You Make Me Read Free Page A

dead. Though I wasn’t aware you would care either way.”
    Was he crazy? Confusion made my breath shallow, my palms sweat. I had suffered when he left. I had cried until I threw up. I had taken off after him, only to walk two miles and realize I had no idea when he’d left or where he was going. I had stalked him online, never finding anything. I had stopped eating. Stopped showering.
    And he was going to stand there and act like I hadn’t cared?
    “How could you say that?” My voice shook.
    But his eyes just studied me, dark and angry. “Maybe this isn’t the time or the place to discuss it.” He took my hand into his.
    My frustration faded at his touch. A deep, intense longing rose up in me. God, I had missed him. But he merely turned my hand so that my new engagement ring was visible.
    “Congratulations, Cat.” A mocking smile crossed his face. His jaw was tense. He took my hand and gave it to Ethan, who laced his fingers through mine.
    “I’m Heath, Cat’s foster brother, like she said,” he told Ethan, and I could hear the edgy irony in his voice. “It’s nice to meet you.”
    “Ethan Walsh. Nice to meet you, too. It sounds like you and Caitlyn have a lot of catching up to do. Maybe tomorrow we can all grab some coffee.”
    “Sure. Sounds delightful .”
    That was attitude. Plain and simple. My eyes narrowed at Heath and I shook my head slightly in warning. What the hell was he doing? Why was he even there?
    “I didn’t mean to interrupt a big moment,” he added. “I’m heading downstairs.”
    A million questions were racing through my head, but there was no way to ask them. Not where we were. Not with who I was with listening.
    Ethan stuck his hand out, because Ethan had good manners. For a second Heath just stared at it, but then he took it and shook briefly.
    I’d never seen him in a suit before. He looked… dangerous. Very James Bond. He was even better looking than I remembered and I had spent a lot of time coaxing his image out of my memory banks. Especially alone in my bed late at night when I was lonely and my body ached.
    “See ya,” he told me casually, before turning and leaving.
    That wasn’t a promise of anything. It didn’t mean that he would or wouldn’t ever see me again. It certainly wasn’t a goddamn explanation for why he’d left or where the hell he’d been. What an asshole. What a complete and total asshole.
    Ethan was taking a sip from his flash and I held out my hand. “Can I have a sip of that, please? My throat is dry.”
    “Sure.” Ethan handed it to me and gave me a worried look. “You okay? You seem really shaken up.”
    “I’m fine.” I wasn’t. I wasn’t even remotely fine. I took a huge swallow of whiskey. It burned, but it felt good. It felt hot whereas my entire body felt like ice. It was like I’d been dunked in the river in January. The shock had numbed me before I felt wracked by shivers of disbelief.
    “He calls you Cat?” Ethan mused. “I’ve never heard anyone call you that.”
    There was a reason for that.
    I craned my neck to see Heath, but he had already disappeared down the stairs and into the crowd. God, the crowd. They were mostly disinterested, having gone back to their own conversations, but some were still glancing up at us, and I saw Aubrey biting her fingernail and studying us with narrowed eyes.
    No. Just no.
    I wasn’t going to let this ruin my night. This was Homecoming. I glanced down at the ring on my finger. It sat perfectly beneath my blue manicure, a rhinestone floating on the tip of each nail. They matched, the sparkles on my nails and the sparkle of the ring, and I hadn’t even known that box with a proposal would come out tonight. Not a clue. Ethan wanted to marry me and Heath wasn’t going to ruin it.
    Even as my hand shook and my stomach fisted and my heart squeezed, I smiled up at Ethan. “I prefer Caitlyn.”
    “I’ll call you whatever you want as long as I can call you mine,” he said, with a little