I sigh because it actually does make sense and if Trey is actually willing to commit to her this could actually be great for the both of them. They were, at one point, very good for each other. “I just don’t want you to get hurt again.”

“And I love that and you. You’re my best friend Whitney, you always have been but I’m your older cousin. You don’t have to look out for me all the time.” She puts her hands on my shoulders and gives them both a squeeze before dropping her hands. “Now circling back to my ‘judgment,’” she says, using air quotes. “What did I just walk in on? What are you doing here alone with him? Whitney, you know this is a bad idea.”

“Well, he showed up at my house so thank you for warning me that he’d left my parents’ house. I could have assumed that he’d come after me but I wasn’t anticipating him surprising me at the house I share with my fiancé!”

She puts a hand over her mouth in shock. “Oh my God, really!?”

“Yes, and Parker saw him on the door camera and—”

She puts a hand on her forehead. “Wait, you let him in?”

“No! I saw him pull up because I was waiting for you to show up and I met him outside before he could even get to the door.”

“So how did Parker see? I understand if he rang the doorbell because I get those alerts too from the Blink app but… how would he have seen…?”

“I guess he got an alert when I opened the door?”

Chloe narrows her eyes at me. “Why? You can turn that off, you know.”

I feel like I can hear where her thoughts are going and I really don’t want to go down this road with her about that too. “Chlo…”

“It just reads a little… controlling.”

“Parker is not controlling, he just worries!”

“Worries that you realize you’re out of his league and you leave him?” She snorts. Like the rest of my family, Chloe wasn’t necessarily Parker’s biggest fan. But hers more came from just not really meshing with his personality. She was exuberant and loud and bubbly and Parker could really only handle her in small doses. Well that and the fact that he’d cheated on me.

“Chloe,” I snap, already getting fed up with this conversation. “You can’t chastise me about Jacob and Parker in the same conversation. Pick a lane.”

She blanches. “Sorry.”

“So, he shows up and he wants to come in and I say no and then he’s like can we talk and then Parker calls and is asking all these questions about him and I think he accepted my answer when I said who he was but then I just felt like I was doing something wrong…” I know I’m talking a mile a minute and I feel myself getting more worked up by the second. “So, we left and came here and… he told me he loved me and not to marry Parker and then asked if I’d come back to his place so we could talk in private and then thank God you showed up because I was honestly going to say yes.” I take a deep breath because I don’t think I did the whole time I was speaking. “I am a shitty person.”