Page 30 of Most Likely to Match (The Matchbooks #2)

Chloe is all crimson and shadows. She takes my hand, pulls it around her waist, nuzzles her nose into my neck. “I wish I could have watched you do this when we were students,” she says into my skin. The longing in her voice reverbs against my jugular, down my spine.

Even with all the chemicals safely stored in their cabinets, an acrid, vinegary smell hangs over the room. It sours even more. Because she could have watched me do this when we were students, and she and I both know why she didn’t.

Gently, I pull away from her. “I think I need to get out of here,” I say.

“Okay.” She lets me lead her out. The exit to the track is a few steps away from the classroom door. Not until we’re outside, the door slamming behind us, can I actually breathe again.

“Are you okay? Dean?” She takes over, leading me to the empty bleachers that face the track. A woman pushes a stroller on the far side but doesn’t pay us any attention as our steps clang up to the top of the metal seats. “Hey.” She takes my hands in hers. “Breathe, okay?”

“I am breathing.” I gasp, though. So maybe not.

“I know,” she soothes. She kisses my knuckles, one for each letter, one for each exhale. “I know. I’m sorry,” she says. “I never should have made you come to this.”

I shake my head, not trusting myself with words.

Because I appreciate her apology and I know what she’s trying to say, but also, again, it’s not really about her.

The sun is warm on my face, the metal seat hard and uncomfortable, the smell of fresh cut grass a welcome replacement to the chemicals in the darkroom.

I was numb before, my only awareness of it that I’m not numb now .

“We don’t have to go to the reunion,” she says, gesturing back to the school. Because, of course, the reunion will be held next weekend in our former high school auditorium.

I shake my head, swallowing, though my mouth is dry. “No, it’s fine. I want to go.” A lie but also the closest I can get to the truth. I don’t want to go, but I will go. I have to .

“No. Really. This wasn’t fair of me. None of it was. I’m telling her right now.” She stands, shaking her hands with a nervous flutter.

“Chloe.” I gently tug her back to me. “I’m serious. Listen.”

She watches where our hands enfold one another’s, where I trace her nail beds, press her skin until it’s white and watch the blood rush back in.

“I insisted we not talk about this, and I thought that was for the best at the time, but I think it’s time we talk.”

Chloe takes a deep breath, closing her eyes. She sets her shoulders back and straightens. Then she looks at me, clear-eyed, resolute. “Okay. I’m ready.”

I don’t know where to start. With right now. With back then. With me. With her.

“I was in love with you,” I say. “When we were seventeen.” She opens her mouth to respond, but I hold her face in my hands, hovering my thumbs over her parted lips. “Let me finish.”

She nods. I kiss her.

“I think I’m in love with you now, too. And I don’t want you to say it back,” I say quickly.

“If that’s how you feel. I don’t want you to say anything , honestly.

I drowned in you once,” I say. If we need honestly, I might as well go all the way.

“And that’s not your fault. That’s…just me.

But I can’t let that happen to me again.

I think that’s why it’s been so hard for me to set aside what happened.

It’s why I wanted to blame you. It was a way of protecting myself. ”

My heart beats in my throat, my fingertips, my femoral artery. Everywhere but in my brain. My lips are numb. If I stand up too fast, I think I might fall over.

“You know,” she says slowly, like she’s waiting for me to stop her again.

“I didn’t have anything to do with it. Lauren saw a text from you.

She took my phone while I was in line for lunch.

I…” She shakes her head, her eyes shining with unshed tears.

“It hurts me that you think I would have done something like that to you. Yet I don’t even feel entitled to that hurt, because your hurt was so much bigger. ”

I pull her into me, tuck her face into my shoulder again. Her body against mine, chest to chest, skin to exposed skin, spoils my panic, slows my rapid heart. “I know. I’m sorry,” I say simply.

“I’m sorry,” she says back.

“All I wanted when we were seventeen was to hold your hand, to kiss you.” I kiss her now, her face covered by the mess of her hair in the gentle breeze. Her hands grasp my sides, and she wraps herself in the fabric of my shirt.

“I want that too, now.”

“I know you do,” I say. It’s been there this whole time, reaching for my hand, taking turns caring for each other. “And I know it’s unfair of me to ask you this.” I pull away so I can look her in the eye when I say this. “You can say no. You can dump me right now.”

She shakes her head.

“I can’t walk in there.” I point at the school. “Attached to you,” I say. “In front of all of them, without carrying all the baggage along with it.” The words taste sour as they leave my tongue.

“I…do you…?” Her squint from the sun deepens into a frown. “You want to stop this? Between us?”

“No. I need…” I sigh. If there are words to explain this to her properly, I don’t know what they are.

“I know that what we are now is totally different from what we used to be,” I say slowly.

“And I know that’s all that should matter.

But…” I look down at our hands in her lap.

“The thing people remember most about me in high school is the thing I wish they’d forget.

And we’re already working together, we’re already connected— again— but, I think, if I were to walk in there with you , without having the opportunity to explain to everyone what the truth is. ” I shrug.

It would be like when I was seventeen again.

Already, I’m anticipating the weight of each individual gaze, their judgment.

I can already hear their whispers, their jokes.

“I’m not ashamed of you,” I say firmly into her hand.

“I’m not ashamed of us or of what we do together. Professionally or otherwise.”

She smiles shyly.

“I’m asking you if you will forgive me for not wanting to have to explain to everyone else why I am not ashamed. ”

“Oh.” She blinks. “ Oh .” Chloe has always been smart. There’s no way she doesn’t see the irony in this request. There’s no way she doesn’t feel, at least a little, like this is a reprisal. A debt finally come due.

“I want us to be a secret. For just a little while longer.”

Almost as soon as the words are out in our atmosphere, I want to take them back.

They sound so ridiculous, strung together like that.

Hurt flickers across her face, but then she hides it away.

Not for the first time, I wish for a microscope, X-ray glasses, the all-knowing power to find where she puts it.

But to do that, I’d need to know her heart— and to know that, we can’t have any secrets.

This is wrong. “I’m sor—”

She presses her thumb over my mouth. “No.” She nods once, firmly. “You asked for what you wanted and I’m giving it to you. You get to ask for this, Dean,” she says, her voice made of something stronger than steel. “Okay?”

I shake my head, caught in this endless loop of not knowing.

“Okay?”

“Okay,” I say against her skin.

She drops her thumb. “We still get to fool around, though, right?” She smiles, a joke, except the crease between her brows is pure worry.

I grin back in a way I hope is charming but at this point could be the tragic face of a Melpomene mask. “Right.”

Chloe relaxes into me again and we watch the woman push her stroller around the track. Not a secret, for just right now.