to realize that wasn’t going to fool anyone, so they turned up the heat a little.
It was painfully awkward to watch. It was more orchestrated than natural, but maybe that was because I knew what others didn’t—there were no romantic feelings between Taylor and Drew.
I, on the other hand, felt things for Drew that I hadn’t wanted to admit until now. Even to myself.
Watching him kiss someone else, put his hands on someone else, made my skin feel like it was on fire from the inside out.
They gave it a few more seconds before they broke contact and looked back at Aamee.
“Happy now?” Drew asked.
“Yup,” she answered.
That made one of us.
Chapter Twenty-One
D R E W
“Remember when no one knew you made out with your sister?”
Carter was referring to my living hell since the party. He slung an arm around me as we walked toward the stone building that housed the library. I was pretty sure he had no intention of actually using the library, so I could only assume he was tagging along because he wanted to bust my balls a little more.
I removed a hand from one of my pockets just enough to elbow him in the ribs, which made him reflexively pull his arm from my shoulder. Once he was off me, I gave him a shove.
“I didn’t make out with my sister, you dick.”
Carter ignored my lie. “Whatever you say, bro. I gotta admit, though, the gay thing was a good cover.”
I stopped walking and glared at him.
Either he knew I’d been lying about being gay, or he was fucking with me. I wanted to punch him either way.
“You think I pretended to be gay so I could fuck my sister?”
Carter raised his hands in the air innocently and jerked his head back. “Whoa, whoa, no one said anything about fucking her. Jesus, dude, that’s some seriously messed-up shit right there. Kissing your sister is one thing. Fucking her is, well… Fucking her is…fucked up.”
“With your speaking skills, majoring in communications is clearly your calling.” Adjusting my backpack from where it’d slipped a little when I’d shoved Carter, I turned toward the library again and continued walking.
“Don’t change the subject. I’m just concerned for your future children if you forget to pull out. Look at all those old royal families whose children had all sorts of deformities because they didn’t want the bloodlines to thin. You don’t want your son slash nephew to have three ears or something, do you?”
I ignored his comment, hoping that if I sped up, he’d finally realize I absolutely did not want to talk about this. It was bad enough I’d been hit on four times since Friday night. Two guys, two girls. Evidently the jury was still out on my sexual orientation.
“Okay, maybe that was a little too far,” he said.
“You think?” I wondered when the novelty of all this would wear off. At some point, the student population would have something else that captured their attention, and Sophia and I would drift into the backs of their minds until they forgot about it completely. Or at least I hoped so.
How long did we have to wait until someone got a video of Brenden Willis letting his dog blow him? Everyone knew Dr. Hayes’s TA put peanut butter on that shit and let his corgi have an afternoon snack when no one was looking.
“You know that was Taylor, right?” I said. If someone who was supposed to be my buddy didn’t believe it, there wasn’t a chance in hell any of these other people did.
“I don’t know, dude. I wanna believe it, but it looked a lot like Sophia.”
“It was dark.” We’d used the excuse every time anyone mentioned it because it was all we had.
Carter let out a sigh that sounded too serious to have come from him, and then he said, “I’ve known Sophia for two years. I’ve seen her in different light, wearing different clothes, with makeup and without.” He shrugged. “Looked like her to me. And listen, whatever you guys are into isn’t really for me to judge. I wish you’d both just tell me the truth about it.”
“I’m telling you the truth. I would never have an intimate relationship with my sister.” At least I was being honest about that.
It was easy to tell when Carter was thinking hard about something. He was like a cartoon character with a thought bubble that he looked to for suggestions of what to say. He was quiet for a