Seducing My Best Friend (Fated #3) (9 page)

I couldn’t wait to tell Fiona about my meeting with Nathan. I
felt a thousand times better about the Chuck situation after talking to him,
and I was eager to ease her anxiety, too.

And since Aiden’s car wasn’t in the street when I got home, I
figured I could fill her in while everything Nathan said was at the front of my
mind, preferably before Aiden arrived.

After all, I didn’t really want to talk to him about it. I knew
he would just freak out and get over protective, and I had enough to manage
without having to manage his anger on top of everything.

Plus, I wanted the time I spent with him to be fun and light.
Our relationship- at least the romantic side of it- was still new. I didn’t
want it to be punctuated by my own personal job drama, especially when I knew
Chelsea’s constant griping did his head in.

I opened the door and smiled when I saw the flowers on the
counter. But when I went to grab a shandy, my face fell. There was a bottle of
vodka on the counter, and it was half empty.

“Fiona?!” I called.

I grabbed the bottle and marched down the hallway towards the
music. When she didn’t hear me knocking, I pushed the door open.

I didn’t see her so I stepped over her clothes until I got to
the stereo and turned it off. “Fiona?!”

“What?” she said, walking out of the bathroom, patting her face
with a hand towel.

“What the fuck is this?” I asked, holding the bottle in the air.

She shrugged. “I had a few drinks.”

“A few drinks?!” I could tell by her eyes that she’d had a lot more
than a few. “You were supposed to look for a new job today.”

“I’ll start tomorrow.”

“You’ve been saying that all week,” I said. “Plus, tomorrow’s
Saturday.”

She reached out her hand. “I’ll finish that now then.”

I held the bottle behind me. “Do you know where I was while you
were day drinking all afternoon?”

“Work?”

“Yeah, and then after work, I went to talk to a lawyer to get
some legal advice, which I was hoping I’d be able to discuss with you right
now.”

“Sorry.”

“I don’t want you to apologize! I want you to sober up and get a
grip- or at least a job!”

She lowered her voice. “Please don’t yell at me in front of
Aiden.”

I leaned towards her. “Aiden’s not here.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

“He was a second ago.”

“What?”

“I was talking to him in the kitchen, like, five minutes ago.”

“Aiden?!” I yelled.

She made a listening face. “Huh.”

“I’m not yelling at you, okay? You have every right to drink and
sulk, but can you not do it during the day when I need your help to pay the
bills?”

She nodded. “Sorry, Luce.”

I shook my head and set the bottle down. Then I took my phone
out of my pocket and dialed Aiden’s number. He didn’t answer. I tried again.
Nothing. “Are you sure he was here?”

“Yeah,” Fiona said, leaning against the inside of her bathroom door.
“I’m drunk, not hallucinating.”

“Why would he leave?”

“I don’t know.”

“How long was he here?”

“Ten minutes maybe? I got him a drink and we joked about Tinder,
and then I came in here to wash off my face mask because it was freaking him
out.”

“What do you mean you joked about Tinder?”

“We just talked about what a bitch Chelsea was basically.”

I swallowed. “What exactly did you say?”

“Just that he must’ve been pissed when he found out she was on
it while they were going out, and I said if Peter-”

I covered my face with my hands.

“What?”

“He doesn’t know she was on it,” I said.

“Sure he does.”

“I never told him.”

“But he knew she was-”

“Cheating. He knew she was cheating. That’s it.” I sighed. “As
far as I know, he had no idea she was on Tinder.”

“But-”

I walked over and put my hands on her shoulders. “I need you to
think very carefully.”

Her eyes went wide.

“I’m not upset, okay? I just need to know what you said.”

She pursed her lips. “I don’t know. I-”

“Did you say that we saw her on a date?”

She nodded.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath through my nose. “Did
you say she came up on Alex’s phone?”

She swallowed.

“Did you?”

She nodded.

I let go of her shoulders and left the room.

“Lucy?!” she called after me.

I turned back and went in her room, grabbing the vodka off her
dresser.

“I’m sorry!”

“You are so done.”

“I didn’t mean to-”

I turned to face her. “What? Fuck this up for me? Hurt my best
friend?”

“It was an accident.”

“No surprise there.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. Just leave me alone.” I walked across the hall and
swung my bedroom door shut behind me.

Then I slumped on my bed and tried to call him again. He didn’t
pick up. I fell back on my bed and dug the heels of my hands into my eye
sockets. Fuck.

Just as well he didn’t answer. What would I even say? I was
going to tell you that night, but you’d broken up with her anyway?

He would never believe me. He would never understand how torn up
I was over it. And now it didn’t matter anyway because it was too late.

Now I was just as bad as Chelsea, keeping secrets from him and
being deceitful. Except this was worse. I was supposed to be the person he
could trust the most. I pretended to be anyway, and what did I do when I had a
chance to protect him?

I kept my mouth shut. I thought I was doing the right thing, but
I wasn’t. Now it was so obvious. If I could just go back and do it all over
again, I could’ve told him when I knew she wasn’t at the nursing home. At the
very least, I could’ve called him when she popped up on Alex’s phone.

What was I thinking?

How could I do this to him? I tried to imagine the scale of his
anger, or worse, his hurt. What if he’d done this to me? What if he’d let my
boyfriend make a fool of me and not told me I was getting played?

It was impossible to imagine.

Because he never would’ve done that.

He would never hurt me that way. Not by omission, and not on
purpose.

I rolled onto my stomach and stared at the phone, willing it to
ring. I squeezed my eyes shut and hoped it would vibrate in my hand. I needed
to hear his voice. I needed to know he wasn’t mad at me, that he knew I never
meant to lie to him.

I was so sorry I could feel it in my bones.

And I wanted to be mad at Fiona for being a ditzy, drunk
blabbermouth, but it wasn’t her fault. It was mine. I’m the one that didn’t
tell him Chelsea was cheating on him, and I should’ve told him as soon as I
found out.

She wasn’t his best friend. She didn’t owe him anything. She
didn’t grow up with him. She didn’t even know what it was like to have a friend
as loyal as he was.

And now I had gone and royally fucked up our friendship just
because I couldn’t say what was difficult.

Except it wasn’t our friendship that I’d fucked up.

It was our budding romance.

And now what?

Now he was probably thinking I was just another girl who dicked
him around and couldn’t be trusted, another girl that was as fake and selfish
as the rest of them.

And I knew him well enough to know that forgiveness didn’t come
easy to him. He would never forget that I’d done this, even if he could pretend
to.

But it wasn’t over yet. Maybe we could fix this. We’d been
through tough times in the past.

And it always worked out when it was us against the world.

Maybe he would understand.

Maybe he could forgive me even if he couldn’t forget.

This couldn’t be it.

If only he would answer his phone.

I had to leave.

I couldn’t face Lucy. I was too embarrassed. Too furious.

And as far as Fiona, she said more than enough in the few
minutes we spoke.

I pulled the car into my parking spot and turned off the
ignition. But I didn’t get out. I just sat there, gripping the wheel like I had
all the way home.

My phone buzzed on the passenger seat. It was Lucy again. I let
it ring out. I wasn’t ready to talk to her.

What was there to say?

I knew my anger was beyond explanation, that what happened with
Chelsea was in the past, but I thought Lucy was the only woman that had never
lied to me. Even my Mom and my sister had lied to me hundreds of times, but
that was different. That was family. I was stuck with them, but I had chosen
her.

And she was the last person on Earth who I ever thought would make
a fool out of me like this.

I felt like a fucking idiot!

How many times had I defended Chelsea to her or bit my tongue
instead of bad mouthing her to Lucy? Too many to count! And every time, Lucy
just listened politely, nodding and pursing her lips, probably thinking about
what a pathetic schmuck I was.

And she didn’t even like Chelsea! That much had been perfectly
clear since the first time I introduced them. So why protect her? Why guard her
secrets and let her keep parading around town making a fool out of me?

It was unforgivable.

I turned to the phone and waited to see if she would leave a
message, but the beep never came. No surprise there. What could she say?

I’m sorry?

It wouldn’t even mean anything because I’d know she was just
sorry I found out, sorry Fiona spilled the beans.

And that was the other thing. It wasn’t even like Lucy was the
only one who knew! She and Fiona probably fucking laughed about how lame and
trusting I was, joking about my bitch of a girlfriend while she continued to
bleed my bank account dry and fuck strangers while I thought she was
volunteering?!

Did everyone know but me?!

I mean, how many guys had swiped my girlfriend while we’d been
dating. I straightened my arms and pushed my head back against the seat. I felt
sick.

Being reminded that Chelsea was a cheating bitch was one thing,
but finding out that my best friend knew the scale of her deceit and didn’t
tell me was a blow my ego couldn’t take. What was it that Fiona had said? They
saw her out with some other guy?

Why didn’t Lucy call me that second?

Even a text would’ve done.

Shit. If the situation had been reversed, I would’ve taken a
goddamn picture and sent it to her. By the time she got it, I would’ve already
beaten the shit out of the guy that was fucking her around and left him for
dead.

Cause I was fucking loyal. Perhaps to a fault.

And I thought Lucy was, too, but maybe I was wrong about her.
Maybe she was no different from all the other lying bitches I’d been with over
the years.

Even Alex knew. What a joke. The kid used to look up to me and
now he probably thought I was some loser that willingly let his girlfriend’s
fuck around and didn’t care who knew about it.

The phone rang again and I turned it over so I could see her
face on the screen. It was a picture of her smiling with icing on her nose. I
took it at my last birthday party, the one she helped Chelsea plan. Maybe they
were fucking friends after all. Maybe I couldn’t read either of them, and they
only pretended they didn’t get along.

I didn’t even know anymore.

All I knew was that everything I was excited about, everything I
had planned, felt like it had been pissed away to nothing.

And it hurt so much worse than breaking up with Chelsea. Cutting
ties with her had been relatively neat and tidy. But my life and my memories
weren’t all tangled up in hers going back as far as I could remember.

Losing Lucy made my heart ache and my head hurt at the same
time. I hadn’t felt that kind of pain in ages. Normally when a woman dropped
out of my life, she was the first person I called.

Cause she always knew how to take my mind off things.

But now I had no one to turn to.

And even if calling her would make it better, she wasn’t the
person I thought she was. She was still gorgeous, still sexy, still funny as
hell.

But I couldn’t trust her.

And she wasn’t loyal.

So what was the fucking point?

I grabbed my phone and got out of the car, slipping it in my
back pocket as I walked to the basement elevator. Normally, I was too impatient
to wait for it, but now I just pressed the button and sighed.

Earlier, I was so excited to see Lucy that I took the stairs two
at a time all the way down to the parking garage, drifting through stale yellow
lights all the way to her place. I’d been dying to see her, to hold her. I’d
been in the biggest hurry of my life.

And for what? To kiss her lying mouth? To kiss a mouth that told
me what I wanted to hear and nothing that was inconvenient? What was the point
of her being the sunniest part of my life if it was all a lie?

Fuck it.

My whole life people sucked up to me because of who my Dad was
or because I was the coach’s pet. Or worse, they tiptoed around me because I
was a useful, generous friend to have.

But not Lucy. She was one of the only people that didn’t just
tell me what I wanted to hear. She told me when I was being a dick, when I was
taking the easy way out. She told me when I was being too hard on myself or not
hard enough, as rare as that was. She was the last person on Earth whose
loyalty I would’ve questioned.

I would’ve bet everything that she would’ve done anything to
protect me. And why wouldn’t I? She always had. That was the deal. We protected
each other. Us against the world.

And now us was just me, and the sense of loss I felt was overwhelming
and heavy, like I was lying under a wet mattress.

I stepped onto the elevator and hit the button for my floor,
crossing my arms and leaning against the wall.

How could she say she was worried about preserving our
friendship when she’d been lying to me for weeks?

I stepped onto my floor and walked to my door.

My apartment felt strangely empty, like it, too, had been expecting
me to return home with a guest.

And suddenly, it filled up again with the sound of my ringing
phone.

I sighed. “What do you want?” I asked, disappointed at how
defeated I sounded but too tired to change my tone.

“I’m so sorry, Aiden.”

“Not as sorry as I am.”

“Can we talk?”

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“I’ll do the talking.”

I exhaled through my nose.

“Please.”

“Do you think I’m an idiot?”

“Of course not.”

I shook my head. “Well, I feel like one.”

“But you’re-”

“You made a fucking fool out of me, Lucy.”

“No I didn-”

“Yes you did.”

“Give me a chance to explain.”

“I don’t want to see you right now.”

“I understand that, Aiden, but I need to talk to you.”

I clenched my jaw.

“When can I see you?”

“Not today.”

“Tomorrow?”

“No thanks,” I said.

“Will you call me when you’re ready to talk?”

I shook my head. “Don’t hold your breath.”