The Cad and the Co-Ed
Page 77

“What?”
“Keep touching me.”
There was a moment of silence. Her hand didn’t move, but then it did, and I sighed quietly in relief.
“So, it was at Annie and Ronan’s wedding,” she started.
“Yeah, that much I recall.”
“You do?” She sounded surprised, and pleased.
“Yes. You said something about it at dinner when you told me about Patrick, and I’ve been wracking my brain. I remember asking you to dance.”
“Oh,” she exclaimed, her voice breathy. A moment of quiet passed before she started speaking again. “I was so excited to be there because I was really into rugby at the time. Like, superfan territory.”
That was unexpected. “You were?”
“Yep. I knew every player’s name, their stats, basically every single detail about the league. I was such a nerd.”
“Did you know about me?” I asked, interested despite the small voice in the back of my head warning me to stop asking questions.
“Of course I did. Like I said, I knew about everyone.”
I shouldn’t have asked the next question, but I couldn’t seem to hold it back. “Did you have a crush on any of the players?”
She went quiet, then answered. “Maybe.”
“Who?”
“Never mind.”
“Oh, come on. You’re a grown-up now. A silly teenage crush is nothing to be embarrassed about,” I cajoled, but for some reason I had difficulty swallowing.
She went quiet again and I grew frustrated, turning and pulling her forward so she was in front of me. I slid my arms around her waist and bent to whisper in her ear. “You can tell me.”
She let out a little huff and shook her head. “Fine. It was you, if you must know. I had a crush on you, Bryan. It’s why I was so dumbstruck when you asked me to dance.”
I let that sink in for a moment. Eilish had had a crush on me when she was a teenager. Shit. And like the opportunistic twenty-five-year-old swine I was, I probably ate it up. I certainly took full advantage of it.
“I should’ve left you alone.”
She tilted her head a little to look up at me. “Why? I was over the moon that you were even acknowledging my existence. It felt like the best night of my life.”
My eyes widened in surprise, and the unease that had felt so small a moment ago flared like a fire in my chest. “It did?”
She glanced down. “You were actually really sweet and patient.” A pause as she blew out a breath. “God, I was such a love-struck little virgin.”
Wait, what?
Holy shit.
Holy fucking shit.
Her cheeks heated as soon as the words were out and I knew she hadn’t meant to say them.
Meanwhile, I hadn’t recovered from her confession.
Jesus Christ. She’d been a virgin?
I couldn’t fucking believe this. I couldn’t believe myself. I’d taken something so special without a single care. But that’s who I was when I drank, a careless, greedy fucktard.
She twisted in my arms so her back was to me. I pulled her around again and met her gaze, my eyes flickering back and forth between hers, oddly out of breath. “I was your first?”
She swallowed, then nodded.
“Oh, Eilish, I’m so fucking sorry,” I said, my tone full of remorse. She must’ve been so scared when she found out she was pregnant. Pregnant from the one and only time she’d had sex. With me. The biggest bloody arsehole in the whole entire world.
“It’s okay,” she assured me. “Honestly. Like I said, you were really sweet. You kept telling me how much you loved my hair and how gorgeous I was.” Some things didn’t change. I still loved her hair. And yeah, I had to admit that there was some tiny part of me that loved the idea of being her first, even if I made an absolute hames of it in the end.
I was quiet for a long moment, my brain working.
An image of her flashed into my mind’s eye, the night I saw her at William’s birthday party, how she’d acted like she didn’t know who I was when the truth was she’d followed my career for years. She’d had a crush on me. And then the first time she met me, we slept together.
Another image, of her friend this time, the way Josey had looked at me last week, how she’d acted. I didn’t like the thought of Eilish ever looking at me that way.
“I thought I was in falling in love,” she added distractedly, pulling me from my thoughts, her eyes losing focus. “The next morning I woke up, stars in my eyes and everything, and you barely even knew who I was or what we’d done.”
I winced. A silence passed between us and I tried putting all the pieces together. As I did, something hit me, a weird memory, and I couldn’t tell if it was real.
“I told you to close the curtains,” I blurted, and her eyes flared.
“What?”
“That morning, I told you to close the curtains, didn’t I? That was you.”
She gasped, her hand going to her mouth. “But how . . .?”
My brow creased. “I don’t know. I think you recounting the night helped. I wish I could remember more.”
Eilish swallowed and turned to stare out at the water for a second, her profile to me, her expression thoughtful. When she finally spoke it was barely a whisper, “Yes, that was me.”
I swore under my breath and grabbed her upper arms, my thumbs brushing tenderly back and forth. My face was earnest when I said, “I know I keep repeating myself, but I really am sorry, Eilish. You deserved so much better than that. I was a total prick to you.”