Amelia is fine. Where are you on your date?
At Three Beers. Why?
I grabbed my bag, keys, and the chart, and turned to Amelia. “Will you be okay if I go out for a while?”
“Sure,” she said, a little too enthusiastically.
“If you need anything, my parents are out the back.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m sixteen. I’ll be fine.”
Right. Of course she was. “Okay, I won’t be long.”
“Are you going to find Finn?” she singsonged.
I hesitated, unsure how much I wanted to share, but she’d probably work it out. “Yes.”
She grinned. “Did I help you realize you’re in love with him?”
In love? My heart skipped a beat, then when it kicked back in, it was running double time.
Another text. Why, Scarlett?
I ignored it and looked back at Amelia, “What? No. What are you talking about?”
“The chart.” She pointed at the piece of folded paper in my hand. “You haven’t wanted to kiss other guys since you met Finn, because you’ve been in love with him. You just didn’t realize it till I pointed it out.”
“No,” I said slowly and clearly, “what I hadn’t realized until you pointed it out is that he’s been interfering with my love life somehow.”
“Oh.” Her face fell. “Are you sure you don’t love him?”
I took a breath. Finn wasn’t just a brother to her; he’d been her parent since she was eleven, which made this more complicated.
“He’s my best friend and I love him very much. Other than my family and you, I love Finn more than anyone in the whole world. The thing is, though, we’re not going to get married. It’s a different type of love. But he’ll always be a part of my life, so you’re still stuck with me.”
“Okay,” she said, but she wasn’t as happy as she’d been a few moments earlier.
My cell beeped again, and I quickly checked. Why do you want to know where I am?
“I have to go,” I said to Amelia. “You’re sure you’ll be okay?”
“One hundred percent.” She nodded and pointed to the front door. “Go.”
I gave her a hug and scampered out to my car. It shouldn’t be a surprise she wanted more stability in her life after being sent home from boarding school—I’d mention it to Finn at some point. But not tonight. Tonight was about getting to the bottom of what was going on in my love life.
I pulled up in the parking lot of The Three Beers and headed in. Since he was on a date, Finn had probably tried to get a booth down the back, so I checked those first. Bingo.
I slid in beside Fake Friend Marnie, across from Finn, and fixed my Don’t Mess With Me gaze on him. Unfortunately, I’d been wearing my old yellow glasses with a crack in the frames at home and hadn’t stopped to change them, so that wouldn’t help the effect. I glared a little harder to make up for it.
“Scarlett,” he said. “What’s wrong? Is it Amelia?”
“I just wanted to ask you a question.” I turned to his date. “Hi, Marnie.”
“Hi, Scarlett,” she said with a completely false smile.
“You interrupted my date because you had a question?” Finn asked, his brows drawing together.
“It’s the kind of question that couldn’t wait.”
He blew out a breath and picked up his beer. “Ask then.”
I took out the chart and put it on the table in front of him, then smoothed my hands across it to flatten out some of the creases.
Finn looked at me incredulously. “You want to talk about this. Here?”
“What is it?” Fake Friend Marnie asked, leaning over the table to see.
Finn raised an eyebrow. “A chart about Scarlett’s dating history. Which we can talk about when I get home.”
“One question, then I’ll go.”
I snagged his beer and took a mouthful. Fake Friend Marnie watched me with a frown. Well, if she didn’t like me sharing his drinks, then she wasn’t going to be happy with my question.
“Okay,” he said, running a hand down his face. “Just ask quickly.”
I smiled and said in my sweetest voice, “Why has my sex life been shrinking in correlation to the length of time I’ve been friends with you?”
He froze, except for his eyes. Those dark blue babies widened like he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “What do you mean?”
I dropped the smile. “Have you been interfering in my sex life?”
There was a gasp from beside me but I ignored it and kept my gaze on the man across from me, who was beginning to look suspiciously uncomfortable.
He shifted in his seat. “I wouldn’t say interfering. Maybe guiding a little bit. A tiny little bit. Barely worth mentioning.”
“Apparently not worth mentioning at all, since you never have.”
“Hang on,” said Fake Friend Marnie to Finn. “You said there was nothing between you and Scarlett.”
“There isn’t. We’re just friends. And friends look out for each other,” he said pointedly, turning back to me.
Oh, friends did, did they? I leaned back in the booth and crossed my arms. “How exactly have you been looking out for me?”
“Sometimes I see a side of your dates that you don’t.” He shrugged as if that was obvious. “Guys are on their best behavior around girls, but they let their guard down around other guys, so I can see when one hasn’t got the best of intentions.”
My stomach swooped. Things were starting to make sense, and the picture wasn’t pretty. “And what have you been doing when you decide the guy doesn’t have the best of intentions?”
He picked at the label of on his beer bottle, but still met my gaze. “It’s possible I might have had a quiet word with them.”
I stabbed a finger on the chart and pushed it closer to him. “Which ones? Point to the guys on here that you’ve had a quiet word with.”
He glanced down at the chart then quickly away.
“Finn?” I said.
“Finn?” Fake Friend Marnie echoed.
“All of them,” he mumbled.
The breath left my body in one long rush, and I had to thump the middle of my chest a couple of times before I could get enough air to speak. “All of them?”
“Well, since I met you. Not the ones from high school, obviously.” He folded up the piece of paper and handed it back to me.
“Obviously,” I said faintly. I’d come down here tonight because I thought there might be some connection, but I hadn’t expected it to be this extensive. I probably trusted Finn more than any person alive, so hearing his admission felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. Not only had he manipulated my life according to how he thought it should be, but he’d kept it a secret from me. A whopping secret. Maybe I didn’t know him as well as I’d thought.
“So you’re telling me you’re the reason I haven’t had sex for a year?”
“I’m not sure—” Fake Friend Marnie began to say, but without taking my gaze from Finn, I held up a finger to her. This was between him and me.
He shifted in his seat. “I wouldn’t go that far. If you were dating a better class of men, I wouldn’t have to talk to them, then you wouldn’t be having your dry spell. So, if you—”
I held the same finger that had silenced Marnie in front of Finn. “Stop right there. I can’t believe you’re even saying this.”
“And if I’d been wrong,” he said, his gaze not leaving mine, “if any one of those guys had been worth your time, he would have had the guts to ignore me and date you anyway.”
I snorted. “Who wants to get involved with a girl with a crazy roommate? I don’t blame them for backing away.”
“Come on, Scarlett. I was looking out for you.”
He really couldn’t see it. It was tough to say whether I was angrier that he’d so blatantly meddled in my relationships, or that he couldn’t even see what was wrong with that. Either way, the blood in my veins was simmering.