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“Is Luke lying to me,” I demand.
Caden holds my gaze. “Yes.”
I swallow hard. “I don’t believe you.”
“Funny, he said as much while he was threatening me last night. Telling me you’d never believe me if I told you the truth.”
“What’s the truth?” I ask. “Tell me your version then! I…this isn’t making sense.” A dull ache is beginning to throb at my temple.
“Do you really want to know?” he says.
My eyes flash. “Yes.”
Caden holds up his hands. “Okay. Fine. I punched Luke because…” He hesitates and I feel a dizzying sense of trepidation, like maybe I don’t want to know what he’s going to say next. “It was him who was with one of the waitresses. But he wasn’t harassing her.” He clears his throat. “He was kissing her.”
I pause for the longest second of my entire life.
“What?” I ask, confused. The words don’t make sense.
Caden’s expression is pained, but he speaks each word with precision. “I saw Luke making out with a waitress at the Minton Club last night.”
It feels like the floor has dropped out from under me. My knees buckle and I clutch the counter for support.
“No,” I whisper.
“I’m sorry—” he begins but I cut him off.
“Luke wouldnever,” I hiss. “He would never do that.”
Caden looks weary. He shrugs.
“He had a video,” I say, desperate for evidence that contradicts Caden’s version of events. My mind rejects it. Luke wouldn’t cheat. He wouldn’t do that to me.
“Of what, exactly?”
“You getting hauled out of that club.”
“That wasafterI slammed him against the wall and confronted him about cheating on you. Which he didn’t deny since I saw it with my own eyes. That was alsoafterhe said marriage was different for “people like us,” as if I would ever be unfaithful to someone I loved. And it was after he told me that you liked your freedom too—like this was an arrangement you two had or something.”
“What?” I barely mouth the word.
“And then, yes, I punched him in the face and broke his nose. And then, as you saw, I was hauled out of the club by security.” Caden rubs his hand over his bruised knuckles. “I don’t regret that.”
“I can’t…believe…this,” I gasp.
“I’m telling you the truth,” Caden says, his face burning with sincerity. “Why would I lie?”
“To break us up!” I insist. “Just like Luke said.”
“Isla,youcame looking forme,” Caden says. “If I wanted to use this to break you two up, wouldn’t I have come running to you last night? Called you to tell you what I saw?”
“Why didn’t you?” I demand.
“I didn’t know what to do!” he cries. “Luke told me he could be very convincing. I have to give him credit, he came up with a pretty good cover story. I’ve been agonizing about this all morning. I tell you and you’re going to be hurt—hurt badly, and you might not even believe me, so then I lose any chance of having you in my life even as a friend. I don’t tell you, you marry a cheating asshole who, by the looks of it, was not at his first rodeo. Both options are shitty. I was trying to figure out what to do. Alistair said to tell you but I…” His expression turns bleak. “I didn’t want to hurt you either.”
Nausea overwhelms me. I think I might throw up. I want to tell him to get Alistair on the phone right now, but being Caden’s brother, he’s not the most reliable witness.
My body feels like a live wire, every muscle tensed, every strand of my hair alight. Luke can’t be a cheater. I’ve never even seen him glance at another woman when we’re out together at a restaurant or getting drinks with his friends in the city.