Chapter 15 Fifteen Bedrooms to Cheat In #2
My fingers were shaking, so I grabbed another tissue to give them something to do. I couldn’t look at him. “Did you just kiss?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
Devlin sighed and let his head fall back against the windowpane so hard I winced, afraid he’d leave cracks in the glass. “For fuck’s sake, Dolly. I told you that same night that all we did was fucking kiss. It was a long time ago. Why are you so hung up on that?”
“Because you wanted to kiss her so bad,” I said, twisting the tissue as I spoke. “And afterwards, there was that condom wrapper…”
“Which I asked you about,” he reminds me. “And you asked me. I told you the truth. It wasn’t mine. Were you telling the truth?”
“Of course I was,” I said, starting to pick the fibers from the mangled wad in my hand. “I’d never sleep with your cousin. He’s literally slept with every single one of my friends.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, narrowing his eyes. “Because Preston’s been obsessed with you since before he took his first steps. It’s fucking weird. And you bring up Lacey every time we fight. Is there something you’re trying to tell me? Did you and Preston do more than kiss?”
“No!” I protested, maybe too vehemently. “You know I was a virgin our first time.”
“So was I,” he gritted out. “And anyway, the condom was from Colt and Destiny. Why are you bringing it up now?”
I swallowed hard, forcing myself to admit the truth that had been gnawing at me since the funeral. “It wasn’t theirs.”
“What?”
“They didn’t use a condom.”
Devlin squinted at the ceiling, and I waited, watching him run through the memory in his mind. “Then it must have been Preston and Carmen’s,” he said with a shrug. “Which has absolutely nothing to do with this.”
He was right, of course. What happened when we were sophomores had nothing to do with him leaving for the summer.
Except…
Except that it did. It had everything to do with me being unable to trust him. I’d already run through every combination of people who went into the cedar chest that night a million times. Devlin and Lacey. Destiny and Colt. Me and Preston. Preston and Carmen.
That was it.
I knew it wasn’t from me and Preston. I knew it wasn’t from Destiny and Colt.
And I knew that there was no possible way that Carmen Saravia could have kept her mouth shut for six entire months while Wade walked around school like nothing had happened after he conned her out of her virginity and never spoke to her again.
If there was one thing Carmen loved more than stirring the pot, it was avenging herself.
Not five minutes after she and Preston did it at the year-end party, she’d come running out of the treehouse and told anyone and everyone who would listen that he was better in bed than Wade Montgomery.
Even if he’d sucked, she still would have said it, just to hurt Wade in any way she possibly could.
If she couldn’t hurt his feelings, she’d hurt his rep.
Hell, I’d believe that she made up sleeping with Preston in the treehouse that night even if she didn’t.
But for it to really happen but her to keep it secret?
No way. She’d been waiting all year to get her revenge on Wade for screwing her over.
She didn’t waste a single second in doing so the moment she had ammunition.
If she could have done it back in November and made him look bad for more than half his senior year, there was zero percent chance that instead, she would have waited until the last party of the year, when he wasn’t in school anymore, and it wouldn’t even tarnish his reputation.
Besides, she had no reason to keep it secret.
She and Preston were both single, both freshmen, both hot and rich and popular in their grade. No one would have batted an eye.
Even though Colt had asked if the wrapper was there all night, the rest of us had clearly seen it fall from the sleeping bag, which he’d shaken out before putting it in the trunk.
Someone had left it that night, and despite the thousand excuses I’d made for him, the mental gymnastics I’d done, and the self-gaslighting I’d used to question what I saw with my own eyes, at some point I had to admit that it was Devlin.
That also explained why Lacey obnoxiously gloated about how great her “first time” had been when she and Preston hooked up.
Of course it didn’t hurt. It wasn’t her first time at all.
And unlike Carmen, if she hooked up during the game, she had a reason to hide it.
Devlin was taken. I was her supposed friend.
Since Devlin was the king at Willow Heights, by default, I was the queen.
She would have been shunned from the group if we had a falling out, especially if everyone knew she’d interfered with their golden couple.
Sometimes it felt like our relationship was more for Faulkner than for us.
I wanted Devlin because he was perfect, because everyone wanted him.
How could I not? I loved him, loved the anguish of wanting him, wanting him to love me back.
I lived for the moments we spent together, the times he said he loved me.
In return, he tolerated my love.
He said he loved me, but it always felt obligatory.
I’d say it, and there would be a beat of silence, and then he’d say it back.
Like he knew it was expected of him, so he’d do his duty so as not to make things awkward or hurt my feelings.
I wondered how, after a lifetime of being friends and four years of dating and two years of sleeping with someone, you could still not love them with your whole heart.
Maybe he wasn’t capable of the kind of love I felt.
He respected me, escorted me to school dances and town functions, bought me things.
But sometimes it seemed like he wanted me because he needed a companion, an excuse not to participate in the Darling debauchery that he loathed so much.
If we hadn’t been hooking up, I would have wondered if he was gay and using me for a cover, so no one questioned why he didn’t want to sleep around like his cousins.
He didn’t treat me like a trophy girl—in fact, I was more guilty of that than he was—but I was definitely an accessory to his life.
I played a supporting role, was the best supporting actress to his rising star.
My eyes were focused on him, while his were focused somewhere else, on some distant point I couldn’t see no matter how hard I tried.
My love was a burden, an annoyance he had to deal with, like a dog he’d adopted on a whim and now was responsible for.
Suddenly I remembered something Destiny had said as we sat outside Boehner’s Burgers.
She said not everyone was content to just get married and have babies.
What happened to a dream when the dreamer died?
Did it die with her? Or was it still floating around somewhere, waiting for someone to live it?
Once, on a trip to the mall, we’d tried to find matching outfits and wondered why there were boy bands but no girl bands.
We decided we’d start a girl band. Even though I wasn’t especially coordinated and couldn’t dance, I had a good voice.
I told her I’d be her backup singer, but she said no, I had to be a star, too.
That I had star quality, like Dolly Parton.
“This isn’t Dreamgirls,” she said. “We can all be Beyonce in our band.”
I thought about what she’d do now. I already knew, could almost hear her voice telling me I’d put up with this long enough, that I deserved better.
The problem was, there was no one better than Devlin Darling.
If I was as good as him, if I was good enough to deserve him, then I’d do what was best for him, even if it broke my heart. And if he was good enough to deserve me, he would prove it and do what was best for me.
I sandwiched my hands between my knees, holding them still as I did the most terrifying thing I’d ever done. I did what Destiny would do. I stepped off the edge without a parachute, without knowing if Devlin would catch me.
If I was going to marry this man, I had to know.
Didn’t I?
It wasn’t about the romantic notion of marrying the man I’d given my virginity to. That was one night. I’d given him so much more than that. For four years, I had given him every piece of myself, every ounce of my body, every beat of my heart. I had given him my every breath, my every thought.
And he had taken it. Not greedily, but dutifully, as if it were his burden to bear.
The only night he’d ever been greedy had been our first time, when he’d seemed like a different person altogether.
Had I fucked up by crying that night, by not wanting to do it again for a month?
Had that messed with his head, making him think he’d hurt me and filled him with so much guilt he could never be himself again?
After that, he’d always been careful. He’d never again dared to unleash his passion on me, even when I wanted it, when I begged for it.
It made me want to cry that I could have scarred him that way, made him afraid of his desire for me until he locked it away and vowed to never lose control with me again. No wonder he wanted someone else, a clean slate, with no expectations or past hurts between them.
I remembered what Preston said just before Destiny fell, the night I tried not to think about. He’d said Devlin wasn’t the only one who wanted to be with someone else.
But that was silly. Of course I wanted Devlin. Who else would I want?
I knew exactly who Preston had meant, of course.
He was just cocky and arrogant enough to think I wanted him, just like all his other conquests.
Devlin may have been overly controlled, but Preston was the opposite.
He lost his temper and got in fights, fucked girls like it was a sport, just because he could.
Hell, just the other day he’d pinned me on that chair and bitten my nipple.