Page 47 of Fake It For Him

“Once upon a time, I tried talking to her like this, but it didn’t go well.” He pushed off the counter and turned around again, then checked the pasta before turning off the heat and picking up the spatula to stir the sauce. “This is just about done. Do you mind grabbing some bowls? They’re in that cabinet over there.”

He pointed in the direction of a slate gray, eye-height cupboard, and I nodded, sliding off my chair and leaving my wine behind for a moment as I did what he’d asked. After that, I tracked down some forks and carried it all over to him.

As I set it down, Calan poured the water out of the pasta before adding the sauce to the pot and stirring it in. I inhaled deeply as I watched the creamy mixture coating the noodles, getting a whiff of chicken, celery, and spice.

I accepted my bowl after he’d dished up for me. “Comfort food, huh?” I commented. “You’re just full of surprises tonight.”

He chuckled, but the sound wasn’t light and humorous. There was something dark about it and I got it. Stuff like this was never fun to talk about. It dredged up old memories and tore open old wounds.

I didn’t know if he was doing it tonight for my benefit or for his, but I was catching a glimpse of the human behind the dick again, and I liked it. Calan and I really did have more in common than I ever would’ve been able to imagine.

Just like it had that night in Edinburgh before everything had gone to shit, spending time with him tonight felt good. He and I were similar in so many ways he didn’t even know about, and for once, I could drop the everything-is-okay act and be real, and that? It was a damn good feeling. One I intended on hanging onto for as long as I possibly could.

25

CALAN

I honestly wasn’t sure why I was talking to Ella about all of this. My resolve to be better to her hadn’t included yanking open the closet and letting all my skeletons bust out, but here we were. I’d never opened up about it this way before, but maybe it was because I had no skin in the game—like Joe had said.

It didn’t really feel that way, though. Not tonight anyway. Tonight, it felt like I had all the skin in the game, and yet, I was still talking.

I glanced at her as we settled on opposite sides of the kitchen island, wine and pasta in hand and an oddly comfortable silence between us. We took our first bites. When she glanced up at me and smiled while she chewed, I wondered if I was talking to her because she was looking at me with empathy instead of pity or disdain.

When we’d talked about this the first time, the shock and disgust had been painted like a neon unicorn all over her features, but it wasn’t like that now. I supposed she’d had some time to digest the events of that night and I was only fleshing out the picture, but still.

It was really fucking good to be looked at like that while I told this story. “What happened between Aspen and me is my greatest shame.”

Fucking hell, where did that come from? It was true, but I’d never said it out loud before. As the words came out though, I felt a weight lifting from my shoulders and I rolled them, realizing that it suddenly felt like I could move freely again.

Well, well, well. Let’s see if we can keep this ball rolling, then. The fact of the matter was that I’d been holding on to all of this for much too long. If offloading that one admission had been as freeing as it had been, I was going to keep going. See if maybe I could finally get rid of all that weight once and for all.

It was a foreign concept to me, talking and sharing to offload said weight, but it was working, and I wasn’t one to argue stubbornly in the face of irrefutable evidence. “I’ve hated myself every day for what I did, and if I could take it back, I would, but I can’t. The cards have been played and they’re all on the table now.”

Ella blinked hard, like she was as surprised by the brutal raw honesty of my confessions as I was, but other than that, she took it in stride. “Where is she now? Aspen. Have you spoken to her again?”

I shrugged. “Beats me. I haven’t spoken to her since and I don’t want to. I have no idea where she is and it’s probably for the best. If my family thought I was still sniffing around her, even if I wouldn’t, I’d have zero chance of getting back in.”

“Do you want back in?” she asked evenly after pausing for a moment to swallow the bite of food she’d just taken. “It’s just that you seem like the I-don’t-need-anyone type. I don’t mean it in a bad way. That’s just how you come across to me.”

I stared into those deep green eyes, still not finding any trace of judgment or disdain. “Let me tell you something about I-don’t-need-anyone types. We don’t need anyone. Not really, but ultimately, being the outcast gets real old. Getting blamed for tearing your own family apart? That stings and it doesn’t ever go away.”

Her chest rose on a deep inhale and one corner of her mouth pinched in as she nodded. “Yeah, I kind of know that feeling too.”

The offhanded comments she kept throwing out about understanding my situation and the look in her eyes that said she meant them made me want to ask about her past. I would but not yet. “The thing is that I did tear us apart. I wasn’t the only one to blame, but Aspen is gone. I’m still here, and besides, I was always going to bear the brunt of it.”

“So what really happened that night?” She picked up her glass and took a sip of her wine, her eyes still on mine.

“You know, you might be the first person ever to ask me that. I started telling you the other night, but you didn’t want to hear it then.”

“No, I didn’t, but I do now.”

I nodded slowly, taking a generous drink of my own wine. I set the glass down and dragged in a big breath. “Everyone was hammered that night. I mean, you saw me hours after and I was still drunk at first.”

“Yeah, I remember.” A soft smile crept onto her lips. “You were in real rough shape that night. When I first saw you, I thought you’d been attacked by thugs until I smelled the alcohol and realized you’d probably just gotten in a fight.”

“If you thought I looked rough that night, you should be happy I didn’t stick around for breakfast. My nose and eyes were so black and swollen, a few cab drivers just went right on by before one finally stopped.”

She chuckled. “Well, I want to say it served you right, but I haven’t decided that quite yet. So you were hammered, but being drunk doesn’t always lead to having sex with your brother’s fiancée.”