I finished eating the quiche as Jordan handed Chase his own to eat. The silence continued and the level of awkwardness that filled the room made it like a thick cell that we all wanted to escape. Chase could hardly keep a straight face as he finished his food and tried to get out of the kitchen without getting into any more trouble with the ladies.
“Hey, how’s the gym going out back?” Chase offered up as a reason for us to leave.
“Let me show you. It’s looking real nice. You ladies enjoy catching up; we’re going to head out back.”
As quickly as possible, Chase and I made our way out of the house and toward my workout shed without looking back. Chase was almost buckled over with laughter by the time we made it to the building, and I couldn’t hold back my own laughter at the sight of him. He hadn’t seen me get into trouble with Jordan before and it was causing some pretty hilarious laughter in both of us.
“What did you do?” Chase asked accusingly. “You slept with her, didn’t you?”
He didn’t look particularly disappointed at the idea that I would have slept with Ana. She was a beautiful woman and I would have been lucky to have her in my bed. But I absolutely wouldn’t take advantage of her like that. She had so much healing still to do and I would just cause more harm than good if I got involved with her.
“No!”
“Why did you just look away when you said that?” Chase exclaimed. “I know all those facial recognition things too. I’ve read the books. You’re lying to me. Why did you look away?”
“I didn’t. Hey, I’m the one with facial recognition experience. You don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
But clearly he did. My years of harping about what liars look like when they lie had obviously soaked in and Chase knew that something was up. Certainly, I wasn’t lying to him, but the fact that I looked away when he asked the question showed that there was much more to the story than I was letting on. As much as I didn’t want to tell Chase what had happened, I knew it would be easier to just cave in and tell him now.
“Okay, well there was a kiss,” I added.
“You sly dog. She’s sexy as hell. I say go for it. Give her something to be distracted by,” Chase joked with me and punched my arm.
“No, she kissed me!”
“What? No way.”
“Yeah, first she yelled and screamed at me after having a dissociative event and cutting her hand. Then she came out here and kissed me.”
Of course there was much more to the story, but I didn’t feel like Chase needed to hear all of that. I just wanted to fill him in on the basics of what happened. But it really didn’t give any clues to why Ana wasn’t looking at me at all while she was in the kitchen.
“Shit, what happened before she kissed you? That seems odd.”
“I was just trying to be nice to her and told her what happened when she spaced out. Then she touched me.”
Chase again started to laugh like he was a teenage boy. We hadn’t had a good talk about my love life in a few months; it felt good to have my brother there to chat with. I only wished that our brother, Jeremiah, was around too; he always loved a good make-out story. Jeremiah went on to become an actor, and I swore that it was because he would get to make out with different women and get paid for it. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had become a porn star, but was much happier with the plan of being an actor.
“She touched you in a bad spot?” he teased.
“Stop. It’s serious, Chase. She’s not in any position to be fucking someone. I put a stop to it, and now she won’t even look at me.”
“She’s just embarrassed. Girls hate being told no.”
“How would you know, Chase? You’ve never told a girl no before.” I laughed hysterically.
“So, you want her to come stay with us still?” Chase questioned me with a smirk.
I could see it in his eyes that he thought I had ulterior motives. I really couldn’t blame him. He knew me well. I certainly hadn’t established myself as the relationship type of guy or the sweet, sensitive guy who would give up a night of sex with any woman. But things were different with Ana.
Ana had been through so much already; I couldn’t be the person who took advantage of her. She didn’t even know how to care for herself yet after all she had gone through. I also wouldn’t be the person who sent her away at the first sign of trouble. I could control myself around her, even if she wasn’t able to.
My philandering was always with women who knew exactly what we were getting ourselves into. Women from the bars who practically threw themselves at me so I would take them home. Those women were nothing like Ana. I didn’t feel bad about screwing them on a one-night stand because I knew nothing about them. But I knew about Ana and I wasn’t about to do something I would regret with her.
When I was around Ana, I was a different man than I was around any other person on the earth. Everything about her made me want to be a better person and I liked that about her. I wanted to be a better man and less of an asshole to her; it wasn’t something she asked for, though, it was just how I wanted her to see me.
From the moment I carried her out of Stephano’s home, I felt something for her. It was a connection, a need to protect her. I wasn’t about to go against that feeling. Whatever was coming in the future for Ana and I wouldn’t come until she was better and I felt like she knew what she was doing. Because at the moment, it felt like Ana was whirling through life on autopilot with no cont
rol over her actions.