33. Ethan

33

ETHAN

Pain tore through my fingers as I gripped the pages. My eyes jumped from paragraph to paragraph, each one more explicit than the one before. Heat unlike anything I'd ever felt before—even in the darkest of my pits of anger—locked a vise around my ribs and squeezed. "What the fuck?" It was me, the things I'd done to Rebecca, and some things I'd dreamed of doing, written out in detail.

I shoved the papers toward David and Cole. Cole took them when David kept his hands by his sides. The poor man looked paralyzed, and I didn't blame him for the state of abject, terrible fury stamped on his face.

The lack of light in the room suddenly felt right. What better atmosphere to learn about betrayal than in the gloom of a small apartment?

Rebecca stood, wavering on her feet with her brows pinched down in either pain or annoyance. "I can explain." She'd been found out. She sure as fuck was going to explain.

"Yeah?" I barked out the response automatically, my voice matching the caustic feeling rumbling around in my gut. It churned, the acid hot and raw. "You can explain why our sex life is on those pages?" I stabbed a finger toward Cole, who held the pages up for him and David.

David took them from Cole and flipped through them too fast to read.

"It wasn't meant to be like that. I…" She pressed both her thumbs into her temples and made slow circles. "I was pissed at you, and I was horny. So I wrote a story of what I thought you'd be like in bed." Looking up, she scanned the room.

"What did you intend to do with this?" I waved at the papers in David's hands. He'd gone an odd gray color exacerbated by the lack of natural light. He took a step back and gripped the edge of an antique table with one hand. A vintage typewriter sat behind him. I'd thought Rebecca's house was charming when I first came here. It was a modern Victorian look with the typewriters and leather couch coming together in an odd conglomeration that somehow worked for her. Now I looked at it with suspicion. "You said you wanted to be a romance author. Were we nothing but fodder?"

"No." She lurched forward with her hands outstretched in a gesture of surrender. "It was never like that." A pause for a breath. "I mean, yeah, I used you for inspiration on that character, but it's not really you."

"Not really me?" I scrubbed both hands through my hair and down the back of my neck. "Fuck, Rebecca. You wrote out our sexual experience."

She winced, caught in her own web of lies.

Cole fisted the papers, tearing them away from David. "I can't say about the sex, but this character is different from you." He focused on the pages. "Though they all do bear a striking similarity to each of us." Coldness burned in his eyes when he strode toward Rebecca. "You'd better have a damned good explanation for this. We're people too. You can't use us like this."

"I didn't mean to." She covered her face with her hands, her chest heaving with every breath. "I'd been working on another story, one that I thought would get me published. But I fucked up and Fitz destroyed the papers. It would have been easy to keep going with that story, but inspiration struck while in class with Ethan, and I started a new book." She pointed. "That book."

We kept silent. I wanted her to stew in this moment, this complete and utter disregard for our feelings and how it would look if anyone discovered our relationship this way.

Cole waved the papers toward her, then tossed them aside. They landed on the table and fanned out, slamming into the typewriter and spilling onto the floor. "So you used us for inspiration. You took our relationship and made it into a story."

"What were your intentions with this?" I asked the question again since she'd refused to answer it the first time.

Fitz whined and danced around at our feet. The poor dog had no idea why he was being ignored. I leaned down and scruffed his ears. It wasn't his fault we were arguing, but I was glad he'd brought the papers to us now. I blocked my mind to the thought of what might have happened if we'd learned about this later.

Rebecca stayed on her feet despite her headache and what looked like a desire to sink into the couch and never come up again. If I looked closely, I was sure I saw remorse, maybe even regret. No wonder. We'd caught her in the act of ruining us.

"Once I wrote the first chapter, I knew I had something special." Her chin tipped up. "I meant to ask you all for permission, but things were crazy."

"That's not an excuse." David's fury threatened to boil over. He stood straight as a board, his arms crossed and his scowl deeper than anything I'd ever seen. "You can't ‘ oops, my bad ' your way out of this one."

She took the verbal blow with grace and dipped her head to acknowledge the truth in it. "Fair point. And you're right, I did want to use it for a story. You're all fascinating, and I was struggling to make a story that I loved. I hoped to change the characters enough that no one would recognize you."

"Pretty fucking hard to ignore that you used my actual fucking name and thought people wouldn't notice." The writhing anger choked me into silence.

"Just your first name. And I changed it in editing. That's a rough draft of a chapter." She smoothed her skirt and sighed. "But yes, I did hope to send the book out for queries once it was done. I would have asked you already, but the pregnancy news knocked me off kilter."

"Again, not an excuse that holds any weight. How long have you been writing this story? You said since before you and Ethan had sex." Cole laced his hands together behind his neck and stretched.

The look on her face changed, going from worry to abject fear and resignation. She paled, and everything about her slumped down into itself. "I've been publishing it online, one chapter at a time. None of you are mentioned by name."

As if that was enough reassurance to keep us safe.

David and Cole cursed so long my ears blistered. I was too angry to say anything because the words spewing through my mind were enough to end this relationship once and for all. I'd been used. Again. It was enough to challenge the patience of a saint. How were we supposed to go forward from here? The entire stability of my life and my career rested in Rebecca's hands, and she'd gone and published a story starring us as the main characters.

"No one knows it's about you. I'm publishing it on a serial publishing site under a pen name." She rushed through the explanation like she expected us to walk out the door and she hoped to reel us back in before that happened. I was tempted, so fucking tempted, to do exactly that. "The first chapter went semi-viral, and every chapter after that has done better and better. I'm gaining a solid readership."

"With characters based on real life." David's eyes closed. His former anger morphed into pain.

I hated this for him most of all. He'd been betrayed by Carrie for being emotionless, and now, the one time he fell harder than ever for a woman, he learned she was using him for her own gain.

"This is unacceptable." I stalked across the room. "Where is this posted? I'm reading the whole thing. Then we'll talk about what happens next."

Head bobbing and tears sitting on the edges of her lashes, Rebecca scurried from the room. "I'll log you into the site. You can read everything." Her voice faded as she traveled down the hall and into the room across from her bedroom. "You'll see that the only reason you know it's about you is because you saw your name in the rough draft and you've lived the experience." A quaver and a falter hit her voice.

"Is either of you okay with her publishing our sexual exploitations online?" I directed the question at David, knowing Cole was already halfway to forgiving her. He'd forgive almost anything, and while this felt like the ultimate betrayal to us, Cole had a way of thinking things through until he came to understand why people did the things they did. I couldn't trust his judgment, not in this.

David's shoulder rose and fell in a weary shrug. "I'm not sure I can answer that right now. Let's read what she published and go from there."

He was a good man. Too good sometimes, with his willingness to give her the benefit of the doubt. Wasn't that what we were supposed to do when in love? I should be tempering my anger, not stoking it higher.

"I'm not experienced enough to come up with the sex scenes on my own." Rebecca returned, her laptop clutched to her chest and bright spots of color on her cheeks. "I tried looking stuff up, but when I went to write it, it fell flat. That's no excuse." She held out the computer to me. A pink screen bracketed the first page of her story. "I thought if it did well enough on here, I might get the attention of a publisher later. I never meant to hurt you."

I could choose to believe that or I could reserve my thoughts. I chose the latter and carried the laptop over to the couch. David and Cole followed me, and we sat at the same time with me in the middle, David on my left, and Cole on my right. Page by page, we read through her entire story. I appreciated the prose and flow of her writing, but my stomach curdled every time my character came onto the page. He was me and not me, all at the same time. The further I read, the more I understood her adamant stance that no one would recognize us. She'd done well in giving us different appearances and attitudes while the core character traits were ours.

And the sex scenes made me want to carry her into the bedroom and do all the things she'd written about.

A devilish grin appeared on Cole's face. He pointed at the screen. "We haven't done that yet." He emphasized the yet, and Rebecca's blush deepened. "Guess that's why you brought it up." Was it me, or was there a bite to his voice?

A notification popped up in the corner of her screen.

David leaned in close and squinted. "You have an email from Dean Scott."

"Will you open it?" She knelt to pick up Fitz and tucked him under her chin. "I can't deal with it by myself."

Good to know there were still some things she needed us for, though this was a crappy reason to have us around.

David took the computer from my lap and scrolled over to her email. A few clicks and we all read the email. My heart gave a slow, unsteady lurch.

"What does it say?" She sounded more scared than ever, and with her face buried in Fitz's fur, I couldn't read her expression.

David looked at me for confirmation, and I nodded for him to go ahead. "Dean Scott has a deal for you. You can keep your scholarship and continue your education." He swallowed hard. "But you are required to transfer to our sister college in Florida. And the three of us must remain here in California. If we breach these terms in any way, we're fired and you will be dismissed and your scholarship revoked."