Page 24 of One Bet

I could only see Alex holding that ring box, smiling with just the slightest glow of pink staining his cheeks, and she was married.

“Anyway. If you don’t want to go, I guess I’ll find out what’s going on myself.” He laid his hand over mine. “I have some other news too.”

I wasn’t really interested in his news right then. I shoved my hands through my hair, thoughts flitting around like startled caged birds. I needed to call Alex, warn him. When that was done I wanted to kill Susie. How could she lie to Alex? He wasn’t disposable. Anger on my best friend’s behalf burned in my gut.

“Did you know?” It might’ve sounded more like an accusation than I meant it to.

“No. Jameson was my driver yesterday and it came up.”

“Alex came up?” I didn’t know or remember Jameson, but I knew Alex, and he would be heartbroken, devastated and I didn’t want to be the one to tell him, but I also didn’t want to know and not tell him.

“No.”

Normally, in a situation like this, I would call Alex. He always knew what to do.

“Do I tell him?” I didn’t wait for an answer. “I have to tell him. If he finds out that I knew…”

It would kill him. A new thought occurred to me and I looked up at Keaton with a hint of fear in my eyes. “Are you going to tell Jameson?”

Oh shit. What if Jameson killed Alex? I couldn’t wrap my head around one thought long enough to decide anything.

Keaton took my mug from my hand and put it on the counter so he could brace a hand on each of my shoulders. “Avery, we don’t know anything. Maybe…there’s an explanation.”

“For cheating? For leading Alex on then going home to her husband and kids?” This was the same kind of injustice she’d spray-painted the Alpha house for. Not exactly the same, but a lie was a lie. “Do you have any idea how many times we graffitied the Alpha house because of what happened to her, for the way she was treated? Because she got treated like she didn’t matter.”

Not to mention my article which was best left in the past, way in the past.

“And now, she’s doing the same thing, well, kind of, to Alex and to Jameson.” That bitch. A little bit of the old, kick-ass first, ask questions later me poked her head out from wherever she’d been hiding all these years.

“We don’t know everything.”

“What’s there to know? She has a husband and kids, and she was out with us the other night porn-kissing my best friend in a bar. What detail do I still need to know, Keaton?” And if he thought any of this was okay, we had nothing left to say to each other.

“I don’t know, but…maybe we should wait and talk to her first.”

Keaton was the kind of guy who gave the benefit of the doubt. Maybe because of the way he grew up or maybe because he was just good-hearted. But I wasn’t so easy to get along with. I saw things for what they were and the old me spoke up about it. Unless someone I cared about asked me not to.

One Decade Ago

I should’ve known when I’d smashed my cell phone screen into a spider web of broken glass on the edge of the bathtub, and when I missed the bus from the marina to Glouster, and when I received my first C on a test, in my life, that I should’ve gone home and crawled back in bed. My nice warm boat bed with the thousand count sheets and the man who’d talked to me until the wee hours then held me until his alarm blared for his five-a.m. practice.

I never should’ve left the boat. At least then I wouldn’t have been so surprised to return to the boat and find the older version of Keaton holding a pair of my fishnet stockings by the toe and staring at me like he’d just found the holy grail.

I wanted to run, and I didn’t know why, instead, I stood watching him, thinking nothing more than he was what Keaton would look like in twenty years. I breathed out, and he turned to look me up and down. “Yours, I presume?”

Not an impressively brilliant deduction since I was wearing the matching pair and he’d spent a few seconds gawking at them, I nodded.

He chuckled and held out the stocking to me. I snatched it and hid it behind my back. “I have to say, you’re not the usual kind of girl Keaton brings to the boat.”

Yeah. No shit. My skin had to be fifty or sixty shades of red since my cheeks were on fire. But it wasn’t every day I trespassed on a boat to find a man holding my intimate garments pinched between his fingers. “Well, he’s expanding his horizons.”

Oh no, this wasn’t going well.

“I see that.” Oh hell, they had the same grin. “Do you happen to know where Keaton is?”

And as if he’d been summoned by his dad’s question, Keaton slid open the door and stepped through. “Dad!”

And they hugged with what sounded like some painful back slapping and a round of laughter.