“So?”
“Let’s…” I paused, running a frustrated hand through my hair. “Let’s just say I know something that he doesn’t.”
“Oh,” Jae said flatly. “Who told your big mouth about the surprise party?”
“What?” I blanched. “What the heck are you talking about?”
Jae’s eyes bugged momentarily before he cleared his throat and stood up, turning away from me as he cleaned the bench off.
“N-nothing. Forget it,” he said firmly. “What doyouknow that he doesn’t?”
Great, another secret I would have to hide.
“I can’t tell you,” I muttered, following Jae over to the mats where we took a seat.
“What?” he whined. “Why not?”
“Because it’s not my place.”
“That’s not fair, you can’t just leave me hanging like that!”
He turned to give me a pouty face, his eyes glossing over as he held his stare. I shoved his shoulder and started doing some crunches to further avoid the topic. Unfortunately, Jae was very persistent and wouldn’t let the matter drop.
“How about I guess, and you can just tell me if I’m getting warmer?” he suggested with a mischievous grin.
“No.”
He sighed in defeat, moments later perking back up. “Did you walk in on him and your sister doing the nasty or something?” he asked with a yuck expression.
I gave him a pointed glare, and he laid down beside me to join me in the exercise.
“Please, can you just tell me? We tell each other everything! I swear I won’t tell anyone. Not even Shiloh.”
I cleared my throat uncomfortably at the mention of her name and tried to act normally. “Jae, I told you. It’s not my place to share. This doesn’t even have anything really to do with him.”
“What? Then why does it matter if you know or not, if it has nothing to do with him. That doesn’t make any sense, bro,” Jae shook his head at me.
“I mean, it’s not about him. But if he had knowledge of this…event, then it would affect him. He was fr—”Frick. I closed my mouth before I finished my sentence.
“He was what?” Jae asked coyly, like he could prod the rest out of me. “Go on. He was fr-...he was fr-... fresh…fr-ied…fr-eaking…fr-eezing…fr-eckles…fr-osting…”
“Jae seriously, I’m not gonna tell you, so please. I don’t want to accidentally tell you and then feel guilty as hell for sharing something that I was told in confidence.” I stopped to look at him seriously and he seemed to be oblivious because his eyes went wide with another theory.
“Okay, so you were told about an event that happened that would affect Sebastian because he was fr-...” Jae gasped and rolled onto his side to look directly at me. “Friends. He was friends with…wait…who told you about thisevent?”
His eyes narrowed and as the silence grew between us. Then he started listing names, studying my reactions as if he could spot when he mentioned the right one.
“Eden, Esther…your mom. Your dad! Ruthie, Sebastian’s mom, my dad…Oh shit!” he suddenly froze, and I furrowed my brows at him, resting my hands on my abs that were burning from the crunches.
“Wait a second. Wait a motherfreakingsecond. This person is a friend of Sebastian’s. Who do we know that is friends with Sebastian?”
Oh fuck. Fuck me.
“Shiloh,” he nodded smugly. A smiling curving on his thin lips as I swallowed harshly.
“Hah! It’s about Shiloh. Oh, hell yeah! Does she have a crush on him or something? I mean…that would explain why you’re in such a sulky mood. Man—”
I pushed him, making him roll over and quickly climbed to my feet, grabbing my bag and heading to the locker room. Damn him and his inability to listen.
