“No. But Darla is a student and she talked me into this farce.”
“She’s very persuasive, I take it?” I heard myself, knew I sounded snarky and jealous and petty, but I was hurt.
He didn’t rise to the bait. “I do what I want, Cat, you know that.”
God, did I ever. “So what is it you want to do? Why were you looking for me?” This wasn’t at all going the way I had expected a reunion with Heath to go. I had fantasized a million times about this moment, about us hugging, kissing, about how he would explain where he had been and how he had never stopped loving me.
This sucked in comparison. This was a whole lot of freaking suck and I was fighting to hold it together.
He didn’t answer my question. He was studying me, his gaze intent. I thought for a second he was remembering, that he was allowing himself to feel something special for me. My heart melted just a smidge. My shoulders relaxed.
But he said, “I don’t like your hair all done up like that. It’s too sophisticated.”
So much for the melting heart. I felt slapped. “Thanks. Thanks a whole hell of a lot, Heath. Maybe I wasn’t sophisticated when you knew me, but I do all right now, thanks.”
I started to brush past him, tears stinging my eyes, but he blocked me with his bulk, his hand grabbing my wrist. “Cat. Wait.”
“Just let me go.” I yanked my arm but he held fast. When I realized I was staring at the floor, shielding my tears and humiliation from him, I resented it. So I forced my head up defiantly.
His eyes shuttered. “That’s not what I meant. I’m sorry. I’m just used to seeing you differently. I like your hair unruly. Free. Like you.”
Aware that any minute now someone would want to come in or out of the garage, I bit my lip. “I’m not unruly anymore.”
The hallway we were standing in was narrow and dark. Intimate. He lifted his hand and his fingers hovered next to my face, but he didn’t actually touch me. “No?” he asked. “Then that’s a shame. I loved that about you.”
Loved. As in past tense, and not what I wanted to hear anyway. I wanted to know that everything he had ever said was the truth, but he wasn’t giving me that. Emotions coursed through me, along with the whiskey. I closed my eyes briefly, the ache in my chest profound.
“Were you going to tell me you were here?” I asked when I opened them again, my voice husky.
“It crossed my mind.” His voice was low too and his hip was brushing against mine. “But after what you did, I wasn’t sure you would want to see me.”
That snapped me out of the seductive haze simmering around us. “What? Did what? What did I do?” I asked, confused and bewildered.
But suddenly the door behind me to the garage yanked open and loud voices pummeled me. “Whoa, sorry, what up, Caitlyn?”
I turned and saw Colton and another guy I recognized from the fraternity, another pre-law major. “Hey,” I said distractedly.
When I looked back to Heath, wanting answers, he was already backing up. “I’ll catch you later,” he said.
“No.” I meant I didn’t want him to leave. I wanted to discuss what he had said and what I had allegedly done, because I hadn’t done a damn thing that would have made him angry with me. I needed to know the answers as to why he’d left me alone to fend for myself. He shrugged, like it didn’t matter to him whether he’d see me later or not.
“How’s your mom?” he asked.
Heath had been one of the few foster kids who had connected in any way with my mother. She had liked him, and he had treated her with kindness, helping her find whatever she had randomly lost that day and fixing her breakfast along with his own. It meant a lot that he asked. “She’s okay,” I said, throat tight. “She’s in a… nice place in Rockland.” A home. She was in a home for the mentally impaired, but I didn’t want the two guys jostling past me to hear that.
He nodded. “I’m glad to hear that.”
Ethan appeared behind Heath. “Hey, I was wondering where you went.” He looked between Heath and me, tone casual but clearly suspicious. “Why are you crowded in the doorway? Come in and sit down and hang out.”
“It’s okay, I’m leaving.” Heath gave me a look I didn’t understand. “Bye, Cat.”
Was that a real goodbye? A forever goodbye?
But I had no answers. I couldn’t accept that.
Except I couldn’t follow him, couldn’t demand he explain.
It was Homecoming and there were eyes everywhere and Ethan’s hand was slipping into mine.
“So is he a student here now?” Ethan asked, stroking my hand and the engagement ring with his thumb.
“He said no.” I stared at Ethan, wanting him to pull me back to the present. Take me out of the past, with all its pain and heartbreak and back into the now where everything was stable, predictable, well-planned.
“Did you have sex with him?” Ethan asked, catching me off guard.
He had never asked me details about my past boyfriends. He’d known I was almost a virgin, had known I needed him to go slow. But he had never asked who the one guy was and I had appreciated that.
That he just asked now, so boldly, in the hallway, unnerved me. “What?” I knew I should tell the truth. But I was afraid. Afraid that Ethan would see what Heath had meant to me. So before I could think about the consequences, I lied. “No. Of course not.”
He knew I was lying. I could see it in his eyes. But he didn’t call me out on it.
Instead, that night when we got back to his apartment a few streets from the fraternity house, Ethan f**ked me. He’d never done that. Not the way he did that night. He had always been tender, thoughtful, gentle with me, pausing to ask if I was okay, spending the majority of his time on pleasing me. Coaxing me open and wet with kisses, hand strokes, his tongue between my thighs, before he entered me. He’d never been rough.
But as soon as we got in the apartment, he pushed me against the wall and kissed me hard, hand yanking up the skirt of my dress. His fingers were frantic stroking over me, in me, his tongue plunging deep into my mouth. I wanted to tell him to slow it down, let me catch up, but I couldn’t because I knew why he was doing it. He was staking a claim, putting his stamp on me. Reminding himself that he had me, and Heath didn’t.
I couldn’t deny him that, not when I knew what he must have seen on my face, not when the very night Ethan had asked me to marry him, I had been distracted and emotional over someone he had never even heard me talk about. If our roles had been reversed, I would need reassurance too, if some random chick showed up out of nowhere, and I wanted to give him that.