“I’m not afraid,” Chase snapped, reaching for the door.
“No, you’re terrified,” Grey said softly, making everything inside him go still.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Chase said evenly as his grip tightened around the doorknob.
“I know that you’re about to let the woman you love walk away because you’re afraid of losing her,” Grey said as Chase glanced over his shoulder.
“I don’t love her,” Chase said, knowing that wasn’t an option, not if he wanted to keep his fucking sanity.
Grey considered him for a moment before he said, “But you care about her.”
“More than anything.”
“Then what are you so afraid of?”
“I’m not afraid,” Chase bit out.
“Then why did you let her leave?”
“This was a mistake,” Chase said, shaking his head as he opened the door and–
“You know what I think?”
“I don’t fucking care what you think!” Chase shouted as he slammed the office door shut and faced the man that had no fucking clue what he was talking about.
“Fair enough,” Grey murmured, still flipping that fucking coin across the back of his knuckles, “but I’m going to tell you anyway. I think you’re afraid of losing her. You know better than most people that life isn’t fair and just how quickly you can lose everything. Keeping Sloane at a distance is safer. It’s easier. The idea of letting her in, admitting that you love her and want to spend the rest of your life with her terrifies you. The idea of spending the rest of your life with her and having children with her terrifies you more because you know that you could lose them all in the blink of an eye and–
“Stop,” Chase said hollowly, unable to handle the thought of something happening to Sloane and if they had a child…
God, he couldn’t fucking do this!
Ignoring him, Grey continued, “What do you think is going to hurt more? Living the rest of your life alone or knowing what you could have had if you hadn’t pushed her away?”
“God, I…I…” Chase said, struggling to catch his breath, but the image of Sloane holding a baby, his child, kept going through his head and god help him, but he liked the idea more than he should.
“What do you want, Chase?”
“I don’t fucking know!”
“What does Sloane want?” Grey asked as Chase rubbed his hands roughly down his face, trying to figure out why he couldn’t let her go.
It was what he needed to do to keep his sanity because he couldn’t handle the idea of something happening to her. If he let her walk away now, he could always tell himself that she was happy and safe, but if she stayed…
He would have to face the possibility of losing her one day and he didn’t think that he could handle that, but…
He couldn’t let her go.
Not when she belonged with him. Not when he knew that he would never be able to stop thinking about her, wondering if she was happy, if she was still working a job that she hated, and…he wouldn’t have lasted a week before he went after her, he realized. She was his best friend and he couldn’t imagine his life without her. He didn’t need to love her to know that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.
“Me, she just wants me,” Chase said hoarsely as the reality of what he’d done finally sank in and when it did…
He needed to fix this.
But first, he needed to figure out where she was. Trying not to panic, Chase pulled his phone out of his pocket as he rushed out of the office with a murmured, “Thanks,” and headed to the front door as he quickly sent a text message to Sloane, hoping that he could make this right.
What the hell was wrong with him?
He should have begged her to stay. He should have done a hundred things differently to make sure that she didn’t walk out that door and–
“Chase?” came the softly spoken word that had him slowly turning around to find Amy standing behind him, giving him a hopeful smile as she wrung her perfectly manicured hands together.
“What the hell do you want now, Amy?” Chase asked absently as he glanced down at his phone and felt his stomach drop when he didn’t see a response.
Shit!
Too fucking desperate to play any games, he sent Sloane’s brothers a group text begging them to tell him where their sister was, hoping that one of them took pity on him before it was too late even as he ran the possibilities through his head. She could be at her parents’ house, with one of her brothers, or at one of the thousands of fucking hotels in this state or at the fucking airport. If he couldn’t find her, then he’d wait there, hoping that groveling would be enough to stop her from leaving and if it wasn’t…
He would–
“I moved my office last year,” Amy said lamely, gesturing to the building across the street and since he didn’t fucking care, he ignored her as he called Sloane.
“Come on, baby, pick up,” Chase said, rubbing the back of his neck as he tried not to lose his fucking mind while the phone continued ringing.
When it went to voicemail, he bit out a curse, hung up and found himself staring at Amy in disbelief when something she’d said caught his attention. Telling himself that he’d misunderstood her, he asked, “What did you just say?”
“I said that I missed you, Chase,” Amy said, giving him a hopeful smile.
“You missed me?” he repeatedly hollowly.
“Yes,” Amy whispered as her bottom lip trembled and she gave him that look that had broken him too many times over the years.
“Unfucking believable,” Chase said, shaking his head in disgust as he looked back down at his phone and called Sloane again, telling himself that it wasn’t too late to fix this.
“Are you mad at me?” Amy mumbled prettily, worrying her bottom lip in a well-practiced move that used to leave him feeling like he was an asshole.
Now, it just pissed him off.
“You’re fucking unbelievable,” he said, shaking his head in disgust.
“I panicked, Chase. I’m sorry, but I was so scared.”
“You were scared? I was fucking terrified!”
“I-I didn’t know what to do,” Amy said around a broken sob as she wrapped her slender arms around herself.
“You knew enough to fuck my best friend,” he snapped at her, shaking his head in disgust because he couldn’t believe that she was trying to waste his time with this bullshit.
“It was a mistake!”
“No, coming here was a mistake,” Chase said, returning his attention to his phone.
“Please, Chase! I love you!”
“I don’t love you,” he said, trying to figure out what he should do next.
“You don’t mean that! We’ve been together since we were children, Chase,” Amy said around a sob.
“And that didn’t stop you from marrying another man,” he pointed out as he sent Sloane’s mom a text message, hoping that she took pity on him and told him where he could find her.
“It was a mistake, Chase. I was so scared and I needed you, but you weren’t there and…and Thomas was. He was there for me and I was so lonely and–”