Page 79 of When You're Gone
She didn’t know. But she had to try.
Chapter thirty-one
Tori
Toriblewoutashaky breath as she parked the car at the back of the lot. She flipped down the visor to check her reflection in the mirror. She looked decent for having been on the road for more than two hours; her hair still looked nice and her makeup was intact. Hopefully, her put-together appearance was enough to mask the crippling anxiety raging inside her.
She pulled out her phone to check the time: two o’clock on the dot.
She entered the little café and spotted her immediately. That bouncy platinum hair and hot pink V-neck were hard to miss. Tori’s eyes would have been drawn to Chandler even if she hadn’t been looking for her when she walked through the door.
She moved timidly toward the table, reminding herself to breathe with each step forward.
“Thanks so much for meeting me,” she opened as she slid into the booth across from the woman her husband had dated for more than three years at her insistence.
The tension in Tori’s chest coiled even tighter as she looked up and met the other woman’s gaze. She felt her cheeks flush under Chandler’s appraisal. A charged silence sparked between them before she finally replied.
“I have to say, you were the last person I ever imagined myself having coffee with on a Saturday afternoon… yet here we are. So to what do I owe this… pleasure?”
Tori didn’t miss the sarcasm in Chandler’s jab. But she didn’t get defensive, either. She knew better than to expect to walk away from this meeting emotionally unscathed. For as awkward and horrible as this whole exchange was bound to be, she believed it would be worth it. She had to try.
“I wanted to meet today because I owe you an apology, Chandler. An apology, and an explanation.” She launched into the speech she’d been rehearsing for days, starting at the very beginning and leaving nothing out.
She told Chandler about her mom. About her genetic mutations. About the kind, compassionate, sometimes-too-serious boy next door she fell in love with before she even knew what love was. She told her about breaking up with Rhett before college. Then about that fateful night when they both gave in to their soul-deep connection. She admitted that was when she came up with the idea for their arrangement; when she set up an online dating profile for Rhett and insisted he needed to date other people if he wanted to keep hooking up with her.
For her part, Chandler sat quietly and listened. When Tori tearfully apologized for what felt like the tenth time, she finally spoke up.
“Holy shit,” Chandler murmured.
She almost sounded… fascinated?
“I knew a lot of that. Almost all of it, really. But to hear it laid out in order…” She shook her head and stared at Tori. “That man is committed beyond reason. Which is ironic, given everything you just told me about the sorry state of my relationship with him.”
“Chandler, what we did—what I made him do—it was wrong. It was wrong in so many ways. When I came up with the idea, it was just that. An idea. I was so focused on protecting him that I didn’t think about who else might get hurt in the process. I know I’ve already said it, but I’m so sor—”
“Nope,” she interrupted and popped thePfor emphasis. “You’re done apologizing. I’ve heard enough. I chose to look away and be naïve in my relationship with Everhett because it served my interests, too. I Googled him before our first date. I knew what he was worth and what his future entailed. I went along for the ride hoping that one day he’d look up and realize how easily I slotted into his life.”
The threat of tears prickled behind her eyes as Tori processed that revelation. She knew Chandler wasn’t stupid—but to hear her admit she’d been biding her time, waiting for Rhett to need someone up to the challenge of being the CEO’s wife? Resentment swirled with shame inside her heart. Chandler would have been perfect in the supporting role Tori was grappling with now. She would have been polished and poised at that press conference in Virginia. She would have been happy to sit around waiting for him to come home each night.
Chandler sighed. “I always knew he wasn’t mine. I didn’t always want to admit it to myself, but deep down, I always knew. I guess we were both settling, in a way.”
There it was.
Even if Chandler seemed like the more sensible partner for the life Rhett was destined to lead, there was one ingredient missing from the equation. That soul-deep, fated connection Tori and Rhett shared refused to be deterred after all these years. It didn’t matter that Tori didn’t fit neatly into his life. It didn’t matter that she still didn’t know how her dreams could harmonize with his career aspirations.
That was the crazy thing about love. When it was so deeply woven into the fabric of a relationship, it could clobber anything it went up against. Time, distance, grief, loss, addiction, depression… none of it could overshadow what they shared. Their love was the ultimate outlier.
Tori picked at the corner of her drink napkin, lost in thought, before Chandler spoke again.
“Ya know, I think I’ve only ever seen him genuinely happy one time.”
That got her attention. She peered up to meet the other woman’s gaze.
“It was the morning of graduation,” she explained. “That’s the day I found out I was pregnant. I wanted to tell him in person… and the second I spotted him across the parking lot, I knew. I could tell something was different. And now I know it’s because that was the only time I’d ever seen him not pining for you. Even at the hospital… during and after the miscarriage when he stayed with me in Columbus for a few days… I knew he was distracted and fixated on the one thing he cared about most.”
Tori nodded in understanding. As the person who had been on the receiving end of Rhett’s laser-focused love for so long, she knew the intensity of his devotion.
“I’m so sorry you lost the baby,” she offered sincerely.
