Hector

  Her mind raced now as she paced in her room. Could Hector have really done something with Drew, even if it now felt wrong and had turned Drew’s offer down? She remembered his interest in Drew before he showed any in Charlee. Her head buzzed with so many things coming to her now.

  The day after the keg party, Charlee had gone back to bed, and Drew was gone when she woke. Then Drew had acted so weirdly when she got home, and Charlee had asked her where she’d been. Unable to take it anymore, she rushed out of her room, stopping only when she saw Drew’s phone on the table in the front room. She picked it up and opened the text message log and clicked on Hector’s name. She scrolled randomly, reading the first exchange it stopped on.

  Drew: I can’t believe you’ve never noticed. She so pathetically obvious about how lovesick she is!

  Hector: Yeah, well, kill me I hadn’t. Maybe my mind being so preoccupied with another girl had something to do with it.

  “Are you . . .” Charlee looked up at Drew, who stood by the dining room entrance staring at Charlee holding her phone.

  Hot tears blurred Charlee’s vision now. Drew had been the number one advocate all her life for trying to convince Charlee she wasn’t pathetic. Her using the word in describing her, and to Hector of all people, hurt more than her not telling her about the texts.

  “Did you know about the dog party before I went to it?” Her words were a strained whisper. She could hardly believe she was saying them.

  Drew’s expression fell, and Charlee knew right then it was true. “Who told you?”

  A numbing chill ran down her spine. This couldn’t be possible. “Danny did. Is it true?”

  She shook her head, but Drew’s words said otherwise. “I couldn’t tell you, Charlee.”

  Feeling as if her heart had just been ripped out of her chest, Charlee sucked in her breath but couldn’t hold back the emotion any longer. “You knew?” Drew’s own lip quivered now. There was no denying Charlee’s worst nightmare. Drew had done the unthinkable and joined the bullies against her. “You knew and you let me go?” She raised her now-sobbing voice. “Encouraged me to when you knew I didn’t even want to in the first place!”

  Drew’s dad came to the dining room doorway, looking very concerned.

  “I wanted to tell you,” Drew took a few steps toward her. “But I couldn’t.”

  “Why? How could you let me go? How could you do that me?” The pain was so profound Charlee could barely breathe between sobs now.

  Drew turned to face her dad then Charlee again. “I just couldn’t. It wasn’t supposed to turn out that way. You know I’d never hurt you like that, Charlee.”

  “But you did! You knowingly let me do something that you knew would humiliate me. You pushed me to do it!” She sobbed, unable to understand how she could be so wrong about Drew. Then she gasped and looked back down at Drew’s phone in her hand. “You and Hector text?”

  Drew’s eyes became a little wider. “I didn’t tell you because I thought you’d be mad.”

  “You think!” Charlee dropped the phone onto the sofa and spun around.

  The mortification that possibly Drew had told Hector about the dog party and maybe he too knew that Drew had been in on it sunk in.

  “Charlee, please let me explain,” Drew hurried into her room behind her.

  Charlee grabbed her still-packed carryon, her purse, and her keys and rushed out past Drew. “I’ll send for the rest of my things.”

  “Don’t go, Charlee. Please!” Drew sobbed. “I’m begging you. I’m so sorry.”

  Ignoring Drew’s pleas, Charlee walked out of the room and stalked through the front room.

  “It’s late, Charlee,” Drew’s dad insisted now also. “Maybe you should wait until tomorrow morning if you really wanna leave.”

  “I’ll be fine, Mr. Morris,” she managed to say before walking out.

  She wanted to thank him for his hospitality, thank him for allowing her to stay there rent-free all this time, but she couldn’t. Her throat was so swollen it hurt. Saying the few words she had said alone was a struggle. Drew followed her all the way out, continuing to plead and apologize over and over.

  Throwing her suitcase in the backseat of the car, she glanced back at Drew, who was now on her knees on her front lawn while her dad stood over her with one hand on her shoulder. “I love you, Charlee,” she continued to sob.

  Never, not in a million years, would Charlee be able to understand how Drew of all people could do this to her.

  ~*~

  The continued buzzing woke Hector. Frowning, he glanced at his nightstand as his phone finally stopped buzzing. He laid his head back and began to close his eyes when the buzzing began again. Grumbling, he reached for it. It took a moment for his eyes to focus enough to read the name on the screen, but he sat up instantly when he saw it was Drew calling him.

  “Hello?” he answered, hoping nothing was wrong.

  Drew said something he couldn’t understand through her sobs, but his heart was already racing. Something was definitely wrong. “What?”

  “Is she with you?”

  “Charlee? No? She’s not with you?” Hector pulled his legs off to the side of his bed.

  “She left about an hour ago. She was upset.” Hector heard Drew take a deep breath and clear her throat in an attempt to speak more clearly. “I figured it would take a while to get to your place since I’m assuming that’s where she’s going unless she’s headed straight to the airport.”

  “The airport?” Hector gripped his phone. “Why would she go to the airport? What’s she upset about?”

  “I couldn’t tell her, Hector. I know she probably thinks I’m the worst person in the world, but I couldn’t, and it killed me to not be able to, but I swear if I had known how things were going to turn out I would’ve never encouraged her to go to that party.”

  Hector stood up, bringing his hand to his confused head as he shook it. “What party? What are you talking about?”

  “The dog party last year. She said she told you.”

  The puzzle came together suddenly, but he still didn’t understand what Drew was saying exactly. “Yeah, she told me about it. So back up. What happened now?”

  “She found out I knew it was one of those parties before she went and didn’t tell her.”

  Everything Hector was trying to put together in his head stopped at once. “You knew?”

  “Yes, but I couldn’t tell her—”

  “You fucking knew they were setting her up, and you still let her go?”

  “I couldn’t explain to her because my dad was here. I wouldn’t have even cared if he found out about the picture I texted an old boyfriend of my tits, Hector. But I didn’t want him to hear the rest.”

  The anger was already too overwhelming, and she was still saying things that made no sense to him. “What are you talking about? What does that have to do with you not telling your best friend she was being set up?” Thoughts of Charlee being out there right now possibly on a plane back home inundated him. He rushed to the window, hoping he’d see her car out there.

  “Danny came to me and confessed about the party. He said he only asked Charlee because word had gotten around that he was talking to her and he was being pressured to invite her to it. He said he only had because he knew how shy she was and was certain she would turn him down, which she did.”

  Hector started out of his bedroom toward the front door. He hadn’t seen Charlee’s car from his window, but maybe he would if he walked outside. This shit was getting more confusing by the second. “I don’t get it. She turned him down? So how she’d end up there anyway?”

  “I convinced her to go.”

  Feeling even more disgusted with Drew, he understood completely now why Charlee would be so upset. He stopped at the top of his porch steps. “Why? Why would you do that?” Then it suddenly hit him. “How did she find all this out now?”

  Drew was quiet for a moment then finally spoke again. “I don’t know. All she said was Danny
told her, so I’m assuming she saw him in Maryland this weekend.”

  Hector stopped once again at the bottom of the stairs and thought about that. Charlee had only mentioned meeting up with her mom on Saturday for lunch. She didn’t say anything about seeing the asshole. He did remember thinking she seemed a little weird on the flight home and when they said goodbye tonight, but he’d assumed she was just as exhausted as he was.

  “Hector, she didn’t give me a chance to explain,” she said, her voice cracking once again. “And I know it was awful of me, but I had no choice.”

  “What do you mean you had no choice? Of course you did. You know what?” he said ready to hang up on her ass. “I don’t even wanna hear your bullshit reasons. What you did was fucked up, and I don’t blame her for leaving. I don’t care that you’re feeling like shit right now either. You should be.” Slammed with another realization, he stopped where this thought was going, his mind rewinding back to a few things that infuriated him even further. “Was this why you said you had to do this for Charlee as much as yourself?”

  ”Yes,” she whispered.

  “You selfish little bitch.” The words flew out without thought. “So after you literally helped set up your best friend, the one you claim to care so much about and who deserves to be happy, you watched her fall apart, saw what it did to her, and then you brought her out here and took credit for making everything better. So you could feel better about yourself?”

  “I do care for her!” She yelled. “What I did could not be helped. I feel terrible about it, yes, and does it help me feel better to see her happy? Yes! Because she does deserve to be. And you will listen to my reasons, damn it. You are no angel either. You know all about feeling guilty and wanting desperately to make up for it.”

  Hector didn’t say anything, but he continued to listen to her, partly because she was right: he wasn’t without his own faults, but mostly because she was hysterical now and he figured he may as well let her finish. But there was no way she’d let her lump them in the same category. He wouldn’t even help set up someone he didn’t know well much less one of his closest friends.

  She was just about done with her explanation when his other line clicked and he saw it was Charlee. His heart jumped to his throat with excitement, but at the same time with the dread of hearing her cry. Because if Drew was hysterical about this, he knew Charlee must be too.

  “That’s her on the other line,” he said quickly. “I gotta go.”

  “Call me back,” was all he heard as he clicked to the other line.

  “Charlee!” he said, bracing himself to hear her sob.

  The last thing he expected was to hear a dude on the other end and the resounding words he said loudly. “You’re an asshole. You know that? And I don’t care if you are a badass boxer. If you were in front of me right now, I’d still take a fucking swing at you!”

  Chapter 31

  “Walter?”

  “You suck!” Since the day Walter had thrown his own backpack at the fence after getting his ass kicked in front of Charlee, Hector hadn’t heard him this wound up. “How could you do that to her, man? If I’d known this is what you were up to, getting your jollies by doing two best friends, I would’ve never agreed that I was okay with you asking her out.”

  “Whoa, whoa—” Hector tried to interrupt, but Walter kept on.

  “Charlee’s not like one of those skanky whores you’re used to dating, okay? She’s a nice girl, and she doesn’t deserve for some asshole stud like you to come along and trample on her—”

  “Dude! What the hell are you talking about? I didn’t trample anything! Everything’s cool with Charlee and me.”

  “Oh, you call banging her best friend behind her back cool?”

  “What!”

  “If everything is so cool with you two, why is your girlfriend passed out on my bed right now after crying herself to sleep?”

  Hector spun around, already on his way up his porch steps. “She’s in your bed right now?”

  “Yes. She said she didn’t know where else to go, but she did say she’s driving home tomorrow. You know how long that’s gonna take her? All because not even Charlee was enough for you.”

  Hector rushed through his house and into his room. Holding his phone between his shoulder and his ear, he pulled off his shorts and pulled on a pair of jeans. “She is enough for me, Walter. I don’t know where she got the idea that I’m doing anything with Drew.”

  He sat down and pulled on some socks, wondering if maybe Charlee was too embarrassed to admit to Walter why she was really so upset.

  “It’s not an idea. She read the texts between you and Drew. That’s proof, so don’t try to worm your way out of this one, asshole.”

  Read the texts? Hector stood up after slipping on his shoes. “Okay, first of all, you really need to stop calling me that,” he said, more annoyed now than ever. The fact that Charlee was in another guy’s bed right now was already annoying as shit, even if was Walter’s. “Second, I have no clue what texts she’s talking about.”

  He sort of did, but he wasn’t going to tell Walter about his and Drew’s combined effort to help set Walter and Natalie up so he’d be free to go after Charlee. He slipped a white t-shirt on that was too damn tight, but he didn’t have time to look for another one.

  Walter let out an exasperated breath. “Hector, the jig is up. She read a text where you told Drew it was very tempting to continue doing what you two had been doing but it didn’t feel right anymore.”

  Hector froze in place. “Shit!”

  “Yeah, shit,” Walter agreed, disgustedly. “I can’t believe you. Is it really that difficult to keep it in your—”

  “She didn’t read the whole thing?” Hector grabbed his keys, glad Abel was out taking care of business again tonight and his mom was still in Mexico; otherwise, they might try to stop Hector from leaving.

  “She said she didn’t get a chance to read all the texts, but what she did read was enough. And she said she wouldn’t put anything past her ex-best friend anymore. Said she’s not the person she thought she was and she doesn’t trust her at all. She’s even dropping out of both chess teams. Says she wouldn’t be able to stand being around you. Talk about screwing with someone’s life for your own selfish reasons.”

  Hector rushed out the front door, trying not to panic too much. He stopped for a second to lock the door. “It’s not what she’s thinking. She’d know this if she’d have read the whole text. And she’s not dropping out of anything. Give me your address, and I’ll explain to her when I get there.”

  “You’re coming here now?”

  “Yeah,” Hector rushed around his truck.

  “No! She’ll be mad that I told you where she was. Plus she doesn’t wanna see you right now, and I don’t think—”

  “Listen to me, Walter,” Hector spoke very firmly now as he climbed in behind the wheel of his truck. He’d been patient enough with Walter. While he appreciated Walter’s concern over Charlee, there was no fucking way he was letting her leave or drop out of any teams, especially now that he knew why Drew had done what she’d done. He only prayed now that Charlee would agree Drew really hadn’t had a choice and stay. “I have the texts. You can read them when I get there if you want, but nothing is going on between me and Drew, and nothing ever has. I’m in love with Charlee. I meant it when I said I was done with other girls. Now would you please give me your gadamn address so I can explain all this to her.”

  Walter told him he’d text it to him, and after waiting for what seemed like an eternity, Hector began to wonder if the jackass had changed his mind. Just when he was getting ready to call him back and tell him off, the text with address came through.

  Taking what felt like the deepest breath he’d ever taken, Hector skidded out of his driveway, ready to do or say whatever he had to make Charlee stay.

  ~*~

  Feeling the familiar soft kiss against her temple and her hair being caressed, Charlee smiled. Then her eyes f
lew open, and she sat up suddenly, whacking her head against someone else’s. “Ow!” They both said at the same time.

  She massaged the spot on her head, realizing it was Hector whose head hers had just collided with. He sat there on the edge of the bed, his fingers at his own temple wearing a very pained expression. As nice as it was to see him first thing when she opened her eyes, reality hit and she began kneeing him until he toppled off the bed.

  “Why are you here?” she demanded, sitting up on the edge of the bed now. “How did you know I was here?”

  She turned to a remorseful-looking Walter and let her shoulder drop in utter disgust. “Isn’t there anyone I can trust anymore?”

  “You can trust me,” Hector said, standing up.

  Refraining from giving into the urge to kick him, she glared at him. “Really?”

  “Yes, babe.” Hector held his hands up in front of him. “Look, I know what you’re thinking, but you have it all wrong. There are a few things I do need to come clean about, but none are as bad as what you’re imagining.” Charlee stood up ready to bolt. If she had to get a room for the night, she was prepared to, but she wasn’t about to stand here and listen to him come clean. She already knew enough. “Please, Charlee, I have proof that I didn’t do anything with Drew.”

  “Oh, and what is that? You’re going to bring her in here to attest to that? Are you both gonna stand here and tell me that neither of you are as bad as all those bastards that made my life miserable? Because I know the truth about her now and about you, Hector!” She cried. “Walter told me every bit of it!”

  The stunned look on his face made the hurt in her heart even deeper because he didn’t deny it. She’d still hung on to the hope that maybe it wasn’t true. Maybe Walter had misinterpreted things. Maybe Hector wasn’t just like Danny. But, no, she could see the truth in his guilty eyes. He was just like him, only worse. At least Danny didn’t think he’d deserved to kiss Charlee after the party.