But I’m done doing that. From this point forward, I’m done with the charade. I loved Catherine like she was my own blood, but in Lincoln I’ve found the guy I’m sure I’m supposed to be with. It’s a daunting fact, and while I feel guilty about keeping him for myself, I know I won’t willingly give him up.
Lincoln sighs into me, and I move us to the bed, guiding him as he crawls in and then opens his arms for me.
We lie there for a while, scratching each other gently, caressing skin, exchanging tired, lazy kisses. It’s not leading anywhere, but in all of my moments with Lincoln, I’ve never felt more intimate.
Lincoln is playing with my hair, the signal that he’s about to nod off, and my heart warms at how familiar this has become. When you begin to fall for someone, to spend so much time with them, routines are put into place. As a young single person, we’re told to fear routine. That change and adventure is what we should seek. But this? I wouldn’t trade this for the world.
“I love you,” he whispers into the dark.
I almost don’t hear it, and for a moment I think I imagine it. But no, I’m not making things up. This man, this frustrating, gorgeous, confident, loving, irresistible man just said he loves me.
Pausing, I try to get my heartbeat under control. I just went from the edge of sleep to slammed into full-on alert mode in two second flat.
But by the time I glance up to look at Lincoln’s face, he’s fast asleep. His long eyelashes kiss his cheeks, that strong jaw moves slightly with the deep, settled breaths he’s taking.
He won’t know I said it, which is possibly a good thing for the first time. I need to test the words on my tongue, see how they make me feel.
“I love you, too.”
My voice is nothing but a feather, floating over a sleeping Lincoln. But the weight of those words is immense. Both an anvil on my soul and such a relief that I want to cry.
The feeling makes me even more exhausted, and I drift off to sleep in Lincoln’s arms.
33
Lincoln
The last month of the semester is a race to the finish.
Between football games, classes, trying to carve out time for Henley and everything else, I feel like I’m losing my mind.
Our team was selected to play in one of the bowl game playoffs that lead to the championship, and everyone is feeling the pressure. It’s like a powder keg at every practice, we’re just wholly ready to light that stadium up come Christmas break. Then, when we win, we’ll be in the championship just after New Year’s.
This is one of the moments I’ve been waiting for in my life, and each day that brings me closer just brings me one step toward my destiny.
Finals are literally nonexistent for me, as is my major. Any professor who assumes division one athletes are in college for any other reason besides their sport is in for a rude awakening.
But I finally have one night off, and I reserved it just for Henley. She gave me the key to her dorm room since she was on a shoot that her professor set up for her until a little later. Kyle, her professor, had gotten her onto the set of this epic magazine article, and she was the only student invited. It was a major accomplishment, and she’d learn a ton. My girl had been going on and on about it for weeks, and I was so proud of her.
And I am also in love with her. Weeks ago, I told her so while I drifted off to sleep. I know she thinks I don’t remember that, but I do. I haven’t brought it up again because I don’t think she’s ready to say it back, but I just needed her to know. Through all the craziness of our two lives the past month, and beyond it, I wouldn’t want anyone by my side but her.
Though I am a tad annoyed, because she lost her remote again and I am stuck in this room with no TV and no sex. I rummage around her bed, thinking it might have fallen in the cracks. And then I search under it, wading through the mountain of shoes she stores under here.
Having no luck, I focus on her desk, which is piled high with photography books and camera supplies. Scanning it, I don’t see the remote, so I open the middle drawer, thinking maybe Henley stuck it in here in a moment of not thinking.
My hands blindly fumble, hitting random desk items like a stapler and a box of paper clips, and then touch some rumpled piece of paper. I pull it out, thinking it had to be garbage, until I see what’s written on it.
At the top, in clear cursive letters, is written “Catherine O’Mara’s Bucket List.”
Wait, what? Catherine? How the hell …
I scan the list, looking at the lines crossing most of the items out. Go to Paris, dye her hair, go on a camping trip …
Wait a minute …
And then my eyes hit the last one.
Get revenge on Lincoln Kolb.
Just as I read it, my name in that pretty handwriting, the sound of the door opening hits my ears.
“Hey, Stallion, thanks for waiting. I brought us craft services from the set, got you two whole subs they were going to just chuck!” Henley sounds elated, and smug that she scored us free food.
“What the fuck is this?” I ask, turning to her with the list in my hand.
I don’t miss the way her eyes literally almost bug out of her head. “That’s … uh … nothing … uh …”
“Bullshit, Henley, don’t fucking lie to me. How the hell did you know Catherine O’Mara?”
My world is tumbling off its axis, everything feeling too close and incredibly spaced out all at once. None of this makes sense, and I can’t connect thoughts in my head. It’s like my synapses refuse to fire because they’re just so goddamn confused.
“Why were you snooping around in my drawers?” she demands, which only gets me more irate.
“Oh, no you don’t. We’re not playing that game. What the fuck is this?” I shake the paper at her while she lunges for it.
Henley looks like a crazed animal, one who is caught between being eaten and jumping off a cliff to her death. She has nowhere to go, no excuse to escape this.
“Catherine was my best friend, we lived on dividing lines between Little Port and Winona Falls. I was there every time she got sick, from the time we were three to up until her death. She was a sister to me. When she started dating you, I’d never seen her more giddy. And then her cancer came back. And you dumped her like she was a piece of trash. So, we started the list. Everything she wanted to do before she died, because we both knew this time it wasn’t letting go of her. Getting revenge on you was one of her top priorities, for the way you’d broken her heart. For the way you’d embarrassed her.”
Henley is huffing out breaths, her cheeks pink, her eye contact steely. This is the face of grieving, of a girl so angry at the world that she can’t contain it. How come I’d never seen this lying underneath the mask she’d used to fool me? I’d never had one inkling.
Suddenly, it all clicks into place. The town she grew up in being right next door to mine. The friend she promised she’d do all those things for. Flashing in my mind is every interaction we’ve ever shared, and I know now …
Henley tricked me. She sabotaged me, lured me in like some kind of siren just so she could bring me to my knees.
“This is fucking insane.” I breathe, not talking to anyone really but shaking my head as if I’ll wake up from this nightmare.
“You dumped her! In the middle of everyone! Knowing she had cancer! What kind of person does that? An asshole. A horrible human being, that’s who!” Henley screams, throwing her hands up.
Jesus Christ, she’s trying to defend her actions because I dumped a high school girlfriend three weeks into us dating.
“You don’t fucking know me!” I shout at her, veins popping in my neck.
Henley gets right up in my face, her cheeks redder than any shade I’ve ever seen. Even with venom running through my blood, I can appreciate that this girl isn’t a fucking chump. She’ll jump into the ring with lions, snakes, or otherwise and give them hell. It’s probably why I was so fucking attracted to her—why I still am despite her massive betrayal.
<
br /> “And you don’t fucking know me. You think that because I let you inside me, that you know everything there is to know about me? You’re a moron, Lincoln. You wouldn’t know how to learn about a woman if she wrote a hand-curated fucking list. All there is to understand is her bra size and her favorite sexual position, isn’t that the case?”
“Get the fuck out of here with that, Henley. Don’t you even fucking dare. Have I not been here every day for you? Walking you home from class, from parties at one in the morning, helping you bungee jump even though you didn’t even want to? And yeah, being inside you might be fucking heaven for me, but it’s more than that. I told you shit I’ve never told another girl before. I’ve said stuff to you that I haven’t felt for anyone. I told you I’m in love with you, Henley! Not that you returned the feeling. And now this? Yeah, apparently I don’t fucking know you because someone I thought I knew inside and out was just here to fucking dupe me.”
I throw my hands up in the air and storm away from her, so hurt that I can’t even look at her. I feel like there is a knife jutting out of my back, and at the same time feel like I plunged one through hers. Because if I’m being honest, I kind of feel like I deserved this too.
What I did to Catherine O’Mara was horrible, I know that. I never should have dumped her like that. In fact, I shouldn’t have dumped her at all. I was selfish, horny, and looking for a good time with a hot girl. Her illness, and all the issues it brought with it, was not what I wanted for senior year. And the issues it dug up inside me, about my own mortality and my own remission … it was more than I could handle.
I was a complete asshole to her, and what I did was dirty and wrong. There were so many times I wanted to apologize, to drive over to her house, to tell her that I should have treated her better. That I could have been there for her as a friend, knowing what she was going through.
But I didn’t. Because I was a douchebag. And just now, when I thought I was starting to change, when I thought I found the one girl who could make me a better man …
She turns around and backhands me to the heart. Henley had double crossed me, fooled me once and then twice without me even realizing it.
Shame on me, because I was the one who fucked up first. But shame on her for being ruthless enough to carry this out.
“What I did to Catherine, it was terrible. She didn’t deserve one minute of it, and I’m so fucking sorry for that. She was a wonderful girl. But what you’ve done? It surpasses all the selfish things I’ve done in my life. You’re a con artist, I’m not even sure I know who is under that mask. I don’t think I want to know. I may have been an asshole, but at least I was honest and upfront. I didn’t lie and cheat to break someone’s heart.”
I shake my head in dismay, trying to work my words past the lump in my throat. I’m losing it all right now. The newfound, quiet, softer side of myself I hadn’t given room to for many years. A friendship that made me laugh until I was almost pissing my pants. And the girl who I thought I might be with until I was old and gray.
“I didn’t know what to do, after I got to know you. I swear, Lincoln, I’ve been so messed up for weeks.” Tears are coming down her face now.
“For weeks? You’ve been messed up for weeks? How about the almost four months we’ve been together? How about every single day we’ve spent with each other? The nights I’ve spent in your bed, or the weekends you’ve spent in mine. Jesus Christ, Henley, you really excelled in the whole undercover game, didn’t you? Because I never saw this coming. You did it, you got your revenge. Was it worth it?”
Rhiannon walks in the door on the tail end of me telling Henley off. “What the hell is going on?”
“Not now, Rhi—” Henley starts, but I cut her off.
“Your roommate is a fucking liar.” I all but slap the piece of paper into Rhiannon’s hands. “Feel free to explain, Henley. We’re done.”
And without waiting for anymore of her traitorous, devious words, I storm out of there.
I guess she fucking did. Got revenge on Lincoln Kolb. Broke my fucking heart.
Thanks to her, I’ll never trust a girl with it again.
34
Henley
It’s been twenty-four hours since my world imploded, and no one I know on this campus will talk to me.
After Lincoln stormed out, Rhiannon took the letter, read it over, and had so many questions that I thought my head would explode.
I explained the entire, dirty thing to her, from the beginning to the end. And when I finished, I saw nothing but hurt in her eyes. The first question out of her mouth was, “Why didn’t you think you could talk to me about her? About this? I thought we were friends.”
We are. We were. I’m not sure if she’ll ever speak to me again, after what I’ve done. She certainly hasn’t in the last day.
Rhiannon basically listened to my side of the story, and the more I told it, the worse it sounded to my own ears. Catherine and I were childish, stuck in teenage drama and made all that more upset by her diagnosis. We almost blamed her getting sick on Lincoln, that’s how far our hatred went.
When I stopped talking, stopped answering questions, she said she was so disappointed in me that she couldn’t stay in our room. She packed what little she had left to take home for winter break, which started tomorrow … or today, I guess, and then went to Alden’s room for the night.
I have no idea what’s going to happen next semester. Here we had this budding friendship, this bond that you can only have with your freshman year roommate. They’re your friend by default, and you cling to each other to survive the new adultness of college. Rhiannon was the closest thing I had to Catherine since her death, and now I’d pretty much ruined that.
It all hurt, each gaping wound carving fault lines in my heart.
Lincoln was right, I’m a liar. A cheat. A con artist. And I hadn’t even tried to make him see what I’d come to feel for him. Instead, I stood by Catherine, defending her honor to a man who had never been anything but wonderful to me. I screamed at him, called him the worst kind of names, and turned this all around on him.
When I did try to take ownership, my words came up short. They were a copout, and not at all how I really feel inside. I did this to myself, both lost the man I’m in love with and dismantled my own heart. I knew, going in, that the fallout would be messy, but I never expected to feel like this.
This is that can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t function kind of heartbreak that all the movies and books tell you about. I never actually thought it was real, until Lincoln Kolb came into my life.
I’m in love with him, plain and simple. There is nothing else I want more now than to apologize, to grovel, and to have him come back to me. My entire life, I’ve been an independent woman. I never needed much in the arena of love, could take care of myself, had my eyes focused solely on my career and my photography.
But now, the only thing I can seem to think about is telling Lincoln how I feel. Apologizing, begging, doing whatever it takes to make up for the pain I’ve caused.
I’ve been sitting in this room all day, staring at my cell phone, my laptop, and any other device or mode that Lincoln might be able to contact me on. He’s returned none of my attempts to apologize. Not my calls, or texts, or emails, or social media messages.
I can’t do this anymore. I know it’s been less than a day that my treachery has sunk in, but I’m not going to sit idly by while my relationship goes up in flames. I’m not going to waste another minute not telling Lincoln that I’m in love with him.
Because if I learned anything from Catherine, it’s that life is way too fragile, and way too short.
Swiping away the tears that seem to be permanently pouring down my face, I throw on sneakers and a sweatshirt. Taking the tunnel between our two tower dorms at a sprint, my heart leaps into my throat thinking about seeing Lincoln’s face in just a few moments. All around me, students carry their bags to their cars or parent’s cars, headed home for Christmas or the other various
holidays. My parents aren’t coming until tonight to pick me up, which luckily gives me the option to apologize to Lincoln.
I bound up the stairs, sneaking onto his floor before the door closes behind a retreating student. Walking to his door, I push my hand into my chest, just above my heart, trying to calm it.
Standing in front of it, I knock. Wait a second. And then knock again.
My heart falls, because I know he’s not here. I’ve missed this shot. It’ll be days before I can get to him, if I can get to him.
When there is no answer at his door, and the rest of the dorm seems to be silent as a church mouse; I turn to leave.
It’s time to go home, back to the house where Catherine and I planned up this whole bucket list, and lick my wounds.
Then, I’ll figure out how to win back the man I love.
35
Lincoln
This should be the game of life.
Well, the game of my life before the actual game of my life.
My head should be completely screwed on, focused on nothing other than plays, formations, and throwing the perfect spiral.
Except, as I go into the second quarter with our team trailing the opponent by ten points, all I can think about is the painful throbbing in my chest. I know it’s not a real physical pain, there is no medical condition I can attribute to this.
This aching, tearing, muscle being ripped from muscle feeling is what the love gurus call a broken heart. This is what happens when the girl you’re in love with betrays you. This is how it feels to fall completely for someone and then have the relationship come to an earth-shattering halt.
Fool Me Twice Page 15
