table situated against a wall bathed in shadows.

With a blonde in his lap.

…

Sawyer had been too busy staring at Kelsie to realize the blonde was on his shit until it was too late. But what did it matter? Kelsie had made it clear she was done with him.

So why wasn’t he over her?

And why did he want this woman off his lap…and that jerk’s hands off his girl?

His. Girl
.

What the absolute fuck?

He’d dragged Ethan to the bar hoping to help his brother live a little and to get his own mind off Kelsie, and that had backfired in the worst way. He had no blessed idea how or why she would have ended up there, but he wasn’t going to sit around and wonder.

Not. A. Chance.

He stood, dislodging the blonde from her one-sided perch on his lap, and made his way closer to Kelsie. She didn’t look in his direction, and he wasn’t sure if she knew he was near. Which meant he had no idea if the show she was putting on was for him or for the asshat who had his hands in all the wrong places. Sawyer knew how those moves translated to the bedroom, so he couldn’t blame the guy, but that didn’t make him any less inclined to punch him in the face.

Fortunately, he didn’t have to. The song ended, and apparently whatever expression Sawyer wore was enough to make a claim, because the guy split. And before Sawyer could blink, some
other
guy was talking to her.

Fuck
. On the cusp of breaking in and raising hell, Sawyer took a step back. And then another. And then he just watched her move, and he remembered when she was his.

Two damned days ago.

It felt like no time. It felt like forever.

It felt utterly fucking wrong.

Her moves now didn’t rival what she’d done to him their first night there, and that gave him a jolt of satisfaction that should have shamed him, but it didn’t. Instead, he saw her curves and the tease of her dress—a new one, he was pretty sure—and that took him back to the warmth of her skin. To the heat in her eyes when he’d spun her around and held her. She wasn’t wearing her glasses now, and to his surprise he kind of missed them. He missed
her
. He’d been the luckiest guy in the room, and he couldn’t offer her a thing. Because as much as he wanted to grab her, kiss her, and say he wanted all of his one-night stands to be with her, he couldn’t. He couldn’t steal this chance from her.

He didn’t know this new and unfamiliar side of himself. He didn’t know what it meant, or who he was. Just that loving her was a promise he couldn’t make.

And she deserved more.

So much for his plan to avoid getting hurt. She wasn’t even his girl, and losing her hurt like a bitch. Which meant he’d either been right about her deserving a better man or really fucking wrong about giving her up. But the result was the same.

He hit the bar and made sure his tab was clear, then—with a distant, dismissive nod to his bewildered brother—gave the area in which he’d last seen Kelsie a wide berth. Maybe she was having fun.

Maybe he’d just go home and drink.

Which was precisely what he was doing when someone buzzed his apartment an hour later. He ignored it. Ever since Kelsie had all but thrown him out of her apartment, he’d been mad at the world. He managed to get his work done without scaring the customers, but he’d blown off everyone else. Almost. He’d spoken to Liam, hoping he’d spread the word that he didn’t need an intervention, all the while grateful Crosby was too busy building a new home and business with Estelle to ride him about his attitude. And Ethan he’d just dodged, because he didn’t need to hear his sanctimonious shit. Tonight had been a mistake—no second opinion needed.

The buzzing didn’t go away, but Sawyer did his best to ignore it. After a good ten minutes, the noise stopped, only to be replaced moments later by a knock on the door. That, too, went unanswered. At least it did until the door swung open.

Ethan walked in, shutting the door behind himself like he planned to stay.

Sawyer glanced up, then quickly averted his eyes. “Who let you in the building?”

“Some woman on her way out.”

Sawyer rolled his eyes. Not a good idea when you’ve downed half a twelve-pack, but Ethan didn’t need to know that, either. The couple he’d had at the club were evidence enough. “Well, that clears it up.”

Ethan shot him a look. “It wasn’t Kelsie, so what do you care?”

“Point taken. Also, you’re an asshole.”

“Says the guy who dragged me to that stupid club then left me there. Thank you for that, by the way. Now when are you going to get off your ass and fix this thing with her?”

“When I run out of beer.” Sawyer swirled the liquid in the bottle, then held it up to the light. Almost down to suds. “And when she runs out of other guys to dance with.”

Ethan snatched the bottle out of Sawyer’s hand. “Consider yourself out.”

“Christ, man.” Sawyer snapped down the recliner’s leg rest, his every intention to stand up to his brother. But gravity shifted, so he thought better of that plan. Instead he glared. “Who elected you camp counselor?”

“Be straight with me, Sawyer. What’s going on?”

“She wanted a date,” he said.

“This was a problem?”

“She wanted a date on a yacht.”

Ethan frowned. “You’ve been like this for two days because she wanted to go on a yacht?”

“She didn’t want to go with me,” he said, conveniently leaving out the part where he didn’t do boats. It wasn’t as if Ethan didn’t know, but Sawyer wasn’t in the mood to be called out on that. “She wanted some picket-fence type who was ready to settle down.”

“So she broke up with you?”

“There was no breaking up. There was no
together
. It was me teaching her how to be irresistible to men.”

“Looks like you accomplished that.”

“Jesus
Christ
. No one asked you.”

“You don’t need to ask me. I’m dealing with your shit all day at work, so I’ve earned my right to an opinion.”

“All due respect, you’ve had one girlfriend your entire life, and it was perfect from day one. I’m so goddamned sorry you lost her. You have no idea. But you don’t know anything about what’s going on here. You’ve never had to fight a day in your life to make a woman believe you fucking loved her.”

Ethan’s brow cocked. “Are we talking about me or you?”

Sawyer glared. It didn’t send his brother from the room like he hoped. Finally he relented. “I don’t do relationships. I fuck, and I move on. That’s my life.”

“I’ve noticed,” Ethan said dryly. “I think we all have.”

“It’s not complicated that way. I hate complications.”

Ethan’s mouth twisted. “And Kelsie is a complication?”

“I don’t hate Kelsie,” he said, not really answering the question.

“Then what’s the problem?”

“She thinks I used her for sex.”

“And you didn’t?” Ethan scoffed.

“Fuck you.”

“God, you’re dense. Did you ever
once
say or do anything to make her think you wanted more than sex?”

Sawyer met his brother’s accusing eyes. “I did more than sleep with her. Does that count?”

“Does she
know
?”

Sawyer shook his head. “No, she doesn’t know. Because I can’t do it, Ethan. I can’t do it.”

“You can’t do what?”

“I can’t fucking become
you
.”

Ethan actually took a step back, and the apartment seemed to echo with the aftermath of the words.

“What,” Ethan asked tersely, “is so wrong with me?”

Sawyer threw out his hands and immediately thought of Kelsie. God, it was contagious. “You tell me,” he said to his brother. “Tell any of us. You’re not alive, man. You’re just…there. You exist, and we’re all thankful we have that much, but you jumped in the goddamned hole after Amy. And for what?”

By then, Ethan had his back turned. Quietly, he said, “You don’t love someone like that and forget.”

“No one is asking you to forget but
think
. You love hard, brother. Don’t you believe you should share that with someone else? Christ. Even Grady has signed up for some online-dating shit.”

Ethan turned around. “Yeah, well, Grady likes computers more than I do. And you’re one to talk. Has it ever occurred to you that you might have more to offer a woman than sex? As a matter of fact, maybe that’s your fucking problem. Maybe you just see women as a receptacle for your dick.” Ethan shot him a dark look. “Respect. Look it up.”

“I respect Kelsie,” Sawyer said. “Might have been the first time I ever went out with a girl and didn’t have sex with her on the first date. Or the second. And I’ve never even been on a third date, but we didn’t have sex then. Nope. Made it all the way to the fourth date—the fucking
opera
—before I even touched her there. So don’t tell me I don’t respect her, because I’ve never respected anyone more.”

Ethan gave a nod of approval in response to Sawyer’s babbling. “Good for you,” Ethan said. “Now does
she
know that?”

“What difference does it make? She’s done.” To Ethan’s raised brow, he added, “She asked me to leave, and she was probably right. I’m not that guy she wants.”

“I think you’re missing the point, brother.”

“Which is?”

“Whether you
want
to be the guy she wants.”

“I’m not.” When Ethan’s brow furrowed, Sawyer caved and told him the rest. “There’s a boat. I’m too afraid to go on the goddamned boat for her. If I can’t do that, how could I ever handle the big shit? The living.” He paused. “The
dying
.”

“Fuck, you’re morbid. It’s not that hard, Sawyer. You live, and you’re glad for every day you have. And you die, and you hope you lived hard enough to make someone miss you. And as for the boat, don’t do the boat for her.”