You Make Me (Blurred Lines #1)(21)
Author: Erin McCarthy

I craved his mouth on mine but I could never go that far. Not while I was still with Ethan. So I wrenched myself away and it took everything I had to do it.

When I got to the house, I chanced a glance back down the street. He was watching and he gave me a wave. I waved back. By the time I got upstairs my phone was buzzing in my pocket.

A text from Heath. I read it, my mouth hot.

I never back down from a fight.

No. He never had. It was why he’d been moved to more than twenty different foster homes on the mainland before ending up in Vinalhaven. He never backed down when confronted. It had enabled him to survive childhood, but I wasn’t sure it was going to do either one of us any good right now.

Because if he won, I would gain him, but I would lose everything else.

The night day Aubrey knocked on my door. “Um, have you see those pics from the birthday party in Bar Harbor?” she asked immediately after I let her in.

“What? What pictures?” I had slept like shit and my eyes felt like someone had rubbed glass into them. It had taken me over an hour to fall asleep and when I finally had, I’d been plagued by nightmares that I couldn’t remember but that kept waking me up, breathing hard and feeling anxious.

She was making a face that gave me a seriously bad feeling. Swiping at the screen on her phone, I waited for her to tell me what was going on, an awful feeling of foreboding coming over me. Finally she held the phone out for me to see.

“Oh my God,” I blurted. It was Ethan, grinning with a drink in his hand and a blonde on his lap. A very sexy, boobs out blonde.

Aubrey swiped to make another picture appear. It was Ethan and the blonde staring at each other this time, her hand very clearly on his ass. It was the kind of look that said two people were about to drunkenly f**k.

“Holy shit. Oh, God.” I clutched my stomach. “I feel sick.”

“I’m so pissed at him right now I can’t see straight. What a f**king douchebag. My brother is a dick,” she seethed.

“How did you see this?” Not that it mattered. It was there. Everyone could see it. He clearly wasn’t hiding anything.

“It’s posted on Michael’s page. There are a bunch of other pics of all of them snuggling up with a group of girls. Apparently it was quite a night at the bar.”

“What am I supposed to do?” I touched the engagement ring on my finger, twisting it, unable to believe how quickly everything was spiraling out of control. “I mean, was it just they got drunk and were being stupid? Or did he actually have sex with her?”

The thought of that completely grossed me out. I felt cheap and hurt, no matter what had actually happened. It was so not something I would have ever expected from Ethan. But at the same time, I wasn’t without fault. I had been weird and distant and the night before I had stood outside and told Heath that I loved him. I wasn’t sure I had any right to call Ethan out. But I couldn’t not call him out. I had to know how far it had gone.

Aubrey was messing with her phone. “Wait a minute. They just took all the pictures down. They’re suddenly gone.”

“I guess they woke up and realized what they posted.”

“You have to call him. This is bullshit.”

I didn’t want to. I just wanted to crawl back into bed and close my eyes and be sixteen again, out on the boat, the sun warm on my face. “I’m not sure I want to know.” Right now I could pretend it was nothing. But that was a lie. It already wasn’t nothing. It was one more crack in our relationship, there in a drunken picture.

“I’m going to go to my room. You call him. Then come and get me.” She gave me a hug. “Hey, soul sister. I love you.”

That made me tear up. “I love you, too.”

As soon as she left I stared at my phone, and hit Ethan’s number before I changed my mind. Taking a few deep breaths I wanted for him to answer, thinking he probably wouldn’t. Most likely he was hungover and feeling guilty and he would avoid me. But I should have realized that wasn’t Ethan. He would want to see if I knew.

“Hey, baby,” he said, his voice scratchy. “How are you?”

“I’m guessing I’m better than you,” I said, trying to sound neutral. “It looks like you guys might have drank a lot last night.”

“Yeah. More than I should have.”

“So who was the blonde in your lap?” There was no point in dragging this out.

There was a pause, then there was shuffling where it sounded like he was sitting up, his breathing heavy in my ear. “Caitlyn, nothing happened. She was just some random chick at the bar and I was too drunk to be able to fend her off.”

Nice try. “You don’t look like you’re being molested. You’re grinning. Her hands are all over you and it doesn’t look like you’re trying to stop her.”

“Her hands. Not my hands. I wasn’t touching her.”

That sparked the anger that so far I’d been holding at bay. “Don’t go all lawyerly on me,” I snapped. “You’re arguing semantics. What, it’s not a problem as long as you don’t touch her? So she could you know, jack you off or blow you, but as long as your hands are behind your back it’s not cheating?”

“There was no blow job! It was five minutes and then she moved on when I told her I have a girlfriend.”

“And I’m just supposed to believe that?”

“Yes.”

I just waited, but he didn’t expand on that, while I struggled to figure out how to feel. “I want to believe you,” I told him honestly. “But I feel like I’d be an idiot to do that.”

“Ask the guys,” he insisted. “I never went anywhere with her or anyone else. There’s four of us in this hotel room. Here, talk to Dan. Ask him.”

“No! I don’t want to talk to Dan.” His friend would just lie for him even if he had done something and I didn’t want to discuss our personal business with anyone else. Yet apparently Dan was sitting right there listening anyway. “Do you know how many people probably saw those pictures? And every single one of them is going to think the exact same thing I did- that you cheated on me. It’s humiliating.”

“I’m sorry. It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time. She was just drunk and falling all over me.”

It looked like more than that. I thought he was most likely downplaying how long he and this girl had been talking. “If it was five minutes then Michael was pretty damn quick with his phone.”