Chapter 438 - Who He Chooses I

Chapter 438: Chapter 438 - Who He Chooses I

Roxie reached the coffee shop early enough that she had already stopped pretending to drink her coffee by the time Dylan arrived.

She had picked a table near the back, away from the counter and the students coming in and out with laptops and backpacks. Her cup had gone lukewarm between her hands, but she kept holding it because having something beneath her fingers helped.

She felt numb. Maybe her body had finally decided it had produced enough tears for the week because she couldn’t even cry anymore. All she could do was stare through the window in a daze, watching people pass outside smiling and talking like it was a normal day.

She had been furious, sad and betrayed because Zac hadn’t told her about the kiss, yet here she was meeting Dylan without telling Zac either.

Did he even deserve to know?

The thought sat badly with her, but she didn’t have enough energy to argue with herself about it.

The door opened and Dylan walked in.

Roxie knew immediately that he hadn’t slept much. His hair looked barely touched, there were dark shadows beneath his eyes and his face had lost that easy expression he normally carried around her. He spotted her almost immediately and slowed before walking over.

Something inside Roxie tightened.

She remembered seeing him through the doorway, red faced and crying while Zac crouched in front of him. For one second the anger became harder to hold because Roxie had also seen what happened before that. She had heard Dylan’s father. She had watched the man humiliate his own son in front of relatives and neighbors.

Then she remembered what came after.

Dylan sat across from her and rubbed his hands over his jeans before looking at her. "Thanks for coming. I wasn’t sure you would."

Roxie only nodded.

The silence stretched long enough that Dylan glanced toward the counter and then back at her, like he was considering getting coffee just so he could delay whatever he had asked her here to say. Roxie gave him nothing. She had spent too much time imagining this conversation already. If Dylan wanted to talk, he could start it.

Eventually he exhaled and leaned forward slightly. "I saw you that night."

Her fingers tightened around the cup.

There was no reason to ask which night, but hearing him say it made everything feel real again. "At your house?"

Dylan nodded. He looked embarrassed now, almost sick. "Through the door. I saw you right before you left."

Roxie stared at him.

For two days her brain had kept trying to give her ways out of what she saw. Maybe it had been the angle. Maybe their faces only looked like they met. Maybe the panic had made the memory worse every time she replayed it.

Now Dylan was sitting across from her telling her he had seen her too.

She set the coffee down because her hands had started feeling cold again. "Did you kiss him?"

Dylan looked at her for several seconds before answering. There was no defensiveness in his face. If anything, he looked ashamed.

"I kissed him."

Roxie stopped breathing for a second. Her nose stung and she blinked hard against the tears suddenly gathering in her eyes.

She hadn’t imagined it.

After all those hours of trying to convince herself that maybe her brain had twisted what happened, Dylan had just confirmed it.

Before she could say anything, he continued. "He froze because he didn’t expect it. Then he pushed me away and got pissed. We fought after that."

Relief hit Roxie so hard she had to look away.

Her chest loosened so suddenly that she almost felt weak. She thought about the Uber, throwing up at the side of the road, lying beside Zac unable to look at him and letting him hold her while she cried because she had been too terrified to ask him what happened.

He hadn’t kissed Dylan back.

Zac hadn’t wanted it.

Roxie stared through the window for a few seconds until she trusted herself enough to look at Dylan again. "Then why did he stay?"

Dylan’s expression shifted slightly, and Roxie hated how quickly the relief became complicated again.

"He was angry at me, Roxie. That didn’t suddenly make everything with my dad disappear." Dylan dragged a hand over his face, looking exhausted. "I was fucked up. My family was still there, everybody was fighting and I could barely get myself together. Zac told me he could be pissed at me and still make sure I wasn’t alone. He stayed until my cousin came."

Of course he did.

It sounded exactly like Zac. He could be furious with someone and still worry about them, and Dylan had been one of his closest friends for years. After what his father had done, Zac wasn’t going to walk out and leave him alone because of one stupid kiss.

Roxie understood that.

She was getting tired of understanding everything.

"What I don’t understand is why he didn’t tell me."

Dylan’s eyes shifted away from hers.

That bothered her immediately.

"You thought he would, didn’t you?"

Dylan hesitated before nodding. "Yeah. I thought he would."

A quiet ache settled into Roxie’s chest.

Maybe Zac planned to tell her. Maybe he thought Dylan had already been through enough and didn’t want Roxie angry with him too. Maybe the kiss had meant so little to Zac that he convinced himself telling her would only create another problem.

Roxie was tired of maybe.

Dylan watched her for a moment before saying, "I’m sorry. I mean it. What I did was fucked up. I was out of my head and I grabbed onto the person who was there, but that doesn’t make it okay. Zac made sure I understood that too."

Roxie believed him, which somehow made everything harder.

If Dylan had walked into the coffee shop acting smug from the beginning, she could have hated him and been done with it. Instead he looked ashamed, and Roxie remembered exactly what kind of night he had been having.

She cared about him.

He was Zac’s best friend.

Best friend.

That word felt bitter now.

"I felt like such an asshole that night," Roxie said finally. "I followed Zac because we had this huge fight over some stupid message, and when I got there I saw your dad outside. I watched everything he did. I watched Zac get punched because he was trying to keep him away from you, and the whole time I was thinking about how stupid I’d been for being jealous of you."

Dylan lowered his eyes.

Roxie kept going before she lost the nerve. "Then I went to that door and saw you kiss him. I spent hours thinking maybe I had made the whole thing up in my head because I didn’t trust myself anymore."

Dylan’s face tightened with guilt.

Roxie looked down at the table and rubbed her thumb along the edge of her cup. Now that she knew Zac had rejected the kiss, the anger she had been carrying finally had somewhere more specific to go.

"I need you to stay away from him for a while."

The silence between them changed.

Dylan slowly looked up, surprise pushing aside some of the guilt in his face. "What do you mean?"

"I mean I need space from this. From you being around him all the time, calling him whenever something happens, coming over, training alone with him. Just for a while."

Dylan stared at her long enough that Roxie could almost see him deciding whether she was serious. When he realized she was, his shoulders stiffened.

"You know what my life looks like right now. Zac is basically the only person I have."

The guilt hit exactly where Roxie knew it would. For a second she wanted to take the request back because she could still hear his father outside that house and remember Dylan crying behind the door.

Then she remembered his mouth against Zac’s.

"I know what your family did to you, Dylan. I’m sorry. I really am. But you kissed my boyfriend."

Dylan leaned forward slightly, frustration beginning to show now. "I already told you it was wrong, and I told you Zac pushed me away. What else am I supposed to give you?"

Roxie looked at him and realized she already knew the answer.

Reassurance.

That was what she had wanted from this entire conversation. She wanted Dylan to tell her the kiss had been some horrible mistake that would never happen again. She wanted him to tell her whatever feelings he once had for Zac were gone.

But even if he said those things now, Roxie wasn’t sure she would believe him.

Distance was the only reassurance she could imagine trusting.

She looked at him for a long moment before asking, "Do you still love him?"

Dylan’s expression changed.

He didn’t answer.

The silence hurt more than Roxie expected. She leaned back in her chair, staring at him while something tired and bitter settled deeper inside her.