You Make Me (Blurred Lines #1)(3)
Author: Erin McCarthy

We made it through two songs before suddenly the music cut out. “What’s going on?” the girl next to me, Olivia, asked.

“I have no idea.”

Aubrey had come into the room and she headed straight over to me. “Caitlyn! You have to come to the foyer. Ethan sent me to get you.”

“What? Why? What’s going on? Is Ethan okay?” He’d been gone for all of eight minutes. I had no clue why he wanted to see me.

She was biting her lip and her eyes were huge. “Everything is fine. Shut up and come with me.” Aubrey’s eyes were even lighter than Ethan’s and there was an odd gleam in them.

Nerves made me tense up as she dragged me by the hand. People were glancing over at me and there was a sense of anticipation in the room. I didn’t like being the center of attention. I never had. As a kid, I’d mostly been outdoors running around on my own or with my brother, and later, with Heath. School and public events were things I had equated with shame and humiliation, being mocked and teased. I had learned to be defiant, to raise my chin up, to fight back with barbs and an air of nonchalance to prove I didn’t give a shit. But I did. I always had, and my prickly pride was back in place as I felt all those eyes on me.

But Ethan was standing at the foot of the grand staircase, smiling, and I told myself to take a deep breath, put away the attitude. These people didn’t know that other Cat. I belonged here. I fit in. The Gamma house was turn of the century and while the staircase was no Jack and Rose on the Titanic deal, it was impressive with its wooden spindles. Classic New England.

“Here she is,” Aubrey said in a weird, singsong voice.

“Ethan?” My voice sounded unsure and I wished I’d hit that flask a little harder. I was trying to remember if there was some tradition involving the fraternity president at Homecoming, but I couldn’t think of anything.

“Come up here,” Ethan urged me, taking my hand and leading up the steps to the first landing.

I looked down and saw fifty people staring up at us expectantly. “What is going on?” My heart was racing and my palms were clammy. When I turned back, I wobbled a little in my heels and squeezed his hands hard, wanting to be clued in. Surprises suck. Surprises are selfish, because they’re only fun for the person giving them, not the person receiving them.

But then he went down on one knee and for a second I thought I might actually pass out. What the what? He wasn’t. He couldn’t be.

He was.

The box came out of his jacket. His blue eyes were earnest. He spoke words but I didn’t hear them. The room was hot yet my skin felt cold. I had goose bumps and a nervous twitch in my hands and I was aware of so many bodies below us, shuffling and whispering, a low hum, like insects on a summer night. Yet all I could really see was Ethan’s face, and I focused hard on him, on those eyes, on his lips moving, afraid I was dreaming. That I would wake up and it would all be gone.

“Caitlyn Michaud, will you marry me?”

I nodded, because I couldn’t speak, because this couldn’t be happening. My throat felt closed, and there were tears in my eyes. Yet Ethan wanted to marry me, and that was a huge ass halo cut diamond ring staring up at me from the velvet of the ring box. But then I managed to say, “Yes. Yes, I will marry you.”

Because only an idiot would say no.

I loved him and this was everything I could have ever asked for and more.

He gave a whoop and stood up, taking the platinum band from the box and sliding it onto my finger. It fit. Perfectly. For the crowd downstairs, he fist pumped and they all cheered and shouted. I laughed, feeling the blush race across my cheeks. It was real. Ethan had just proposed and I had the hefty weight of a rock on my finger to prove it. Aubrey was jumping up and down and grinning.

Ethan grabbed me in a bear hug and kissed me, hard. “God, you make me so happy.”

I laughed and let him squeeze me tight. It was perfect. Ethan was perfect. And we would have a perfect life.

But then over his shoulder I spotted a guy standing at the top of the stairs, in the shadows.

I stopped laughing.

My stomach clenched and my breath caught.

Ethan jostled me and I fought to focus on what I was seeing.

It couldn’t be…

But it was. The dark head that had seemed familiar earlier was familiar.

Because it was my first love. My soulmate.

Heath.

Watching me.

Chapter Two

I blinked, sure I was wrong. But I wasn’t. It was him, with shorter hair and broader shoulders.

“Heath!” I yelled out, overcome with shock and joy that he was there. Alive. Not dead in a ditch or in prison. “Oh, my God!”

Stepping away from Ethan, I squeezed his forearms to indicate it was okay. Then without thought for the fact that everyone was still staring at me or that I had just gotten engaged sixty seconds earlier, I ran in my high heels the ten feet to Heath hovering in the shadows and threw myself at him.

“Hey, Cat,” he murmured, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me tight against his chest. His lips buried into my hair.

I sank against him, breathing in deeply. He smelled the same, earthy and masculine. He felt different, bigger, more muscular, but his hands were just as I remembered, strong and tender, and his voice was low, casual. A thousand memories assaulted me all at once, running along the coast, going out on the water in a stolen boat, laughing, talking. Kissing.

“Oh, God,” I whispered, pulling back to study his face, to cup his cheeks and outline his bottom lip with my thumb. I couldn’t believe it was real. He was real. “You’re alive. You’re here.”

The corner of his mouth turned up. “I am.”

“Caitlyn, who is this?” Ethan had come up behind me and his hand landed on the small of my back.

I suddenly realized how close I was to Heath and I jerked back, cheeks flushing with heat. My hands shook and my voice sounded high-pitched and breathless. “Ethan! This is Heath, my…

There was no way I could explain who Heath really was to me. How much he had meant. How I thought I wouldn’t survive when he left. What it meant to have him punch a hole in my perfect world now and walk back into it.

“My brother,” I finished.

As Ethan’s eye’s bulged, Heath gave a soft snort of derision beside me.

“You have a brother?” Ethan asked, sounding completely astonished, as he should. “I didn’t know you have a brother.”

I did. A biological one that I no longer spoke to and who I didn’t acknowledge, but Ethan didn’t know that, and I never wanted him to.