Page 78 of Undeniable

He had the decency to look scared. He spluttered out his response and then sighed heavily. “Shit, Ives. Look, I wasn’t planning on ever telling you this, but… there was this rumor going around. I didn’t think it was true, James told me it wasn’t true, but a few of the guys told me that maybe it could be. And—”

I was getting frustrated at his drunken rambling and crossed my arms over my chest.

“Spit it out, Forrest,” I snarled.

He winced, but before he had a chance to speak, a few of his friends joined us. They were all also drunk.

“How’s the Midwest, Ivy?” one of them joked while the others started teasing Forrest for something I couldn’t be less interested in.

Dylan, one of their old baseball teammates, slung his arm over my shoulder and looked down at me with a mischievous smile. The drink he had clasped in his hand nearly spilled all over my shoulder with each jerky, ungraceful movement.

“Why do you look like someone just shit in your Cheerios?”

I scoffed and tried to shake his arm off. “Forrest, seriously,” I urged and my brother stepped out of the group of boys. He glanced at Dylan warily before he looked back at me.

“We’ll talk about it later,” he said, but I shook my head. There was no later. I was already on edge, and I needed the full story.

“No,” I argued. “Tell me what rumor—”

Dylan erupted into raucous laughter next to me. He threw his head back and nearly spilled his drink once again. Confused at his outburst, I stopped midsentence and stared up at him.

“You mean the rumor about—”

“Dylan, no,” Forrest cut in, but Dylan didn’t let the abrupt interruption deter him. He continued on like my brother wasn’t even there.

“—how James bet he could take your virginity.”

I didn’t even have time to comprehend what he said before someone else chimed in, “Is that really a rumor? I’m pretty sure we all kind of joked about it that night, although we were talking about a lot of people. It could have been James that was talking about you, Ivy. He said he’d have no problem popping your cherry.”

There was no telling who’d been speaking because the world was becoming more and more narrow. All my thoughts were incoherent, and I was struggling to get any air into or out of my constricted lungs.

“Wait, did it actually happen? I owe him some money then!” Dylan asked, and I could feel the tears stinging the backs of my eyes.

“How sure are you it was James?” I asked the collective group gathered around.

One of their old teammates, Brett, and the person I assumed had spoken earlier, said, “Umm… I would say it’s a good fifty-fifty chance. We were all pretty shit-faced that night.”

“What night?” I asked quietly. But no one had a chance to respond. Forrest threatened the guys with some type of violence if they didn’t leave right then and there.

I didn’t have the strength to put up a fight and tell him that I needed to know.

They left, and he turned back to me, suddenly much more sober.

“That last bonfire before prom. I wasn’t part of the conversation that night, and I only heard about it later. I thought it was just another stupid rumor until Brendon and I caught y’all together. That’s when I asked James about it. He told me it was bullshit, and I believed him. He said it was a stupid rumor… but Dylan and the other guys were there, and hell, he made anactualbet with Dylan about it.”

“They could be lying. Or how could they even remember? They were all absolutely trashed. You heard Brett, there’s a fifty-fifty chance it wasn’t actually James.” Even to me, the words sounded unbelievable. There was nothing those stupid boys would’ve gained from lying, but I wanted to hold on to the little hope I had. They all really had been more drunk than I’d ever seen them. I’d been there too that night and had borne witness to the way they stumbled over their words. And most of them could barely walk by the end of the night.

I wanted to believe that everything that summer hadn’t been just for some drunken bet or so he couldtakemy virginity. Like it was something for him to conquer or had any right to. Like it was his now, and I was worse off without it.

“I initiated…” I began. I didn’t really want to have this conversation with my brother, but I couldn’t see a way around it. “I initiateditand he didn’t pressure me at all, so there’s no way—”

Forrest shook his head. “That was probably his plan all along, Ives. Make you think it was your idea, so if you did hear about the rumor, you’d second-guess yourself just like you are now.”

“No,” I muttered, too caught up in the chaos of my thoughts to come up with a better response. “No,” I said again, a little firmer. Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe and my body felt heavy.

Forrest looked at me warily and glanced around us. He chewed the inside of his cheek and grimaced as he said, “Brendon was there. He heard the whole thing.”

The shock from his statement nearly rocked me. “He knew?” I whispered. He knew but didn’t say anything to me.

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