Page 58 of The Chad Next Door
I remind myself of what Link said to me when I was leaving Phoebe’s house earlier today: “Tell Chad that I’m sorry and that I want him to come back.” His poor little heart has been breaking since the moment Duke disappeared in the woods, and I can’t let him feel guilty for the rest of his life. Duke is back—yay!—but forgiveness is in order.
If Chad is willing to give it.
“You’re stalling,” I tell myself, which isn’t all that helpful. “The worst he could do is shut the door in your face.”
Actually, there are a lot worse things hecoulddo. But I don’t think there’s a lot that hewould. Chad is too good of a guy to make the same mistake twice, and I know he’ll hear me out if I ever get over this cowardice. That’s really what’s important here. We need to clear the air, speak our truths, and decide where to go from there. Otherwise we’ll always wonder, and I refuse to live like that when I’ve seen how quickly a life can be over.
“Okay, Karen,” I say (because it’s a lot easier to be stern with Karen than with Hope). “You have ten seconds before you have to get out of the car or turn around and never look back. Ten. Nine.”
I’m out of the car before I can count down to eight, marching up to the porch and ringing the doorbell before I can chicken out.
Oh no, is it too late to run? I glance behind me, wondering if that bush would be enough to hide me, and I have one foot in the air, ready to book it, when the door opens.
My heart pounds so loudly that I can’t hear a thing, not that he’s saying anything. Chad just stands there in the doorway, staring at me with wide blue eyes, and his whole body frozen in place. And what a body. Whether it’s a costume or just his normal look, he’s got the lumberjack thing on full display right now, with one hand on the door and the other reaching forward to grasp the door frame. Prime position for me to leap onto him and never let go.
“Oh,” he finally says. Not exactly the warm greeting I was hoping for, but I’ll take it.
“Hi,” I say back, which is just as evasive as what he said.
“Where are the kids?”
I shouldn’t love that he asks about them before asking anything about me, but I do. It means they’ve been on his mind. Hopefully I have too. “They’re with my aunt. You left Laketown.”
“I didn’t see a reason to stay.”
“So you just left? Without saying anything?”
“You left first.”
“For two days! I came back.” I huff. Arguing isn’t going to help anything. Maybe we can go inside and…
For the first time, I notice a group of people gathered at the edge of the dining room, all of them watching this scene at the front door with clear interest. I recognize Houston immediately—though I have no idea why he’s wearing a leotard and tutu of all things—and his twin, Brooklyn, is easy to pick out. And not just because she’s in a matching tutu. Okay, why is the guy in between themalsowearing a bright pink tutu? I would think it might be a thing if there weren’t three others in completely different costumes. I’m guessing Micah is the cute one in the circus outfit, unlike the other blonde who looks nothing like the Briggs trio, and Micah’s got a handsome man on her arm and a wide grin on her face.
It seems everyone in his house knows exactly who I am, and I feel my face growing steadily warmer under their stares.
Without a word or even a glance back, Chad takes a step forward and closes the door behind him.
“Does this mean we’re going to talk on the porch or you’re going to tell me to go back home?” I ask.
He doesn’t have much of an expression on his face, outside of the shell-shocked look of someone who has just seen a relationship ghost and isn’t sure if he can believe it’s real. “I guess that depends,” he says slowly.
“Depends on what?”
“On if you’ll let me apologize for being an idiot.”
I risk a smile, even though we’re nowhere close to safety yet. “I think there’s going to be some time for that eventually.”
He frowns. Is it weird that I missed his frown? Granted, I missed everything about him, but seeing this slightly grumpy side feels more like the beginning of our crazy relationship, when I was still trying to figure him out. “But not yet?”
“Do you think we got too comfortable too fast?” That question leaps out of me, wild and desperate. “I’m not saying I regret anything that happened with us—not the good stuff, anyway—but none of it felt real, you know? We didn’t have the awkward dating stage where I was afraid to come across as desperate and you were afraid to take my hand for the first time and neither of us was really sure of how the other person felt. It was just so…”
“Easy,” he finishes for me.
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
Whether that means he agrees with me or not, I feel like my thoughts have been validated by that single word. It’s not even a word. It’s just a sound, a breath, a prayer.
