Reece

The moment I saw Lacey sitting in the hospital I teared up. She looked so vulnerable and fragile. It was difficult to see her like this but I took a shaky breath and marched over to give her the biggest hug I could.

There weren’t words to describe the relief I felt and I didn’t want to scare her because she didn’t remember her diagnosis or having surgery. It must have been frightening to wake up and not remember how you got there.

But I was going to be there with her every step of the way. I would do everything I could to help her.

Once her mother finished hugging her, I stepped closer.

“Reece,” she croaked and any attempt I had made to stop myself from crying evaporated and the tears began to fall.

“You’re here,” I breathed as I held her tight. “That’s all that counts right now.”

I pulled away to see the disorientation in her features. I wiped away my tears. “We will figure things out.” The same confidence I had shared with Aiden I was using with her now. “You just need to concentrate on getting better, okay?”

She nodded slowly. “Okay.”

I felt more in control. When you climbed a mountain you didn’t look at the top and the ascent in one whole task. No you broke it down into stages to make it more manageable and that was exactly what I was going with Lacey. Things that seemed insurmountable, broken into a little steps made it more achievable.

Not wanting to overwhelm her I headed out of the room to let her parents visit with her.

Outside her room I leaned against the wall where I had last seen Adonis before I had gone in to see Lacey. He had been hit hard by Lacey’s amnesia but because he cared he had left and I know how much it had taken for him to do that.

Thinking about Adonis and Lacey brought me back to the mess I had made of my love life. I let out a heavy emotional breath and I ran my hand through my hair. There was no more delaying the inevitable. It was time to face the repercussions of my actions.

I had no idea how Max was going to take it. Suddenly, I felt a weight settle on my chest and it was harder to breathe. And I also had to talk to Aiden but I wasn’t sure how I was going to handle that.

I stayed at the hospital for another hour before I went home.

I called Max and invited him over.

“Hey,” he said when I ushered him into my house after he arrived. His eyes were bright and he looked so happy to see me. He leaned in to kiss me touching my hands with his and I averted slightly so his lips touched the side of my mouth.

“Everything okay?” He frowned as he let go of my hands.

I wasn’t proud of my actions and to have to confess them was the last thing I wanted to do. But what I wanted and what I had to do were two entirely different things.

“We need to talk,” I said.

“It seems serious. Is Lacey okay?” he asked.

He had no idea what was coming and it made me feel worse which at this point I had believed would have been impossible.

“Yes, of course, she’s fine. Well, she has a little memory loss but the doctor is hopeful with some time she will remember.” My voice shook a little. Could he tell? “It could have been much worse, you know.”

He nodded and followed me to the living room. Thankfully my parents weren’t at home so they would not overhear what was about to go down. I wasn’t proud of what I had done and I hadn’t had the guts to tell them either.

I was saving all my courage to get through telling Max.

“So you going to tell me what we need to talk about?”

I sat down and he sat down beside me.

“If you ever told me I would be having this conversation I would have told you were crazy.” I paused.

“What is it? Just tell me.” There was an edge of irritation to his voice.

I sighed and turned to face him. “I never meant for this to happen, you have to know.”

His frown deepened. “What happened?”

It was time to come clean. “I cheated on you.”

I had said the words and I watched an array of his emotions display across his features.

“With who?” He sounded shocked.

I briefly closed my eyes. “Aiden.”

I felt the seat beside me shift and I looked up to see Max pace in front of me. Then he stopped to glare at me.

“So while I was worried about you and Lacey you were fucking my best friend?”

The words he used he had chosen to hurt me and I deserved it, every single one of them.

I nodded, feeling like there was no way to make this easier. What I had done was horrible and how could I expect him to take it well? I felt like the lowest low life on the planet and I couldn’t blame him for the hatred that settled in his glare.

He had every right to feel that way and I had to take it. I had acted without thought and it was time to face the consequences.

“I asked him to watch over you.” He shook his head. “Here I was worried about you and you didn’t give a shit about me.”

I shook my head. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.” Emotion clogged my throat and I swallowed.

“How many times?” he asked, his jaw tense.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Don’t. Just answer my question.” His eyes locked with mine.

“We slept together once.”

Did knowing that make any difference to him?

He raked his hand through his hair as he turned his back to me. I wanted to console him even though I was the cause of this mess. I stood and approached him but when my hand touched his shoulder he shook it off.

“Don’t touch me.”

I dropped my hand. “I never meant for any of this to happen.”

He turned to face me. “How did it happen?”

I frowned. Surely he didn’t want details. When I didn’t answer his question immediately he pressed on.

“You owe me an explanation and I need to know how my girlfriend and my best friend slept together.”

Deep down I knew it would give him no comfort but how could I deny him what he wanted to know. It was the least I could do.

“The first time we kissed was when we took Lacey out the party before her surgery. She was going through a rough time and I was coming apart at the seams. And Aiden was there. It just kinda happened.” I couldn’t even look him in the eye as I told him what he wanted to know.

His fist tightened and that’s when I realized it might not have been the best decision to give him the details he wanted. It would only stoke the fire and what good would come of that.

“When did you sleep together?”

I pressed my lips together, not wanting to reveal that detail.

“It doesn’t matter when it happen, it only matters that it did.”

“The least you can tell me if my best friend, who I trusted, put the moves on my girlfriend when I wasn’t around.”

I shook my head. “It wasn’t like that.”

“Why did you do it?” He studied me.

How could I explain that when I didn’t even know myself?

I shrugged. “I’ve never done anything like this before.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” he scoffed. “It doesn’t.”

He pulled his hand through his hair. “I was so worried about you and what you were going through but I didn’t have to because Aiden was taking care of you, wasn’t he?”

“I know that my decision has ruined what we had and I just need you to know that I never meant for any of this to happen. It was my fault and I take full responsibility for it.” This time when I spoke I looked him dead on, I didn’t look away.

He shook his head. “I should never have trusted him with you.” He sighed but there was still an undercurrent of anger in his body language. “Here I thought I had a friend I could trust to take care of my girlfriend and he…broke my trust. But what you did was worse. I thought we had something special but clearly we didn’t.”

“We did,” I replied.

He headed to the doorway to the reception. “If we did, you wouldn’t have slept with someone else.”

He gave me one last long look before he left and left me on shaky legs on the verge of tears.

*********

After I had a good cry and managed to pull myself together I called Aiden to give him a heads up. I didn’t want Max to confront Aiden without him being prepared.

“How did he take it?” he asked.

How did anybody that take that kind of news?

“Not well,” I murmured. It was a bit of an understatement but I couldn’t emotionally wade into the details.

“Can we meet up to talk?” he asked, cautiously.

I sighed and sat down on my bed. I felt like I had been through the emotional wringer and remembering the betrayal in Max’s eyes was enough to take away my breath momentarily. I didn’t think I was strong enough to face how I felt about Aiden and what it meant. Honestly I still didn’t know what he meant to me. How could I have an in-depth talk about the two of us when I couldn’t even answer the simplest question of how I felt about him?

“I’ve been patient Reece.”

I remained quiet as I looked up to the ceiling.

“The thing is I don’t know how I feel about you,” I finally admitted. “How can we have a conversation about what happened between us when I can’t even figure how I feel about you?”

The was silence.

“I appreciate your honesty but I think you at least owe me a face to face talk about it. There are some things I need to say to you.”

There was no avoiding it and he was right. The least I could do was meet up with him so he could tell me what he wanted to.

“Fine.”

“Can I come over now?”

It was the last thing I wanted but I knew I had put this off for long enough. It was best to get it over and done with.

“Sure.” I answered.

“I’ll see you soon.”

I wasn’t looking forward to it but it needed to be done.

My feet felt like lead when I heard the doorbell go about fifteen minutes later. This was the last thing I wanted to do but it had to be done. Like a bandaid, the quicker you ripped it off the quicker the pain was over. This was the same concept.

I opened the door and the sight of Aiden hit the rawness still left in my chest from my confrontation with Max. And I debated whether this was a good idea in my current emotional state.

I stepped back to let him in before I closed the door behind him. We went into the living room and I sank down into the sofa.

“How are you?” he asked, sitting beside me.

I shrugged. “Shitty.”

Before this I had been the one who had been cheated on, the one who had been wronged. Not once did I think the ex-boyfriend who had broken my heart would have felt as low as I did. Maybe he had also had reasons he couldn’t explain that had caused him to act out of character.

“What did you tell him?” he asked.

“I told him the truth. He was understandably angry and upset.” I rubbed my forehead.

“How did it end?”

I let out an emotional breath. “He pretty much such said we didn’t have anything special if I could have done that to him.”

His words still hurt, even if they held some truth.

“And how does that make you feel?”

I frowned. “What does it matter?”

“It matters.”

“I feel awful…horrible.”

He studied me for a few moments. I had to catch my breath, he had that affect on me. It wasn’t something that could not be denied.

“I don’t know what you want from me.” I clasped my hands together. “I don’t know why things happened between us. Okay? I don’t know. Right now, I can’t even tell you what made me do any of it.”

He stood up and moved to face me. “I know you’ve had a lot going on.”

I had a feeling there was a but coming.

“But I can’t walk away.” And there it was.

He held my gaze and I couldn’t look away. He had this way of drawing me in.

“I don’t want to push you into anything you aren’t ready for but I thought it was important to lay my cards on the table so you know what I want.”

“You know what you want?” I found myself asking softly, torn whether I wanted to hear it or not. I felt so undecided and unclear.

He nodded. “It’s you I want.”

My breath stilled. There was no hesitation, no second guessing, he sounded so sure. How could he be that sure when I wasn’t?

“How can you know that?” I argued. “We kissed once and then slept together once. How is that enough to know how you feel?”

“The night we first kissed, I knew.”

I frowned. It was impossible to know something so quickly, surely. “How’s that possible?” I questioned suspiciously.

“There was something vulnerable in your eyes the moment before we kissed that hit me square in the chest. It didn’t matter that you were with someone else, even if your boyfriend was my best friend. Nothing would have stopped me.” His eyes held mine.

I was shocked. I hadn’t expected that. His words vibrated through me.

“Am I proud of how it happened? Of course not. I’ll always feel guilty for hurting Max but I won’t apologize about how I feel about you. Do you know how rare it is to feel something like this?”

Just in the same room I could feel the pull to him. Even if I couldn’t explain my emotions I could feel the attraction we shared and it was explosive. It was is the way he looked at me and I dared not touch him for fear of being unable to stop myself from taking it further again.

The intensity of what he was saying made me stand and walk over the other side of the room. I needed space to take in what he was saying. I was fighting the need to be close to him and the urge to get as far away as possible.

“I’m not here to rush you when you aren’t ready. You need to know that I’m not walking away, this between us wasn’t a mistake. I just needed you to know that I have real feelings for you and this wasn’t just some random hookup.”

I was still a little stunned but I turned to face him. “I don’t know what I want and I can’t even promise I’ll know next week, or next month.”

“Sometimes in life it takes the most stressful moments to show you what you need.”

I wished I had that same confidence but I didn’t. My feelings had been all over the place and it swung from one polar to the next. The fear of losing my friend, the guilt of hurting Max and confusion of wanting Aiden no matter who I hurt in the process.

He moved closer and I knew I should have kept my distance but I was tired so I gave in and allowed him to take my hand in his. I released a shaky breath. My heart hammered in my chest. He gently held my hand in his. I swallowed as I felt his skin against mine and it was impossible not to think about him kissing me, taking me into his arms and other things that made me blush.

“I know you need time to figure out how you feel.” He leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek briefly.

I gripped his hand. “I don’t know if I can do this. Can it really work after all the deceit and cheating?”

How could a relationship that starts off like that succeed? Surely, it was doomed if it came from underhanded actions.

“How could you trust me?” I asked while our gazes locked together. “If I cheated on Max who says I won’t cheat on you.”

He studied me. “I don’t know anything for sure. I don’t even know if you’ll give us a chance.”

I bit my lip trying to contemplate what he was saying.

“You know where to find me when you’re ready to make a choice.” His gaze lingered for a few moments before he released my hand and left without a backward glance I stood watching him leave, feeling a loss of something I couldn’t quite explain.

I didn’t want to make a choice. I knew I couldn’t go back and I didn’t want to go forward. That left me stuck where I was, feeling unsure and second guessing every decision.