Finding Me (22 page)

Bella

THE SOLITUDE I WANTED SO
desperately was now driving me up the wall. I glanced at my watch for the twentieth time and waited for Laura to come back from her Spring Show practice. Jaimee and Kristy were due here around now and everyone promised me a night of junk food and a good old ‘men suck’ girl fest.

My phone buzzed on my nightstand, ‘Dad’ flashing across the screen. I shut my eyes and dropped my head to my hands. My parents would figure out within five seconds that my heart was broken and I didn’t have it in me to go into what happened with Owen. I took a deep breath and accepted the call with a forced smile, hoping that would disguise the despair in my voice.

“Hey, Dad.”

“Hello, my smart girl. We just got your midterm grades. How the hell did you get a four-point-two average?”

I smiled in spite of my sad sack self. “The advanced classes I’m taking count as more credits. So it’s really just a four-point-zero.”

His hearty laugh filled my ears. “
Just
a four-point-zero. I knew you would do great, but this surpassed any of my expectations. I could have waited until our usual call tomorrow, but I couldn’t. I love you, Butterfly. I’m a very proud father today.”

Hot tears dripped off my cheeks, but I didn’t know why. Was it because hearing my dad’s voice made me homesick and want to nurse my broken heart back home with my family? Or did the pride and love in his voice slice me in half with guilt because I was supposed to meet up with my biological father—knowing Lucas was really the one who took care of me my entire life? Or was it disappointment that the man I thought of as my hero may not have been as perfect as I idolized him to be? I didn’t know which end was up on anything, and was this close to having an emotional meltdown from all the painful uncertainty in my life.

“Thanks, Dad. I love you, too.” Even though I tried my best, there was no mistaking the crack in my voice at the end of the sentence.

“Bella, what’s wrong?” Dad let out an audible sigh as I tried to stop the tears enough to speak. “Talk to me. You always talked to me when you were upset, ever since you were little. I’ll try to take the ogre hat off if it’s boy trouble.” I laughed through my sobs. I loved him for it, but there was no way I could tell him the story of how the guy I’ve been having sex with on a fairly regular basis may be having sex with another girl too. Four-point-two average or not, he’d be on the road so fast he’d make it to my dorm room to drag me home before Laura arrived. And there was definitely no way I could fill him in on Marc, and what he told me about him and Mom. There was nothing I could share with him right now about anything, and that made me cry even harder.

“I’m just really tired, Dad. No big deal.” I let out an exaggerated sigh.

“Don’t run yourself ragged. That brilliant brain of yours needs rest. I have to put your brother to bed now. Mom is at a marketing conference in Connecticut. The house feels weird without either of my girls, but I’ll see you in a couple of weeks for the hockey game?”

Shit.
I forgot about that. “Yeah. Listen, Dad, I better go. Tell Joey I miss him.”

“I will, Butterfly. I love you. Get some rest, okay?”

“I love you, too, Dad. I will.” I ended the call and reached for more tissues. In the past seventy-two hours I’d gone through three boxes.

“Oh, no.” Laura stood in our doorway with Jaimee and Kristy in tow. “What now? Did the one of the janitors have a note from Owen, too?”

“No.” I chuckled, the phone still cradled in my hand. “Just about ready to blow with everything going on this week. I hope you guys stopped for ice cream.”

“Oh honey, I have ice cream, pie, and black forest cake from the diner. We have dessert for days.” Kristy bounced on my bed with two plastic bags full of food.

Laura pulled out paper plates and plastic forks. We all chewed in silence.

“I know we aren’t supposed to speak of . . .
him
tonight but, I thought you should know.” Jaimee grimaced as she sat closer to me. “Owen was suspended from the team today.”

“What?” I dropped my fork and jerked my head in her direction.

“For fighting. With Richie. A friend of mine is one of the new D-men on the team, and Richie has been trying to start shit with Owen all season. Whatever he said at practice today was the last straw and Owen beat the crap out of him in the locker room. He can’t play for the next three games.”

I rubbed my temples as I fought the impulse to run to Owen’s apartment to make sure he was okay.

“Listen.” Jaimee sighed as we all picked up our heads. “You all will jump on me, but I have to say this anyway. Bella, is it so out of the realm of possibility that Owen told you the truth?”

“Jaimee.” Kristy hung her head and put her hand on her forehead. “Amber was naked and sleeping in his bed. We all saw the Snapchat.”

I flinched at Kristy’s words. Yeah, we sure did—but the reminder stung all the same.

“Honestly,” Laura whispered behind me. “It crossed my mind, too. He was so upset that morning he came to our room. He moped out like he just lost everything and I don’t think he was faking.”

My brows knitted together as I met Laura’s gaze. “You’re serious?”

She nodded slowly. “Yes, I am. Maybe you should hear him out.”

“I honestly don’t know what to think. It doesn’t make any sense, but I’ve been duped and humiliated once. I can’t do it again.”

Jaimee squeezed my shoulder. “What does your gut say?”

I reached up to touch the back of her hand. “My gut says that Owen is a good guy that wouldn’t hurt me, but considering I thought the same about my ex at one time, it’s hard to figure out. I get what you’re saying, but the image of Amber in his bed is burned in my brain.” Burned was putting it lightly. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Amber’s naked body cuddling into Owen’s back. Anything short of time travel or a lobotomy couldn’t take that image away.

“Sometimes, things are more than what they seem at face value. If he just wanted to mess with Amber, he could do that without sneaking around. My advice is to hear him out. You’re a pretty smart cookie.” Jaimee stood and ruffled the ponytail on top of my head. “I bet you’ll figure out right away if he’s lying or not.”

“What do you think?” I gazed over at Kristy, who grunted through a mouthful of cake.

“The notes everywhere are kinda sweet, but that could just be his cover. He didn’t want you to come over, and when you did, you found Amber in his bed. It’s a pretty bad smoking gun. I probably wouldn’t speak to him. It’s up to you, Bella. I just don’t want to see you get hurt again.”

“Yeah,” I took another scoop of ice cream. “That makes two of us.”

The conversation shifted to Laura’s Spring Show and her friend Connor’s mixed signals and then to Kristy’s nasty boss at the diner. It was refreshing to talk about other people’s lives for a change, as thinking about my own so much made me queasy.

Jaimee and Kristy left, and Laura went downstairs to get more junk food provisions from the vending machine.

I fell back on my bed and fumbled with my phone, somehow dialing my mother’s number.

“Hey, sweetheart! Are you okay? Dad said you didn’t sound very good. I was actually about to call you myself.”

My mother’s voice made all of my emotions rush out. The dam broke and I told her everything.
Everything
. My sleepovers with Owen, finding Amber there, how he’d been trying to talk to me and I’d been pushing him away. She answered with a few soft okays as I rehashed every heinous detail of the past few days.

Letting it all go and telling her everything was like a brick off my chest. Now, as it sank in, my stomach twisted at her delayed reaction.

She let out a long sigh before she spoke. “Yeah, telling Dad any of that would not have been good at all. He would have piled Joey in the back seat and headed straight to school to grab you by the neck and bring you back home.” I uttered a sad chuckle. We both knew Lucas pretty well.

“I won’t go into all of what you told me right now. I trust that you have a head on your shoulders and have been careful up to this point. Maybe when you’re back home again we should see about birth control as an extra precaution.”

My mouth fell open. “You’re . . . okay with what I just told you.”

“No, Bella.” Mom’s voice took on a stern tone. “But you’re young, and you’re away at school. I can tell you to stop, but that won’t mean anything in the end. I don’t want a slip up now to ruin all the plans you have for later. That being said, I think you need to talk to Owen.”

I groaned. “You too? I’ve been down this road before, Mom. Christian lied and I fell for it. I don’t want to go back there again.”

“I get that. Believe me. I never talked to you about this. But Marc was . . . unfaithful. A lot. And I knew for a long time, but never really addressed it.”

My eyes widened at her admission. “Why would you just . . . let him? And not do anything about it?”
And is that why you cheated with Lucas?
I wished I could ask her but I had enough information I didn’t want to know rattling around in my brain.

“Because at that point, there was nothing between us. I tried to keep things a sort of normal for your sake, but then I realized that pretending was hurting all of us. Your dad came into our lives, and things were so much different. But I almost walked away when I found him in a predicament almost exactly like the one you found Owen in.”

I shook my head, even though she couldn’t see me. Thank God this wasn’t a FaceTime call with all these little reveals. “It couldn’t have been—”

“Oh, it was. Trust me. By the looks of it, I was cheated on, again, and I refused to let that happen. I judged your dad for all of Marc’s crimes. Someone said if I really listened to him, I’d know whether he was lying, and I’m so thankful I did. Imagine our lives without him. No Joey, no alpha ogre grunting around so he could protect us from the big bad world.” I chuckled. That was him all right. “The three of you are the best things that ever happened to me. If you love Owen, you owe it to yourself. Trust your gut to know if he’s lying to you.”

“Okay, Mom. I’ll listen.”

“Good girl. And, I don’t know how to process all of what you just told me yet, but I’m glad you did. You’re a smart person with a big heart. I’m your mother, so I’ll always worry, but I never doubt you’ll do the right thing. I’m going to fish a little bottle out of my mini bar and call it a night. I’ll check on you tomorrow. I love you.”

“I love you too, Mom. Thank you.”

I ended the call and fell back on my pillow. I hoped Mom found the hard stuff in her mini bar. She needed it.

After Laura nodded off, I grabbed my phone off my night stand and decided to bite the bullet. There were fifteen new voicemails from Owen. I started with the first few after I ran out of his apartment.

Bella, please. I didn’t do anything with Amber. I was already passed out when she crawled into my bed, and didn’t wake up until the morning. Please, City. You have to believe me.

There was no mistaking the anguish in his voice. I recalled him saying those words in my room while on his knees, begging for me to listen. I was too mad to let myself be swayed by what he had to say at the time, but could he have been sincere? My heart constricted at the way his voice cracked toward the end. The next few were more of the same, but the last one, from just a few hours before, tore my already battered heart.

Since I have all this time alone, I’ve been thinking about all the things I miss about you. From the first time I saw you, you made me work for it, and I loved that. I loved it because once I won you over, you gave me everything
—
and that felt like I hit the jackpot. I miss all the things that made you mine, that only I know. Most of all, I miss you being mine. And I hate that you aren’t because of a stupid lie.

I miss you and I love you. And I’ll say it as many times and for as many days as I have to—until you believe it.

God, I missed being his, too. The weight of everything going on with Marc and what I knew now about my mom and Lucas was so heavy, but I didn’t want to talk about it with anyone but Owen. I lost more than my boyfriend, I lost my best friend. The same pain and longing I felt was reflected in his voice. My gut said Owen was telling the truth, but my head still wasn’t so sure. My heart hurt without him . . . and because of him. I had no idea who was right.