Okay, so we're going to do this. Taking a breath, I put my book down on the couch cushion beside me and stand. "She caught you with your dick in another girl's mouth. You're going to stand there and tell me that she doesn't deserve better than that?"
"I fucking screwed up, but can you blame me?"
"Yes. I can. I do." I step forward, and he throws up both hands and pushes me back. The backs of my legs hit the couch, and I let myself fall into it. "I'm not fighting you just so you can feel better about yourself." She wouldn't want me to, and I have to let her make her own choices.
"I saw her phone. I saw your texts." He drags a hand through his hair and his mouth twists. "You were supposed to be my best friend but you just couldn't handle that I'm first choice for once."
"What texts? What are you talking about?"
He pulls out his phone and taps on the screen. It's a screenshot of my text exchange with Mia from her birthday.
Arrow: I can't stop thinking about what you did at the Cavern tonight. I had no idea.
Mia: I was drinking. It was a mistake.
Arrow: Was it? It didn't feel like a mistake.
Mia: We're not talking about this again.
Arrow: Okay, but I'm at your door. Come open it so I can give you something.
"I saw it on her phone and took a screenshot. I saved it to my phone so I could decide what to do."
"Why are you looking at Mia's texts?"
He smacks the phone out of my hand. "Fucking stand up, Arrow. Look me in the eye and tell me nothing happened between you two."
But I can't. Of course I can't. Only now do I realize how incriminating those messages look, but I can't say nothing happened, and I promised Mia I wouldn't tell him something did. So I stand, look my best friend in the eye, and say, "You're the biggest fucking idiot. You had a good thing, and you fucked it up over nothing."
"I'm not you, Arrow. I'm not the guy the girls fall all over. I'm not the MVP or the smartest kid in the class. I'm none of those things, but I want them all. And maybe . . . maybe I was feeling like I wanted to be some of those things, even for a few drunken minutes in a dark room."
"That doesn't make any fucking sense. You might not have everything you want, but you had her, and you're a fucking idiot for not understanding what that's worth."
He snatches the phone off the couch and holds it up. "Was I supposed to ignore this?"
"I was texting her because I had no idea she could sing like that. You would have known that if you'd asked her, but you assumed the worst. Or maybe you wanted an excuse. Trish has been following you around for months, just waiting for her chance."
Brogan steps back-one step, two-then collapses into a chair. "She didn't cheat on me." He tugs on his hair with both hands and stares at the ceiling. "I see the way you look at her, Arrow. I know she sees it too, and I've spent all these months waiting for the moment she'd figure it out and leave me."
"Figure what out?"
He drops his hands to the arms of the chair and lowers his gaze to meet mine. "Figure out you were the better guy. Why would any girl want me when she could be with you?"
Guilt gnaws at my stomach. I sink onto the couch and lean forward, my elbows on my knees. I can't look at him.
He swallows so hard I hear it. "I was so convinced it was coming that I didn't question it. I just assumed. I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to be the dick, but she kept putting off being with me, and I get that it's her religion or whatever, but it started to eat at me. You know, like maybe it's not sex that's the problem but me."
I snap my head up. "What did you say?"
"I don't want to be like that," he says, wincing. "But we've been together for a year, Arrow, and a guy starts to wonder."
"She hasn't . . . You two haven't . . ." Yep, now I'm stuttering.
"Don't look at me like that. I love her, okay? I'm trying to be patient." He throws his head back and groans. "I was trying. I screwed up everything."
How long can a heart race without oxygen? Because blood whooshes through my ears but I can't breathe. I can't freaking breathe. She was still a virgin? I assumed in all the time since we talked about it she and Brogan would have . . . But they didn't.
Fuck. And she didn't think that was important to tell me? She never had sex with Brogan, but then one night with me and-
"Arrow?" Brogan calls, and I can tell by his tone that he's waiting for me to answer a question.
"I'm sorry. What?"
"You don't deny it, do you? You have feelings for her. Tell me I wasn't completely insane." The accusation is gone from his tone. Brogan is back. My empathetic buddy who gets that life just isn't fair sometimes, who gets it better than anybody, because life is never fucking fair to him.
Mia was a virgin. It doesn't matter. It shouldn't matter.
Fuck. It matters so much. That means something, doesn't it? But as much as I want to believe it means I'm more to her than she says, I'm afraid it only reinforces what she hinted at the night of her birthday. She thinks what we have is like what her mom and dad had-the hot, fast-burning passion. The impulsive mistake.
Brogan stares at me. Waiting for me to answer his question. No point in denying it. Chris knew; Brogan knew. Clearly it's all over my face every time I look at her.
I swallow hard. "Do you know what we talked about on her birthday? After I stopped by to give her my present?"
Brogan grimaces. I could always read him like a book, and right now he's trying to decide if he really wants to know or if maybe the truth might hurt even worse than his suspicions.
"We talked about you," I say, putting him out of his misery. "I asked her if you made her happy." When he opens his mouth to say something, I hold up a hand. "I know. That's not the kind of thing you ask your best friend's girl, but I did. Maybe I wanted her to tell me she was lonely with you or that you weren't good to her. I don't know what I expected, but it's not what I got."
He rubs the seam at the end of the chair arm. "What did she say?"
"She compared you to the sun. You keep her safe and warm." I don't want to lie to him at all, so I'm glad I don't have to lie to him about this. I'm glad I don't have to pretend. "It doesn't matter how I feel about her, Brogan. You're the one she wants." I'm the fire. The danger. I'm the mistake.
"I screwed up." He turns to me, looking me in the eye for the first time all day, and says, "I didn't believe I was even capable of hurting her. But you should have seen her face this morning. Christ, I didn't even know she cared that much, but when I pulled up at her dad's, she looked like she'd been cut in two." He swallows. "I knew she loved me, but I didn't believe she was in love with me. Maybe if I'd believed it, maybe if I had any fucking self-esteem, I wouldn't have assumed the worst from those texts, and I wouldn't have been such an idiot last night."
I stand up. I don't have it in me to sit here and listen to him bemoan his mistakes. I'm all out of sympathy. When I get to my bedroom door, I stop. I keep my gaze trained on the doorknob as I ask, "Have you heard her sing?"
"It's amazing, isn't it?" He sighs heavily. "That's her thing, you know? She's just too scared to go after it. Too practical."
"She told you her thing." I didn't mean to say it out loud. But there it is. Standing in the room with us like an unwanted guest who shares your secrets.
"Of course she did, Arrow. She's my girlfriend."
"Mia, could you come in here, please?" Gwen calls from the study as I walk by.
I stop in the middle of the text I was writing to Bailey and tuck my phone into my pocket.
Gwen's standing behind Uriah's desk, holding fabric swatches against the dark walnut furniture.
"Can I do something for you, Gwen?" I ask.
The picture of irritation, she flips through the swatches, past a bunch of dark paisley prints that would be a better fit for the gentlemen's club look Uriah has going on in here, and stops when she lands on a pure white swatch the texture of velvet. "I saw Arrow coming out of your room this morning," she says.
Shit. "Gwen, I-"
She holds up a hand. "Listen. I feel like somewhere along the way, you may have gotten the idea that you and I are friends, and I know I'm young, and I know I don't come from money, so maybe you think that makes us twinsies or some shit. But we're not. And you're not my friend. You're my employee. You're not Arrow's friend. You're Arrow's employee. So if you want to make fucking him part of your job description, go for it. But if you think you're going to sleep your way into a better position in this house, you can forget about it right now. It didn't work for your mother, and it's not going to work for you."