You Make Me (Blurred Lines #1)(50)
Author: Erin McCarthy

The door closing behind me felt conspicuously loud, and the guys at the bar did turn and look at me in interest. Two just gave me a brief glance before going back to their beer and conversation. The third checked me out, so I gave him a glare. It wasn’t hard to pull one off. I was in a foul mood.

Heath always said he wanted the wild Cat. He was about to get her. The one who spoke her mind and let all her emotion boil over.

The guy’s eyebrows shot up before he went back to his drink.

I didn’t see Heath at the bar so I crossed the dim room and took the stool furthest away from the other customers. I had been to the Tavern only a few times, and never with Ethan. He didn’t like that type of dive bar, where the sole purpose of being there was to get drunk, as fast and as cheaply as possible. I had been there with Aubrey and a few other sorority sisters and it hadn’t really been my scene either. It felt even less like my scene with the room so empty.

My seat was cold and a little sticky and I wasn’t sure where to put my wallet and keys. I almost never carried a purse because at school I had a backpack and when I wasn’t at class I never needed the crap that most girls carried around. A purse felt like a burden to me, but now I wished I had one to hang on the back of the chair instead of dropping my stuff on the bartop.

I had asked Heath when he had learned to tend bar and he had said it was a recently acquired skill. When he appeared from the backroom, a stack of clean barware in his hand, it struck me that it seemed out of context. Not at all Heath. Then again, I still had a hard time picturing him in the military, even though I’d seen the pictures that Tiffany had sent me. To me, he belonged on a boat.

He paused, clearly startled when he saw me. “Hey, baby.” He smiled and leaned over the bar, glasses still in hand, and kissed me. “What are you doing here?”

I wasn’t sure what to say but it didn’t matter because he knew he well enough to know something was wrong. He pulled back and studied me.

“What’s going on? You didn’t even kiss me.” He set the glasses down and put his elbows on the bar, leaning forward. “What did I do? It must be pretty bad if you came here to tear into me about it.”

The fact that he sounded so matter of fact and unconcerned about the idea that I could be upset with him, pissed me off. “Did you exchange numbers with Aubrey?”

There was no reaction from him at all. He didn’t look guilty or surprised or worried. “Yes. Awhile ago.”

“Did you know she was my best friend and Ethan’s sister?”

“At that specific moment?” He shrugged. “I’m not sure. I may have had some idea that she knew you, but I don’t remember the exact moment I realized her connection to you and Frat Boy. Why?”

“Because she said you flirted with her, that you sent texts to each other.”

“I guess that was flirting, yes.”

His continued lack of emotion only spiked my anger. “Did you f**k her?”

But I had pushed him far enough finally to garner a reaction. His eyes narrowed. “Are we really doing this here, right now?” he asked.

A chill went up my spine. He was warning me to back off, and somewhere in a rational place in my head, I knew he was right. But I had to know. I needed to know. To what purpose I couldn’t say. I just felt like I’d shatter into a million pieces if he didn’t give me full disclosure.

“Yes. We’re really doing this. It’s a yes or no question.”

“No. I didn’t f**k her. Nor did I want to f**k her. I wanted to f**k you.”

I swallowed hard, not sure if that was reassuring or not. “Then why did you flirt with her?”

“Because I was bored and she was flirting with me and I was angry with you for being with Ethan.”

It should have been enough. But I was so unsatisfied with his answer, for a second I wondered if I was in some twisted way sorry that he hadn’t, so that I could hate them both and never have to feel this much emotion ever again. It was scary, to be dangling on the edge like I was, so vulnerable. He had the power to destroy me again and that made me both angry and terrified. I knew in some small corner of my brain I was sabotaging our relationship to protect myself, but it didn’t stop me. I barreled along at full speed.

“Let me see your phone.”

He made a sound of disgust. But he pulled his phone out of his pocket and tossed it on the counter. “The password is Comfortably Numb.”

His favorite Pink Floyd song. I wondered if that meant anything.

“Have at it. I have work to do.” Heath walked away, asking the guys at the bar, “You good? Or can I get you something?”

I picked up his phone. He didn’t have a case for it and it was scratched up. Warm from being in his pocket. I knew that the reasonable thing to do would be to just stand up, follow him down the bar, and hand it back to him. That if he trusted me to have his password, he wasn’t hiding anything.

But it was too tempting. I couldn’t stop myself. The compulsion to see for myself was a feverish, iron grip on my soul. So I typed in his password and I went to his texts, scrolling down. My name was first, not surprisingly. Then there were some angry texts from Darla, which he had not responded to. Texts from guys whose names I recognized as friends from the service. Then there it was- Aubrey.

There weren’t a lot and they dated from the week after Homecoming.

They weren’t full of any substance. Just generic flirting.

But then I saw an exchange Aubrey had started that made me feel sick.

Send me a pic of you.

I don’t take selfies.

No, you know what I mean.

Not really. Spell it out for me. I’m slow.

Show me your junk.

If you want to see my dick just come over.

Where do you live? Haha.

He’d typed his address. No other response than that.

There was nothing more from her either.

It made me think that she’d gone over, they’d had sex, both gotten what they wanted, and had casually lost interest in each other.

I was disgusted. Horrified. Furious with both of them.

I had spent weeks agonizing over my relationship with Ethan and how to maintain a friendship with Heath because I still loved him, and he had been casually slipping his dick to my best friend?

Feeling like I was going to throw up, I grabbed my keys and wallet and half stood, half fell, off the stool. I made enough noise that Heath looked in my direction and came back toward me. “Satisfied?” he asked.

I did it without thinking. Without meaning to, honestly. I wasn’t even aware it was happening until it was too late to do anything about it.