Page 34 of Don't Puck Your Best Friend’s Girl

"Two days!" he shouts, advancing toward me. "Two fucking days, Saylor! The bed was barely cold!"

"I know," I whisper, the words inadequate against the storm of his anger. "I'm so sorry."

He laughs, a harsh, bitter sound that scrapes against my ears. "I expected this kind of shit from him," he says, jerking his head toward Cade, who has joined us on the sidewalk. "But from you?"

The accusation lands precisely where he aims it — directly into the heart of my deepest insecurities. That I'm not who I pretend to be. That I'm exactly the kind of person I've always despised.

"You're so fake," Byron continues, his voice dropping to something almost conversational, which somehow hurts more than the yelling. "Such a phony. Acting like you hated him all this time when you were what, secretly lusting after him the whole time? Were you thinking about him when you were with me? Is he the reason why you were even with me in the first place?"

"No!" I protest, panic rising in my throat. "It wasn't like that, I swear."

But the doubt is already there, planted in fertile soil. Was there always something between Cade and me, disguised as animosity? Was my dislike a cover for something else entirely?

"I loved you," I say, the past tense slipping out before I can catch it. Another mistake in a growing collection.

Byron steps closer, his eyes narrowed. "But not enough, right? Not enough to respect me, to give us a chance to fix things, to wait more than forty-eight hours before jumping into bed with the one person you knew would hurt me most."

Each word splinters something inside me, because he's right. I've constructed so much of my identity around not being someone who hurts people they claim to love. Yet here I am, standing in the wreckage of my own making.

"I was drunk," I say desperately. "It was a mistake. I would never have—"

"Don't," he cuts me off. "Don't try to minimize this like it was some random hookup. You chose him. The one person, Saylor."

He trails off as Cade approaches, his footsteps heavy on the pavement.

"I told you to talk to her," Byron says, turning his fury toward Cade. "Not fuck her!"

Cade stands there, absorbing the verbal blow without flinching. "I'm sorry, By," he says simply. "We were drinking. Not in our right minds. It just happened."

Byron looks between us, something shifting in his expression from rage to disgust. "Look at you two. You idiots deserve each other. I'm done." He turns, starting to walk away again.

Cade follows him, leaving me frozen on the sidewalk, shame and embarrassment rooting me to the spot. I watch them, these two men who have somehow become the central figures in the most humiliating moment of my life.

"Byron," Cade calls after him. "We wanted to tell you ourselves. We're owning up to what we did."

Byron spins around, closing the distance between them in two quick strides. "You think that makes it better? You think I should thank you for your honesty?" He shoves Cade's chest, not hard enough to knock him down, but enough to make his point. "You selfish, self-centered piece of shit. You take whatever you want, don't you?"

Cade takes it all, his face a mask of quiet acceptance that only seems to inflame Byron further.

"Do you even know the kind of things she says about you?" Byron asks, a cruel smile twisting his lips. "What she really thinks?"

I shake my head frantically, a new kind of fear coursing through me. "Byron—"

But he's past caring about my feelings, past caring about anything except inflicting the same pain we've caused him.

"She told me you were nothing but a pathetic, insecure little boy hiding behind your grades because you couldn't handle being second-best to your brother," he says, eyes locked on Cade's. "Said you probably had a tiny dick to match your tiny ego, and that's why Hannah cheated on you. Said you deserved to get cheated on because you're the kind of narcissistic asshole who makes everyone around you feel small just so you can feel big."

The words hang in the air between us, impossible to take back, impossible to unhear. I said those things. Not all at once, not in those exact words, but over the past few months, in moments of frustration, in private conversations I never imagined would see the light of day.

Cade's expression doesn't change, doesn't flicker, doesn't reveal if the words have landed or bounced off some invisible shield. But something in his eyes — a light, a warmth — extinguishes, and I know with devastating certainty that whatever fragile connection we'd begun to form has just been severed.

"I never said those things," I whisper, the lie falling from my lips with practiced ease. But we all know the truth.

Byron's laugh is hollow, empty of everything but pain. "Right. Of course you didn't." He looks at Cade one last time. "Enjoy each other. You both got exactly what you deserve."

He walks away, and this time, neither of us follows. We stand on the sidewalk, two islands in a sea of consequences, unable to reach each other or the shore we've left behind.

Chapter 9

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