You Make Me (10 page)

He was right. I knew he was right. So I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say.

“Go home.” He pointed towards the sorority house. “Just go home and leave me the fuck alone.”

A sob was wrenched from me. But I turned, blindly, and started walking, ashamed of my need, embarrassed that I still wanted him so much.

He swore. “Goddamn it.”

I felt him grab at my elbow and I shook him off.

“Wait. Cat. Wait.”

Unable to face him, I started walking faster, almost jogging.

“Come on, don’t!” He grabbed again, harder this time, and yanked me to a halt.

“Let me go!” I smacked at him, feeling the closest to hysterical that I had since my father had died.

But he didn’t. Instead, he pulled me up against his chest, wrapping his arms around me. I stood there, wooden, turning my face so he wouldn’t see how pathetically needy I felt. “You’re an asshole,” I said vehemently to his sweatshirt. “You came back after hiding from me for four years and now you’re acting like this is my fault.”

“Hiding from you?”

“Yes. Hiding. You ran away. And it fucking hurt then and it hurts now.”

He no longer sounded angry. “I’m sorry, baby. I’m sorry.” His lips brushed over my hair and I shuddered. “I can’t go back and be eighteen again. I can’t stand up and fight for you. I can’t leave you a romantic note or sneak into your room and ask you to wait for me. This is where we’re at and it sucks.”

“It does.” My tears had stopped and I relaxed a little in his hold. It felt good to be so close to him. Familiar and comforting.

“Do you want me to fight for you?” he asked, his voice seductive, coaxing. “Is that what you want?”

Longing rose up in me, and my body tingled in ways it had no business doing. I was playing with more than fire. I was playing with an atomic bomb. It was dangerous to do this, to be with him like this, to encourage him in any way.

I knew all of that. Yet I still said, “Yes.”

I was the Cat of the island, unchecked and impulsive again.

He was right. I wanted my cake and to eat it too.

It made me hate myself.

This time when I pulled away, he let me go.

His eyes were dark, stormy. “Then that’s what I’m going to do.”

I shook my head, feeling desperate. If he did that, I wouldn’t be able to resist him. “That was a bitchy thing for me to say. I’m not asking you to jump over hurdles for me. It’s wrong. I’m wrong.”

But he just stared me down. “No. You’re being honest and that’s what I want. That’s what I need to hear. To know. Now you really should go back before someone sees us.”

He was right. “Okay.” I had to walk away without saying anything else. I had no business asking him for anything. Yet I still stood there. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight. I’ll watch and make sure you get in safely.” His thumb brushed over my lip and it felt as intimate as a kiss.

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 fuck.

“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 fucking 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.”

“You know he always has his phone out. He’s socially awkward.”

So this was where we were at. I could accept his words as truth or I could stew over it. He wasn’t going to admit anything and if he did, would I want to hear it? But I wasn’t sure I could just let it go either. I didn’t want to be suspicious of him every time he went out with the guys. “Fine. Have fun tonight. Maybe you’ll see your new friend again.”

“Caitlyn—”

I hung up. I couldn’t help it. I was so disappointed in him, in everything. This was not the way my life had been a month earlier. Everything was changing, souring. Now there was nothing but anxiety and fear and worry. He called me right back but I hit ignore on my phone. There wasn’t really anything left to say, especially not when I might say something I’d regret. I needed to think about what this meant. Weigh my options.

In sweats and a bulky sweatshirt, both of which suited my mood, I went down the hall to Aubrey’s. She gave me an anxious look.

“What did he say?”

“That it was five minutes and she was touching him, he wasn’t touching her. That he told her he has a girlfriend and she left.”

Her eyes widened. “And do you believe him?”

“I think he looks like he was having a good time. And I think that it had to be more than a couple of minutes if Michael took pictures. But what am I supposed to do? I can’t force a confession out of him. And just because he did flirt with someone for five minutes, does that mean I toss over our relationship? I don’t think so.”

“You’re so calm. I would be ripping him a new asshole. But I’m a jealous person.”

I was too. But maybe it was my own guilt, because I was feeling confused and hurt and angry. More betrayed than jealous. Ethan was supposed to adore me. He was supposed to be reliable, stable. Predictable. It was unnerving that he would do something inappropriate. It felt like the ground was shifting under me unevenly.

The perfect world I had built was crumbling.

“I don’t have proof of anything other than him being a drunken idiot.”

My phone was blowing up. Ethan was texting me. “He says he’s coming back today not tomorrow.”

Aubrey snorted. “Well, yeah, he should.”

I got another text. Only this one wasn’t from Ethan. It was from Heath. It was a picture of his wrist, with his infinity tattoo that matched my own.
You go everywhere with me.

So there was the answer to my question. He hadn’t inked over his tattoo. He’d kept it. Because of me.

I closed my eyes, hot tears behind my lids.

I tried to study, but the words in my textbook swam in front of my eyes. Then I tried to sleep, but every time I was about to drift off, I snapped awake. My heart felt like it was beating too fast. I kept running my thumb over my tattoo, like a worry stone. Like it would give me answers.

There was a knock on my door. I ignored it.

“Caitlyn, it’s me.”

Ethan was back. Sighing, I climbed out of bed and pulled the door open. He looked like hell. Hungover. Wearing rumpled clothes and holding his keys in his hand, his hair a disaster of bed head. He had dark circles under his eyes and he was looking at me anxiously, bouncing on the heels of his feet. He leaned in to kiss me, but I pulled away and turned my head.

“Baby, don’t be mad.”

“How would you feel if you saw a picture of me sitting on some guy’s lap?”

“I would be pissed, I admit it.” He came in and closed the door behind him. “But you know what it’s like- you’re out, you’re loaded, everyone is talking to everyone. I told her I have a girlfriend.”

“So I’m back to being your girlfriend? Not your fiancée?” He’d been so quick to toss that label around, pushing for a wedding date. Now I’d been downgraded.

“Of course you’re my fiancée. It’s just an awkward word.”

I raised my eyebrows at him. “Really? Then maybe we shouldn’t be engaged.”

That made him angry. He suddenly exploded on me. “This is that fucking ‘foster’ brother’s fault! Nothing was wrong between us until him.”

“How does this have anything to do with him?” Yet even as I said it, I knew it did.

“Because I know you care about him and I know you talk to him and you won’t set a wedding date and you come up with excuses not to have sex with me. So I was feeling like shit and I drank too much. None of this would be happening if it wasn’t for him.”

“I’m not taking responsibility for you drinking too much. I’m not doing anything wrong! He’s an old friend.” Though he was right about the sex. I had not been feeling it. I’d had a headache, PMS, my period, studying to do, and a possible UTI in the past ten days, which ruled out sex. Only one of which had actually been true.

“Bullshit.” He reached out and snatched my phone out of my hand. “Let me see what you’ve been doing while I was gone.”

And just like that, the windshield shattered and fell in my lap.

Chapter Nine

All the texts were still there. I hadn’t deleted any of them. Maybe because I’d known Ethan wasn’t coming home until Sunday. Maybe because I hadn’t thought he would sneak a look again after he’d felt so bad the last time. Maybe because I didn’t want to erase the things Heath said to me.