Bring Down the Stars (Beautiful Hearts Duet #1)(88)

Wanting you.

“I’m drunk and scared to ship out,” he said after a moment. “That’s why it happened. We don’t have to tell him. It would only hurt him. He doesn’t…” Weston shook his head, his anger and disgust with himself was palpable. “He doesn’t need or deserve this right now. It’s my fault.”

“I kissed you too—”

“It was my fault and it was wrong and I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

“Weston…”

“It won’t happen again,” he said and his voice cracked on the last syllable, unleashing something deeper than regret for betraying a friend. Something final that scared me to my core.

A thousand questions and emotions swelled in me, tangling with the confused, heated desire for him. But the barrier was up. Barbed wire now. And behind it, he was unyielding. An ice statue. Beautiful, but immovable. Immutable.

I mustered my shaken dignity. “You’re right,” I said. “It won’t happen again. But it’s not up to you to say how I deal with it. I need to tell Connor—”

“Tell him what? That we made a drunken mistake? We can’t let him go to war with the one bright spot in his life dimmed.”

I blinked in confusion. “What are you talking about, one bright spot?”

“You,” Weston said. “You make him happy. You make him proud when all he gets is shit from his parents.”

I sagged against the couch, remembering how proud Connor had been at Thanksgiving that I was by his side.

“We can’t take that away from him,” Weston said. “Not while he’s got his finger on the trigger and making life or death decisions. One hesitation, one second of self-doubt and it’s over.”

He moved toward me and my pulse jumped. His hand rose and my skin tingled in anticipation of his touch, even as guilt coursed through my veins.

“What happened tonight was my fault,” he said. “Everything. It’s all on me. Not Connor. Don’t punish him for my mistakes.”

“Mistakes?” I said. “I don’t—”

He silenced me with his hand on my cheek, and even then, my body responded to his touch and ached for more.

“You can take the guest room,” Wes said, his voice softer now, frayed at the edges. His eyes filled with pain. “I’ll sleep on the couch here.”

I stared at him a moment more, wishing I hadn’t drunk a drop of alcohol.

My truth serum…

I couldn’t think clearly and the only thing to do was to go. I rose on shaking legs and walked to the door like a sleepwalker, and Weston opened it for me.

“Goodnight, Weston,” I said.

“Goodnight, Autumn.”

I stepped into the hallway and he shut the door behind me. I fumbled my way through the dark, quiet house to the guest room and its big empty bed. The tears were already flowing. No matter how rocky, up-and-down and confusing things were with Connor, I was his girlfriend. And I cheated on him. I betrayed Connor on the eve of his deployment.

The eve of goodbye.

The shame whipped me to the bone. I was no better than Mark. And yet…

“It wasn’t wrong,” I whispered against the pillow.

Or rather, it may have been wrong, but it felt perfectly natural. Inevitable. As if I’d been waiting for Weston for months.

Finally.

Kissing him was cheating on Connor, but it didn’t feel like cheating. It felt like a completion.

What is happening between us? The three of us?

But it was too late to ask.





We said our goodbyes in the gray light of dawn. I felt sluggish and slow; last night’s drinking hanging over me like a fog, and what I’d done with Weston feeling like a dream that was both wrong and perfect. Part of me wanted to run away from the porch in shame, and the other wanted to go back to sleep for more.

Weston’s mother cried loudly. Connor’s mother stifled her tears behind her wrist. Paul shook Weston’s hand and was visibly shocked when Weston pulled him in for a hug. They slapped each other’s shoulders, then held still a beat. Weston pulled back and said something to Paul. Paul shook his head at first, his expression grim, but Weston was insistent. Finally, Paul nodded and then they shook hands, as if sealing a deal.

“I promise,” Paul said.

Connor hugged me and I was petrified, positive he’d sense Weston’s lingering presence all over me. When he craned down to kiss me, shame burned my skin.

“Be safe,” I whispered.

“I will,” he said against my hair.

Ruby took her turn hugging Connor and then Weston. She gave him a pat on the cheek.

“Behave yourself.” She smirked. “No, I take that back. Give’em hell.”

He smiled faintly. “Will do.”

Then it was only Weston and me. Everyone watching two friends say goodbye.

I moved slowly into his embrace and ringed my arms around his neck.

“Take care of him,” I said, my voice cracking. “And you. Take care of you.”

And come back to me.

“I will,” he said. When he drew back, his eyes were drowning in a blue-green ocean of pain and regret.

When the Army van arrived, my heart didn’t break—it tore in half. A vicious rip with sloppy, jagged edges. No defined boundaries, no territory lines indicating which part belonged to which man.