One & Only

Chapter Eight

EIGHT

It started simply enough. Since my shifts at Verde ran Thursday and Friday nights, and all day Saturday and Sunday, Dylan and I planned Monday through Wednesday evenings to work on our project. 

On Monday, we worked from five until nine, when he said he had to go meet Hannah.

On Tuesday, we worked from five until ten. He’d been saying he had to go meet Hannah for a full hour before he finally left the lab.

On Wednesday, we looked up from our work to discover it was eleven-thirty. Dylan pulled out his phone. “Three missed calls.”

“Hannah?”

He nodded. “I should have told her I couldn’t meet tonight.”

Now it was my turn to nod. That was the rule. I’d learned it from years of living with my mother. When your married lover starts complaining to you about some issue with his wife or real family, you simply nod and don’t make eye contact. 

Except Dylan wasn’t married. And he wasn’t my lover—not anymore. But that didn’t stop me from mimicking my mother so perfectly I shocked myself. 

“I should go,” he said now.

I nodded again, not even looking up from my laptop this time. 

“Tess?”

I raised my head. He was looking at me, an unreadable expression on his face. “Yeah?”

“Do you want me to go?”

His words scooped something out of my chest, leaving behind a hollow, sucking place. “Sure,” I said lightly as the ache spread from my heart to my stomach. “I’m ready to crash myself. I’ll have those notes to you tomorrow morning.”

He stared at me, saying nothing, and for a moment I could almost imagine that he knew exactly what it cost me to act as if I didn’t care. That I didn’t even give a second thought to the fact that he was going to leave me here and go back to his apartment and be with her.

And just like that, the images were back. The ones where Dylan was with her. Hannah. My sister. He’d walk into his apartment. She’d wait for him on the tangled blue sheets of his futon bed. He’d pull off his shirt, revealing muscles that had only been hinted at back when I knew him, back when he’d been mine, but were now fully formed…and fantastic. She’d run her hand across his chest, through his hair. Her perfect, manicured hand, glinting with rings, especially the big, fat diamond one on her left hand.

I squeezed my eyes shut. What the hell was wrong with me? I was not my mother. I’d had two years in which I could have gone after Dylan if I’d wanted to. I was not going to pine over what was lost to me now that he’d found someone else, as if the only reason I could possibly be attracted to him was that he was unavailable…

His hand covered mine, then swept up my sleeve, softly stroking my arm. “Tess? Are you all right?”

I opened my eyes, feeling stupid. “Sorry. My head hurts a bit.”

“You’re overtired. I shouldn’t have kept you out this late. And you have your shift at the restaurant tomorrow…” He frowned. “You okay to drive home?”

“Fine.” I snapped down the lid of my laptop, annoyed he was calling my bluff.

“I don’t like the idea of you driving.”

“I don’t like the idea of sleeping under the lab table.”

The corner of his mouth quirked up. “You can stay at my place.”