“Drink if you’ve pulled a man,” Scottie repeated.
“Oh,” he replied, before he raised his drink to his lips, taking a long sip. The group watched, jaws hinged open. But Oliver shrugged, a sly smile on his lips. “Boarding school taught me more than tennis.”
We laughed, before, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Chloe tilt her glass to her lips, taking a tiny sip. My heart fell straight into the pit of my stomach.
The second our eyes connected, a simple guilty gaze, I was thrown back to nearly a year ago. That party. That bedroom. And once again, the painful reminder reared its ugly head that it wasmeshe had kissed.
8
Inés
Guilty as Sin?—Rachel Bochner
“Little Chloe Murphy,” Dylan teased from across the firepit. “Care to share?”
I couldn’t pull my gaze away from Chloe. My hand tightened into a fist, panic squeezing like a cobra wrapped around my body.
“It was nothing,” she said quietly.
Nothing.It had been nothing to her. Of course it had, but I hated that it had been something for me.
Soft kisses and even softer lips. She’d tasted like peaches, and when she’d tugged at my bottom lip with her teeth, it felt like she’d read a secret manual on how I liked to be kissed.
It hadn’t gone further, hidden away in a stranger’s apartment, in a spare bedroom we’d stumbled upon, sitting on the floor behind the bed, both of us seeking some relief from the chaos outside.
She’d straddled my lap, her thighs on either side, one of my hands resting on her hip, the other trailing lightly down her back.
“I never do this,” she confessed, almost wincing at her own words.
“Kiss girls or kiss strangers?” I asked.
“Both.” Her answer was a little nervous, as if she were embarrassed.
I searched her eyes, asking, “Do you like it?”
Her hand reached out to me, fingers softly brushing my hair behind my ear. Then she leaned forward, lips pressed against mine.
“Yes,” she whispered, as if it was a secret only for us.
“You never told me,” Henrik said in a teasing voice. I took another drink, trying to drown the feeling inside of me, the sick twist of my stomach.
“It didn’t matter,” Chloe said. “Just a one-time thing.”
A one-time thing I’d been trying to outrun for almost a year now, trying to forget her, except she kept showing up, kept beating me. She’d systematically taken everything from me. My pride, my trophy. A month later she was my mixed doubles partner’s girlfriend.
And now she was here, taking my friends too.
“We all have those stories,” Scottie said. Dylan turned to her, eyes narrowed playfully.
“Then drink up.”
Scottie flicked her hair back behind her ear. “Sadly, I’ve never found a pal for this gal.”
Nico’s arm stretched over to her chair leg, pulling her closer, the metal scraping against the stone patio. “And you never will.”
I forced a laugh, trying to fit in with the group, trying to fight the urge to leave, go upstairs and sit alone.
Couldn’t she have not taken a drink? Did she really have to bring up that night?
