Chapter 15 Fifteen Bedrooms to Cheat In
fifteen bedrooms to cheat in
Dolly Beckett
“You’re going away for the entire summer?” I demanded, hurt raking me over the coals the way it did so often with Devlin. Loving him was an exercise in suffering. “And you didn’t even tell me?”
Peanut perked up her head from her bed, letting out a low growl when she heard the hurt in my voice.
“I’m just going to Colorado with the guys,” Devlin said, like that was the part I was having trouble comprehending.
He cast an annoyed glance at my dog before continuing.
“Our family’s got the lodge up there, and Dad said I could have it for the summer.
Come on, Doll. It’s the summer before senior year.
It might be my last chance to do something like this. ”
The memory of Destiny hit me the way it did sometimes, out of the blue and so fresh I could almost smell it, as if the faintest trace of the cinnamon vanilla body lotion she loved so much was still with us. You never knew when anything would be your last chance.
“What do you mean?” I asked, my voice coming out choked.
Our parents wanted us to get married right after graduation.
We just had to make it one more year. But Devlin never talked about that.
He said it freaked him out when I brought it up, so I’d stopped doing it.
That’s what good partners did. They tried not to make the other uncomfortable.
They didn’t book three-month trips without even thinking to mention it to their girlfriend of four years, who, to add insult to injury, had to hear it from his cousin’s smug mouth.
I didn’t know what I’d done to Preston to make him revel in my pain the way he did.
Devlin shrugged and leaned back on the windowsill in my bedroom. “I mean we’ll be graduating next year, and I’ll have to get ready for college ball… I just don’t know what next summer will look like.”
“Are you breaking up with me?” I asked, sinking onto the bed, my belly filled with trembling dread. Peanut trotted over and jumped up, trying to lick my face. I pulled her into my arms and held her like a shield, as if she could protect my heart.
“No,” Devlin said, frowning. “I’m going on vacation.”
“And I’m not invited.”
“I told you, it’s a guys’ trip,” he said, looking annoyed now.
That wasn’t good. My whole life had become this dance to keep Devlin entertained, to keep him watching.
If he looked away, he might notice someone else, might be lured away by her dance instead.
I couldn’t remember when it had become that way.
Four years was a lot of my life to comb through for clues.
Maybe it had never been fun and exciting, the way other people’s relationships seemed to be at the start.
Our love had always been trimmed with a decorative edge of desperation.
“Will there be other girls there?” I whispered before I could stop the words. I knew it was silly, and it made me look pathetic.
I was, but I didn’t want him to know.
Devlin sighed and gripped the windowsill besides his hips. God, even the way he stood was sexy. Was it any wonder I was such a dick-whipped bitch when it came to him?
“I’m not going to cheat on you, Doll. It’ll just be me and the guys.”
“I know what your cousins are like,” I said, thinking about that party where I’d walked in on them both inside Destiny at once.
I shivered and pressed my knuckles to my eyes.
As much as that had shocked and somehow hurt me, I’d do it again every day for the rest of my life if it meant she was still alive.
“And you know what I’m like,” Devlin said. “I’m not a cheater. I’m not going to sleep with someone else.”
“How do I know that?”
“Because you’re my girlfriend.”
Because I love you.
Because I don’t want to sleep with anyone but you.
Because you’ll be with me.
Those were all the things I wanted him to say, but he didn’t.
Instead, he said, “Don’t make a big deal out of this, Dolly. It’s really not.”
He rarely said the things I wanted to hear, and when he did, it wasn’t in the way I wanted.
I felt shamefully ungrateful for wanting more, for being unsatisfied by all that he gave me.
Every girl in school would have given her left tittie to be his girlfriend, and he’d never dated a single one of them.
I was his Darling Doll, his one and only.
And he was my Devlin, everything a girl could dream of—kind and respectful, gorgeous and popular, approved by her parents, beloved by the town.
Hell, he even had a big dick and made sure I came first. There was absolutely not one thing wrong with him.
Except…
“It is a big deal,” I said, my eyes filling with tears. “You’re leaving for quarter of a year, Devlin. You didn’t think I’d want to know about that?”
“It’s a family trip,” he said, raking a hand through his hair. “You always go visit family in the summer. What’s the difference?”
“The difference is, this isn’t a week or two,” I said. “And you didn’t even think to ask me.”
“I already need your permission to do stuff with the guys?”
“You don’t need my permission, and you’ve always made that crystal clear,” I said, my own anger rising.
I knew what he thought of marriage. That I’d be a nag, that it would ruin all his fun, be the end of his freedom.
That’s why he didn’t like talking about it.
To me, it was the start of life together.
To him, it was the end of independent life.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.
“You do whatever you want, and I’ve never stopped you,” I said. “I’ve never wanted to. But sometimes, Devlin, it would be nice to be part of the decision. Sometimes, it would be nice to know you’d thought of me while you were making it.”
“I didn’t ask you because it has nothing to do with you,” he said. “When we go on spring break, I always ask you to go. This time, it’s just the founding sons. I don’t get why you’re so upset.”
“Because you didn’t even think to tell me,” I said, throwing up my hands. Peanut hopped down from my lap and returned to her bed, where she laid her head down and looked at me with baleful eyes.
“I was going to tell you,” Devlin insists. “I didn’t know Preston was going to open his big mouth before I got the chance.”
“When?” I demanded, wiping away the tear that had leaked out.
“Today,” he said. “They reminded me the other day that I should tell you, so I came over to do it. I didn’t know he’d already told you.”
“Your cousins reminded you?” I asked, tears springing back to my eyes. “Your asshole, biggest-players-in-school cousins? You forgot you had a girlfriend to inform until they told you to? And you don’t see the problem there?”
Devlin scowled. “No. I don’t see the problem. Maybe because there wasn’t one until you started making it a problem.”
“I didn’t make it a problem, it is a problem, Devlin. It’s a problem to me.”
“Then maybe you should work on that while I’m gone,” he said. “I told you where I’m going and what I’m doing. You have nothing to worry about. I’m not going to cheat on you. You’re making it into something it’s not.”
“How do I know that?” I asked, leaning over to grab some tissues from the bedside table to dab my eyes.
I was being silly and dramatic, but I was seventeen, and sometimes that was part of it.
Like when my boyfriend was going off with a bunch of guys who liked to party and bring girls home.
The lodge was huge, with fifteen bedrooms to choose from, fifteen rooms where you could sneak off and hook up when your parents weren’t watching.
I knew because we’d done it during spring break.
It was big enough to hold all the Darling families when they went up for ski trips, plus a few of the other founding families, whoever was lucky enough to be invited that year.
But this wasn’t a ski trip. It was a trip with a bunch of horny teenage boys. What if they got drunk one night and there were girls there, and it just happened? What if Preston and Colt convinced him it wasn’t cheating if he was out of town?
That’s the sort of thing they’d say.
Devlin shook his head. “I can’t force you to believe me. If you can’t trust me by now, that’s a problem you’re going to have to figure out on your own. I’ve done nothing but be loyal and faithful to you since the day I asked you out. I’ll continue to be that way, but I can’t fix your insecurities.”
Tears spilled down my face as he spoke. He didn’t raise his voice, but his words cut deeper than the cruelest insults ever could.
Even when we fought, he’d never once called me a bitch, or even selfish or ungrateful.
He didn’t call names, didn’t fling insults.
Those were opinions. This was the truth, and it cut me to the bone.
He knew me. He knew me in ways he never let me know him, knew the words that would sting the most, the places where he could reach in and leave bruises deep down in my soul. What hurt most of all was that he wasn’t even trying to hurt me. He was just being honest.
“Have you, though?” I asked, swiping more tears away.
His jaw hardened, and he stared at me with the anger that simmered under his controlled exterior.
I couldn’t remember when it had begun, if it was with Lacey’s rape or Destiny’s death or if it had always been there.
Maybe that’s what I’d felt the first time we had sex.
It scared me a little, knowing he was capable of such violence but hid it so incredibly well.
“Have I what?” he asked quietly.
“Been faithful,” I said, wiping my nose and tossing the balled-up tissue in the trashcan. “What about that day in the treehouse?”
He spoke quietly, but his words were laced with fury. “That day three fucking years ago, when we were playing a goddamn kissing game, so I kissed someone, and you did the same fucking thing with my cousin?”