You Make Me (2 page)

As a boyfriend, he was equally awesome. On time and considerate, he gave me compliments and paid for everything. There was literally nothing wrong with him.

I was proud to be on his arm. I was proud of him.

The music was pumping and because he knew I liked to dance, he put my coat in the makeshift coatroom off the foyer and led me to the dance floor in the main room. Couples were already grinding on each other and flailing around. Dancing was probably the one thing Ethan wasn’t so hot at. But he knew it and still tried anyway and had a sense of humor about it. Mostly his dancing involved spinning me in circles or pulling me against him at random intervals.

Our rhythm was always off with each other and we couldn’t even seem to grind properly. Instead of winding up between his legs dirty dancing I kept bouncing off his chest. “This isn’t working!” I said loudly over the music, laughing.

“I suck, I’m sorry.” He leaned over and gave me a kiss. “Want something to drink? You dance, I’ll forage.”

“That would be awesome, thanks.”

He lingered briefly, giving me a serious look, one that made my insides melt.

“I love you,” he murmured.

My heart swelled in appreciation the way it always did when he shared his feelings. “I love you, too.”

He squeezed my hand and left, and I joined a group of girls who were dancing together, jumping up and down.

We made it through two songs before suddenly the music cut out. “What’s going on?” the girl next to me, Olivia, asked.

“I have no idea.”

Aubrey had come into the room and she headed straight over to me. “Caitlyn! You have to come to the foyer. Ethan sent me to get you.”

“What? Why? What’s going on? Is Ethan okay?” He’d been gone for all of eight minutes. I had no clue why he wanted to see me.

She was biting her lip and her eyes were huge. “Everything is fine. Shut up and come with me.” Aubrey’s eyes were even lighter than Ethan’s and there was an odd gleam in them.

Nerves made me tense up as she dragged me by the hand. People were glancing over at me and there was a sense of anticipation in the room. I didn’t like being the center of attention. I never had. As a kid, I’d mostly been outdoors running around on my own or with my brother, and later, with Heath. School and public events were things I had equated with shame and humiliation, being mocked and teased. I had learned to be defiant, to raise my chin up, to fight back with barbs and an air of nonchalance to prove I didn’t give a shit. But I did. I always had, and my prickly pride was back in place as I felt all those eyes on me.

But Ethan was standing at the foot of the grand staircase, smiling, and I told myself to take a deep breath, put away the attitude. These people didn’t know that other Cat. I belonged here. I fit in. The Gamma house was turn of the century and while the staircase was no Jack and Rose on the Titanic deal, it was impressive with its wooden spindles. Classic New England.

“Here she is,” Aubrey said in a weird, singsong voice.

“Ethan?” My voice sounded unsure and I wished I’d hit that flask a little harder. I was trying to remember if there was some tradition involving the fraternity president at Homecoming, but I couldn’t think of anything.

“Come up here,” Ethan urged me, taking my hand and leading up the steps to the first landing.

I looked down and saw fifty people staring up at us expectantly. “What is going on?” My heart was racing and my palms were clammy. When I turned back, I wobbled a little in my heels and squeezed his hands hard, wanting to be clued in. Surprises suck. Surprises are selfish, because they’re only fun for the person giving them, not the person receiving them.

But then he went down on one knee and for a second I thought I might actually pass out. What the what? He wasn’t. He couldn’t be.

He was.

The box came out of his jacket. His blue eyes were earnest. He spoke words but I didn’t hear them. The room was hot yet my skin felt cold. I had goose bumps and a nervous twitch in my hands and I was aware of so many bodies below us, shuffling and whispering, a low hum, like insects on a summer night. Yet all I could really see was Ethan’s face, and I focused hard on him, on those eyes, on his lips moving, afraid I was dreaming. That I would wake up and it would all be gone.

“Caitlyn Michaud, will you marry me?”

I nodded, because I couldn’t speak, because this couldn’t be happening. My throat felt closed, and there were tears in my eyes. Yet Ethan wanted to marry me, and that was a huge ass halo cut diamond ring staring up at me from the velvet of the ring box. But then I managed to say, “Yes. Yes, I will marry you.”

Because only an idiot would say no.

I loved him and this was everything I could have ever asked for and more.

He gave a whoop and stood up, taking the platinum band from the box and sliding it onto my finger. It fit. Perfectly. For the crowd downstairs, he fist pumped and they all cheered and shouted. I laughed, feeling the blush race across my cheeks. It was real. Ethan had just proposed and I had the hefty weight of a rock on my finger to prove it. Aubrey was jumping up and down and grinning.

Ethan grabbed me in a bear hug and kissed me, hard. “God, you make me so happy.”

I laughed and let him squeeze me tight. It was perfect. Ethan was perfect. And we would have a perfect life.

But then over his shoulder I spotted a guy standing at the top of the stairs, in the shadows.

I stopped laughing.

My stomach clenched and my breath caught.

Ethan jostled me and I fought to focus on what I was seeing.

It couldn’t be…

But it was. The dark head that had seemed familiar earlier was familiar.

Because it was my first love. My soulmate.

Heath.

Watching me.

Chapter Two

I blinked, sure I was wrong. But I wasn’t. It was him, with shorter hair and broader shoulders.

“Heath!” I yelled out, overcome with shock and joy that he was there. Alive. Not dead in a ditch or in prison. “Oh, my God!”

Stepping away from Ethan, I squeezed his forearms to indicate it was okay. Then without thought for the fact that everyone was still staring at me or that I had just gotten engaged sixty seconds earlier, I ran in my high heels the ten feet to Heath hovering in the shadows and threw myself at him.

“Hey, Cat,” he murmured, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me tight against his chest. His lips buried into my hair.

I sank against him, breathing in deeply. He smelled the same, earthy and masculine. He felt different, bigger, more muscular, but his hands were just as I remembered, strong and tender, and his voice was low, casual. A thousand memories assaulted me all at once, running along the coast, going out on the water in a stolen boat, laughing, talking. Kissing.

“Oh, God,” I whispered, pulling back to study his face, to cup his cheeks and outline his bottom lip with my thumb. I couldn’t believe it was real. He was real. “You’re alive. You’re here.”

The corner of his mouth turned up. “I am.”

“Caitlyn, who is this?” Ethan had come up behind me and his hand landed on the small of my back.

I suddenly realized how close I was to Heath and I jerked back, cheeks flushing with heat. My hands shook and my voice sounded high-pitched and breathless. “Ethan! This is Heath, my…

There was no way I could explain who Heath really was to me. How much he had meant. How I thought I wouldn’t survive when he left. What it meant to have him punch a hole in my perfect world now and walk back into it.

“My brother,” I finished.

As Ethan’s eye’s bulged, Heath gave a soft snort of derision beside me.

“You have a brother?” Ethan asked, sounding completely astonished, as he should. “I didn’t know you have a brother.”

I did. A biological one that I no longer spoke to and who I didn’t acknowledge, but Ethan didn’t know that, and I never wanted him to.

“Is that what I am?” Heath asked, sounding both amused and annoyed. “A brother from another mother, Cat?”

“He’s my foster brother,” I added. “My family always took in foster kids and some stayed longer than others. Heath stayed long enough that we got close.” In a manner of speaking.

“I didn’t know that. You never mentioned foster siblings.”

Shit. Ethan was looking at me like he didn’t know me. But he did. He knew the me I wanted to be, the me I could be. I didn’t want to drag him through my past. But here was Heath. My past. And who I had once considered my present and my future.

Speaking of…

“Where the hell have you been?” I asked Heath, my initial excitement turning to frustration as I realized that he had just appeared out of nowhere and hadn’t even bothered to speak to me first. Let alone any sort of text or other contact.

He shrugged. “Around.”

Seriously? I went straight into pissed off. Four fucking years. Four years and not a word. “That’s not an answer. I thought you were dead!”

“Not dead. Though I wasn’t aware you would care either way.”

Was he crazy? Confusion made my breath shallow, my palms sweat. I had suffered when he left. I had cried until I threw up. I had taken off after him, only to walk two miles and realize I had no idea when he’d left or where he was going. I had stalked him online, never finding anything. I had stopped eating. Stopped showering.

And he was going to stand there and act like I hadn’t cared?

“How could you say that?” My voice shook.

But his eyes just studied me, dark and angry. “Maybe this isn’t the time or the place to discuss it.” He took my hand into his.

My frustration faded at his touch. A deep, intense longing rose up in me. God, I had missed him. But he merely turned my hand so that my new engagement ring was visible.

“Congratulations, Cat.” A mocking smile crossed his face. His jaw was tense. He took my hand and gave it to Ethan, who laced his fingers through mine.

“I’m Heath, Cat’s foster brother, like she said,” he told Ethan, and I could hear the edgy irony in his voice. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Ethan Walsh. Nice to meet you, too. It sounds like you and Caitlyn have a lot of catching up to do. Maybe tomorrow we can all grab some coffee.”

“Sure. Sounds
delightful
.”

That was attitude. Plain and simple. My eyes narrowed at Heath and I shook my head slightly in warning. What the hell was he doing? Why was he even there?

“I didn’t mean to interrupt a big moment,” he added. “I’m heading downstairs.”

A million questions were racing through my head, but there was no way to ask them. Not where we were. Not with who I was with listening.

Ethan stuck his hand out, because Ethan had good manners. For a second Heath just stared at it, but then he took it and shook briefly.

I’d never seen him in a suit before. He looked… dangerous. Very James Bond. He was even better looking than I remembered and I had spent a lot of time coaxing his image out of my memory banks. Especially alone in my bed late at night when I was lonely and my body ached.

“See ya,” he told me casually, before turning and leaving.

That wasn’t a promise of anything. It didn’t mean that he would or wouldn’t ever see me again. It certainly wasn’t a goddamn explanation for why he’d left or where the hell he’d been. What an asshole. What a complete and total asshole.

Ethan was taking a sip from his flash and I held out my hand. “Can I have a sip of that, please? My throat is dry.”

“Sure.” Ethan handed it to me and gave me a worried look. “You okay? You seem really shaken up.”

“I’m fine.” I wasn’t. I wasn’t even remotely fine. I took a huge swallow of whiskey. It burned, but it felt good. It felt hot whereas my entire body felt like ice. It was like I’d been dunked in the river in January. The shock had numbed me before I felt wracked by shivers of disbelief.

“He calls you Cat?” Ethan mused. “I’ve never heard anyone call you that.”

There was a reason for that.

I craned my neck to see Heath, but he had already disappeared down the stairs and into the crowd. God, the crowd. They were mostly disinterested, having gone back to their own conversations, but some were still glancing up at us, and I saw Aubrey biting her fingernail and studying us with narrowed eyes.

No. Just no.

I wasn’t going to let this ruin my night. This was Homecoming. I glanced down at the ring on my finger. It sat perfectly beneath my blue manicure, a rhinestone floating on the tip of each nail. They matched, the sparkles on my nails and the sparkle of the ring, and I hadn’t even known that box with a proposal would come out tonight. Not a clue. Ethan wanted to marry me and Heath wasn’t going to ruin it.

Even as my hand shook and my stomach fisted and my heart squeezed, I smiled up at Ethan. “I prefer Caitlyn.”

“I’ll call you whatever you want as long as I can call you mine,” he said, with a little smile, though I knew him well enough to hear the slight edge of insecurity there.

“I’m yours,” I said, reaching up to give him a soft kiss.

But even as I did, my thoughts were elsewhere and my eyes were drifting downstairs, searching, searching.

The first time I saw Heath I was sitting on the sagging back porch of our house, swinging my legs between two posts, eating a pile of blueberries I had picked off the neighbor’s bushes. I liked to maneuver them around my mouth, feeling the waxy skin on the inside of my cheeks. The car had pulled into the gravel drive and I knew who it was—it was a social worker car. They were always the same. An inexpensive sedan in blue or burgundy. The social workers were always the same too. Smiling women with a distracted air to them, wearing long skirts or capri pants in the summer, fur trimmed boots with puffer coats in the winter.

She gave me a wave as she stepped out of the car. “Hello. Is your father here?”

I nodded. “In the house.” I could have gone and gotten him, but I was more curious what annoyance she had brought with her this time. I was almost sixteen and by that time, I’d had around forty foster siblings. They were a blur of faces and names and bizarre habits. Some were cool, some were quiet, some I actually liked. Most hated me on sight for no reason other than that I had my parents, regardless of how shitty they were most of the time. Those ones liked to stand in my way in the hallway so I couldn’t pass and stole my clothes and put mouse shit in my cereal.