Page 76 of Ex's & Oh's (The Lucky Girls 1)

Brett shakes his head. “Not now. Not before the wedding.”

He’s right. It will ruin everything.

“I don’t know what to do. Afterward, then? And how do I tell Stacey? If I report him, it will ruin her life, and she’ll blame me, too.”

“So, don’t report him,” Brett says.

I blink at him. “What?”

“Just let it go. Pretend you didn’t hear him at all.”

“I can’t just do that.”

“Why not?” Brett asks.

“Because it’s wrong! He’s cheating. Not only that, but he’s also about to marry my best friend, and it turns out he can’t be trusted.”

“This doesn’t change who he is,” Brett says. “It doesn’t change anything.”

“It changes everything!” I cry out. “How can you be so blasé about something so serious?”

“Because shit happens, Jen,” Brett says. “Sometimes, these things happen, and you can either be a tattletale and ruin it for everyone, or you can just keep quiet. Stacey is going to be heartbroken over this. Marc will get locked up, maybe, or kicked off the team. This is his life, and you want to take it away from him. From both of them.”

“So…I should just let it all go?” I ask. I’m shocked to my core that Brett thinks it’s okay to do something like that. A thought occurs to me. “Do you…think what he’s doing is right?”

“Obviously not,” Brett says. “But he’s my best friend, Jen. And Stacey is yours. And doing something like that to him…I can’t. We can’t be the people to hurt them. Someone else might report him. Or maybe, no one will ever find out and things will be fine.”

I don’t like what I’m hearing. But Brett is right—reporting Marc will ruin everything for both of them. And no matter how much I think what he’s doing is wrong and that speaking up would be the responsible thing to do, it’s the day before their wedding.

“Please, promise me one thing,” I say to Brett.

He looks uncertain, but he nods.

“Don’t hide something like this from me, okay? I don’t know how far this will go, but whether we end this next week or keep going together for years…don’t hide anything from me.”

Brett swallows hard. “I wouldn’t do that to you. You know how much you mean to me, Jenna.”

I lean my head on his shoulder and he puts his arm around me.

“Thank you for listening. I didn’t know who to turn to.”

“You did the right thing,” Brett says. “Even if it doesn’t feel like it.”

It doesn’t feel like I’m doing the right thing, but I can’t be the one to shatter this happy ending. It will work itself out in the end.

I hope.

All I can do from my side is make sure that things never turn out that way for me. But Brett is as serious about making this work as I am, and we just need to get through this.

But my heart breaks for Stacey, and I still feel guilty for choosing not to tell her.

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