Chapter 46
FORTY-SIX
I was practically bouncing as I walked into the restaurant where Rachel and I had agreed to meet for our lunch date. I hadn’t seen her in weeks and couldn’t wait to share everything that was going on.
“Rach!” I called out, spotting her at a corner table. But as I got closer, my excitement dimmed. She looked off. She was fidgeting with her hands and nibbling her lip, her brows furrowed with worry. When she spotted me, the worry remained, which made my stomach knot with dread.
“Hey,” she said, forcing a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
I slid into the seat across from her, immediately concerned. “What’s wrong? You look like someone died.”
She shook her head and waved away my concern. “Nothing’s wrong. How was rehearsal yesterday?”
“Don’t deflect. I know you better than that.” I studied her face. Rachel had been my best friend since freshman year—I could tell when something was eating at her. “What’s up?”
She pressed her lips together, looking down at the table. “It’s nothing. Really.”
The waitress came over, but I stopped her before she could speak. “We need just a minute.”
“Sure, no problem,” she said with a smile before walking away.
I faced my best friend, determined to get the truth about why she looked so worried. “Rachel.”
She let out a long breath, then looked up at me with the most conflicted expression I’d ever seen on her face. “I’ve been debating with myself all week about whether I should say anything…”
That knot in my stomach tightened. “Say anything about what?”
“Maybe I shouldn’t. It’s probably just gossip and rumors, and I don’t want to—”
“Rachel, spit it out. What is it?”
She bit her lip, clearly wrestling with herself. “I went to a party down by the river last weekend. There were a lot of CFU students there, either ones who grew up here or decided to hang around for the summer.”
“Okay.” I was confused about where this was going.
“Some of the hockey guys were there. The younger ones—Beau, Kyle, a few others.” Rachel’s voice was getting quieter with each word. “They were drunk and…saying stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
She looked like she might be sick. “About you. And Drew.”
Nausea joined the knot and I felt the need to brace myself. “What about me and Drew?”
“Harper, I don’t think I should—”
“Tell me.” My voice came out sharper than I intended. “Please. What were they saying about me and Drew?”
Rachel took a shaky breath. “They were talking about some bet.”
My stomach dropped. “What bet?”
Her eyes filled with tears like she knew the words about to come out of her mouth would devastate me. “That he’d get you to sleep with him before the semester ended.”
It felt like I’d been sucker punched. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. My whole world had been tilted upside down in a split second.
No. It couldn’t be true.
“What?” I hated how weak my voice sounded.
“I know. I told them that didn’t even make sense because you guys hated each other before you got together, but they just kept laughing about it.
They were drunk off their asses, but they have no reason to lie.
They said it started as a joke in the locker room after you two were paired together on your psych project. ”
“He wouldn’t—”
Rachel’s voice shook. “They said he bet everything he had that he could.” She took a breath, her hands trembling. “One of them said he already won. That even after he did, he was still with you because…because he needed help with the baby.”
It felt like the floor dropped out from under me.
“Rachel—”
“I didn’t want to believe it,” she said, her eyes wet. “But they sounded so sure, Harper. Apparently everyone on the team knew. They’ve been making all kinds of bets since then.”
My nose burned as tears started to fill my eyes, but I refused to blink and allow them to escape.
“I’m so sorry,” Rachel whispered. “I’ve been going crazy all week trying to decide whether I should tell you. Maybe they were lying, or exaggerating, or—”
“Or maybe they were telling the truth.” My voice was hollow now.
Because a bet made a lot more sense than him actually falling for me.
Hadn’t I questioned how quick he turned things around? Now it all made sense.
A sick sort of sense that made me want to rage scream, curl up in a ball and sob, or destroy everything he held dear.
But I did none of those things.
Instead I was frozen.
I’d always believed I would be the type of woman to get even if I was scorned by a lover, but I couldn’t even breathe, let alone do anything else.
Everything—every tender moment, every vulnerable confession, every time he’d held me and made me feel safe—had been a lie. A performance designed to win a bet.
The baby. God, even Rory had been part of his manipulation. All those moments when I’d watched him with her, when I’d fallen for the devoted father act, when I’d started to imagine us as a real family.
I was going to be sick.
“I-I have to go,” I whispered, grabbing my bag and sliding out of my seat. I vaguely heard Rachel call my name behind me, but I didn’t stop.
I had to get home.
The thought caused me to stumble.
No, it wasn’t my home, was it? It was Drew’s.
Oh God.
I was so, so stupid.
I’d fallen for all of it.
I had to talk to him—to hear the truth from his lips.
The whole way to the house, I kept replaying every moment, reanalyzing every conversation through this horrifying new lens.
The night he’d first told me he loved me, when he’d been so vulnerable and real—was that part of the performance too? The morning after our first fight when he’d cooked me breakfast and we’d talked about our future—had he been laughing internally the whole time?
“Was any of it real?” I whispered to myself as I pulled up to the house.
I could see Drew through the living room window, bouncing Rory while he talked on the phone, probably to his teammates about how well his plan was working. He looked so normal, so genuinely happy, and that somehow made it worse.
He glanced toward the window as I walked up the front steps, his face lighting up in that smile that always made my heart skip. Now it just made me feel hollow.
“Hey babe!” He opened the door before I could even reach for my keys, Rory babbling happily in his arms. “Perfect timing. I just got off the phone with Liam about dinner plans, and-” He stopped, studying my face. “Hey, what’s wrong? You look pale.”
The concern in his voice sounded so genuine. He was such a good actor.
“I know,” I said quietly.
“Know what?” Drew’s brow furrowed in confusion.
“About the bet.”
The color drained from his face instantly. Rory gurgled and reached toward me with her chubby hands, but I couldn’t look at her. I couldn’t bear to see the baby I’d fallen in love with, knowing she’d been used as a prop in Drew’s game.
And it had worked.
He’d not only gotten me in bed. He’d made me fall in love with him—with both of them.
My bottom lip quivered—the tears were so close—but I couldn’t break yet.
I wasn’t safe here with him. I couldn’t fall apart until I was safe.
“Harper, let me explain—”
“Okay, explain.” My voice came out steadier than I felt, but it was cold. I crossed my arms over my chest as I waited for him.
Drew blinked, clearly not expecting me to actually give him the chance. He shifted Rory to one arm and ran his free hand through his hair.
He let out a heavy sigh. “Yes, there was a bet. But it’s not what you think. I never made a bet about you.”
“No?” My voice was eerily calm. “Then what exactly happened, Drew?”
“I was in the locker room, exhausted and frustrated. The guys were giving me shit about our psych project, saying there was sexual tension between us. I told them they were crazy—that there was no universe where we’d ever hook up. I said I’d bet everything I had on it never happening.”
I tightened my arms, hoping it would hold in the insides that felt like they were about to spill out, and I waited for him to continue.
“Some of the younger guys—Beau and Kyle, specifically—they took that and made it into an actual bet without telling me. I didn’t know about it until weeks later.”
“And what did you do when you found out?”
“I shut it down. I swear to you I did. You can ask Liam, Gordy, or Foster. They were there too. I told them it was fucked up and made them call it off.”
“When?”
“When what?”
“When did you shut it down? What date?”
Drew’s face went even paler. “I-I don’t remember exactly. It was after we started getting closer, after—”
“After you started working on me,” I finished. “After you realized what was happening between us.”
“No!” His voice was sharp with desperation. “Harper, no. My feelings for you are real. Everything between us is real.”
“Is it?” I tilted my head, studying his face.
“Because what I heard was that there was a bet about whether you’d get me to sleep with you, and suddenly you were being nice to me.
Asking for my help with Rory, being vulnerable, opening up about your past. All the things that would make a girl fall for you. ”
“That’s not—the timing doesn’t line up like that—”
“Doesn’t it? You know, a part of me always wondered why you never retaliated after my review site prank, but now I’m realizing, maybe this time it was a long game for you.”
He stared at me like his brain had short-circuited, and the longer he took to answer, the more my heart sank.
He took a breath. “Harper, I swear to you, I never set out to manipulate you. I never had some grand plan to make you fall for me to win a bet. My feelings developed naturally as I got to know you.”
“But you did know about the bet. Even if you didn’t start it, you knew about it and you didn’t tell me.”
Drew’s silence was answer enough.
“How long?” I asked.
“Harper—”
“How long did you know about the bet while we were together? While you were telling me you loved me and I was falling for you?”
“I found out about it a few weeks before we got together officially,” he admitted quietly. “So…the whole time.”
“The whole time.” I laughed, but it came out broken. “So our entire relationship, you knew there were people betting on whether you could get me into bed, and you said nothing.”
“I didn’t want to hurt you—”
“You didn’t want me to know the truth. There’s a difference.”
Drew’s eyes were pleading. “Harper, I understand how this looks, but I need you to believe me. What we have is real. I love you. I’ve never felt about anyone the way I feel about you.”
I studied his face—the face I’d traced with my fingers, the eyes that had looked at me with such tenderness, the mouth that had whispered promises against my skin. He looked sincere and a little desperate. Maybe even a smidge heartbroken.
Or maybe I was projecting my own feelings at this point.
I’d believed him before. I’d believed him when he said he’d changed.
When he said I mattered to him.
When he said he loved me.
And all the while, there had been this secret hanging over us.
And now it had planted a seed of doubt that I couldn’t ignore.
What was worse was the sound of my dad’s voice that suddenly infiltrated my head. Get the Tinsley girl to fall for you, then what? Break her heart? Make her look like an idiot?
“Maybe you do love me now,” I said finally.
“Maybe somewhere along the way, it became real for you. But it started as a game, didn’t it?
Even if you didn’t mean it to, even if you didn’t plan it—it started with you being so confident that I’d never want you that you essentially dared your teammates to prove you wrong. ”
He was shaking his head, his eyes pleading. “Harper—”
“And maybe you didn’t consciously try to win the bet.
Maybe you genuinely started to care about me.
But when you found out about it, you had a choice.
You could have told me the truth and let me decide if I wanted to continue, or you could have kept it secret to protect yourself from losing me. And you chose to keep me in the dark.”
Drew’s face crumpled. “I chose wrong. I know I chose wrong. But Harper, please—what we have is real now. What I feel for you is real. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t think their bullshit stupidity mattered. You and I matter.”
“Which is exactly why you should’ve told me.”
I looked at him holding Rory, both of them looking at me with those matching hazel eyes, and felt my heart break all over again.
“You say it’s real,” I said softly. “But how do I ever trust that? How do I ever know if what you’re feeling is real or if you’re just so good at playing the part that you’ve convinced yourself it’s real too?”
“Because you know me,” Drew said desperately. “You’ve seen who I really am. You’ve seen me at my worst and my best. You know I’m not that good of an actor.”
“Do I?” I shook my head. “Because right now I don’t feel like I know who you are at all. I thought you’d changed from the guy who used to humiliate me, but I’ve never felt so stupid or humiliated as I did when I found out about the bet.”
Silence stretched between us like a chasm. Even Rory was quiet, watching us both.
“I need to go,” I said quietly.
“Go where?” I didn’t miss the panic in his voice.
“That’s not your problem anymore,” I said, but without the venom I’d intended. I just sounded tired. I turned around to go back to my car, but stopped when he spoke.
“Harper, please. Don’t leave. We can work this out.”
“How?” I turned back to look at him one last time. “How do we work this out, Drew? How do I ever trust you again when this is how we started? When you kept this from me for weeks while I fell in love with you?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted, and the honesty in his voice almost broke me. “But I know I love you. And I know what we have is worth fighting for.”
“Maybe it is,” I said quietly. “But I don’t know how to fight for something when I don’t know which parts of it were real.”
We stared at each other for another beat, and I knew if I stayed any longer, my chest would crack open.
“Goodbye, Drew.”
I walked to my car and refused to look back, even when I heard Rory start to cry. Even when I heard Drew say my name like a broken plea.