Page 58 of Halftime

I shook my head. And snuffled. “Seb cheated again.”

She gasped. “Oh, I’m so sorry, sweetie. Wait, I thought he didn’t cheat before. I’m confused.”

I blew my nose and sat up. “Yeah. I forgot. It doesn’t matter anyway, because this time…”

Penny had a frown creasing her forehead. “Wow. I thought he was crazy about you.”

So did I. I picked up my phone again and showed her the picture. She took it, tapped on it, and used her fingers to make it bigger. I didn’t watch. I’d start crying again, and I’d finally got through enough of the hurt to be angry. I needed angry if I was going to get through this.

“Faith, are you sure about this?” Her voice was cautious.

I blinked burning eyes at Penny. “What do you mean?”

She was staring at the phone, looking at a different picture now.

“Well, this is the girl in the picture you showed me.” She looked up at me. “It looks like he’s bending down to do something, but I don’t think he was kissing her.”

“Maybe not in that photo.”

“That’s what I mean. Unless… Is he into kinky stuff? Threesomes?”

It took me a minute to catch up with her, because my mind was somewhere else. “What?”

“This picture, the one I’m looking at now, is the same girl with this guy, and he’s tagged as her boyfriend. And he’s in that picture with Seb as well, right beside her. So either he was trying to kiss her with her boyfriend right there, or they’re doing something else together. Is this the cheating you were talking about?”

I shook my head and grabbed the phone again. I switched between the two pictures, hands shaking. When I looked at the picture with Seb and the girl again, I could see he wasn’t kissing her, not unless he was kissing her ear or something. I hadn’t looked close enough the first time, and I hadn’t wanted to torture myself with it after that.

Seb had been snapped leaning down by her face. It probably wasn’t anything, just a strange angle. The guy beside the girl was big and built and good-looking, and he was her boyfriend.

So…I’d leapt to the wrong conclusion. I closed my eyes.What had I done?

Penny smiled at me. “So maybe you’re wrong. I mean, unless he’s into that kind of thing, and you have rules or something that he broke. I don’t know anything about that, but I’d love to hear about it, if you don’t mind—”

I held out a hand to cut her off. “No kink. No threesomes.”

Her face fell, and I wondered if there was more to Penny than I’d realized.

“And I did talk to Seb.”

Her brow creased. “So he did kiss her?”

I stared at the wall. I tried to remember what he’d actually said. I was able to hear the words now, not interpret everything through my hurt.

“He said he didn’t do anything wrong. And that he shouldn’t have to prove it.”

Penny’s mouth twisted. “He has a point. I mean, I’m on your side, obviously. But that doesn’t mean you don’t do stupid things.”

Wasn’t that the truth.

“I get it. For a year, you thought that he’d cheated. But he didn’t, right?”

I nodded slowly. Obviously, I didn’t have film of his whole evening, and he could have done anything, but the thing that had tripped me up was the picture, and it was turning into a big nothing.

“He has a point. You probably shouldn’t accuse him of cheating just because of a picture like that, not unless there’s more. He’s a hockey player. Girls are always going to be trying to score with him. And they’ll try to take pictures with him, and some will try to make it look like something has happened so they can tell their friends it did. Even if it didn’t.”

Yes. That was the reason for not dating an athlete.

“He didn’t text me.” My voice was small. If that silence hadn’t made me suspicious and sent me looking through social media to find out what was going on, would it have made a difference?

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