“I know.” I interrupt her. “You don’t have to defend yourself to me, Austin.”
My sister read her journal, and anyone who knows Cole and Austin knows that their love is real. Becky just wanted to hurt her and knew exactly what to say in order to accomplish that.
She gives another nod and throws back her wine.
I take another sip of mine.
“So enough about me and onto you,” she says, faking a smile.
I sigh. “There’s nothing about me to be said.”
She quirks a brow. “Deke Biggs,” she says, and this time when I lift the glass of wine to my lips, I take more than just a sip. “You love him.”
I choke on it. “Hell no.”
She tilts her head to the side. “Then why did you sleep with him?”
“Did you love Cole the first time you slept with him?” I counter. I know she didn’t. Their first time was in a bathroom at a party. Deke stood outside the door and recorded it. Then someone uploaded it to social media the next day. I hate to say that I tried to find it, but it must have been taken down because it’s nowhere to be found now. I’m sure Cole made it disappear once he realized he loved her.
“No, but he also wasn’t previously in love with my sister. And I wasn’t a virgin.” She eyes me skeptically. “You slept with him for a reason, Demi. He may not know that, but I do.”
I fall onto the barstool and place my elbows on the marble island. “Would revenge make it any better?”
“I told you I’m not going to judge you.” She shrugs. “Everyone does something for a reason. I’m just trying to figure out why you did what you did.” She refills her drink. “I know why he slept with you.”
“Because he wanted to make my sister mad.”
She shakes her head. “It had nothing to do with her and everything to do with you.” I frown. Taking another drink, she smiles at me over the rim of her glass. “So I’ll ask you again. Do you love him?”
DEKE
I stand at my locker with a towel at my bare feet and my jeans pulled up to my hips but still undone. My shirt lies on the bench behind me.
Cole walks up next to me, also fresh out of the shower, and all he’s wearing is a towel draped around his neck. He yanks his locker open and picks up his phone. “Bennett called me.”
“And?” I ask.
He throws his phone back into the locker. “And I missed it. He left me a voicemail. I’ll call him back on the way home.”
I sit down on the bench and put my socks and tennis shoes on as Cole throws his towel down to the floor. He’s still pissy. This morning, Austin wouldn’t even look at him. As I suspected, she woke up pissed when she realized he had broken into Lilly’s room and carried her up to theirs. If I didn’t know she loved him, I’d half expect his clothes to be on fire in the front yard when we get back to the house.
The guys walk around the locker room after swim practice. We’ve just finished our showers. I’m ready to get the hell home and go to bed. I’m tired. I can’t survive on no sleep like Cole does.
“What did you do last night?” a guy by the name of Peter asks his friend Braden.
Cole and I aren’t close to the guys on the swim team like we were back in Collins. We keep our distance. They don’t try to be our friends, and we don’t go out of our way to be theirs.
“Seth came over,” he answers, sitting down on the bench a few spots down from me. “He brought his hot little girlfriend with him.”
Cole looks over his shoulder at me. I ignore him and keep listening to the guys.
“Damn, the high school bitch he’s fucking?” the guy asks.
He nods.
“Fuck, I’d be all over that every chance I got.”
He laughs. “Yeah, it was weird, though. She just sat there and drank while playing video games. They didn’t even talk much.”
Cole throws his towel into his locker and steps into his jeans without even bothering with his boxers.
“You should have jumped on that. I bet he would have shared her with you. I hear they have an open relationship.”
My hands fist. Is that what you call it? Then why did he get so pissed when he heard she was sleeping with me? I’ve seen him in class since then, but he’s sat down on the front row. He’s the last to show up to class and the first one to run out once the professor releases us. He thinks he can run from me, but he can’t.
“Maybe that’s what he was waiting on,” the guy jokes.