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“Trying to figure out how you cheated,” he quipped back.

“I don’t cheat!” Hopefully, he caught on that my tone was playful indignation, so I added a smiley face before returning, “How could I when I’ve never even played before?”

“So you SAY you’d never played before.”

“I haven’t.”

For a moment, he didn’t respond. I deflated, thinking our conversation was over. I even X’ed out of the chat box and began to log off when suddenly the box popped back up.

“Todd just called me. To gloat.”

I frowned, no idea what he was talking about. I should’ve let it be. But curiosity and a really bad feeling had me asking, “Gloat about what?”

“Come on, Grace. He’s my best friend. Did you honestly think he wouldn’t kiss and tell? Especially about this?”

My face heated.

Oh. My. God.

Ryder Yates knew Todd had kissed me?

Why would Todd tell him that?

The sudden sick swirling in the pit of my stomach rose up my throat, making me wish yet again I could start the entire day over and tell Todd I wasn’t interested the first moment he asked me to meet him after the game.

My jaw hardened as I wrote, “Well. I’m SO freaking happy I could give your best friend a reason to gloat in your face. Honestly. What girl doesn’t love being the object of a gloat?” The frowny face I added didn’t seem necessary, but I wanted to get my mood across.

Gloating indeed.

Humph.

A minute later, Ryder typed, “Maybe I shouldn’t have told you I knew.”

I snorted aloud. “Gee, you think?”

“Sorry. It didn’t occur to me how this would make you feel. I was too worried about how…”

“You were too worried about what?” I asked when his note cut off in the middle of the sentence.

“Ignore that last part,” he answered. “I didn’t mean to type it. Accidentally hit enter instead of backspace.”

“Too late. You sent it; now you have to explain.”

“Really? I have to explain? Think about it from my point of view. The girl I was interested in totally turns me down only to show up in my school and kiss my BEST FRIEND. What do you think I’m going through here?”

I’d never read a note before and actually seen the author yelling in my head, like I could envision Ryder scowling at me as he pounded out his words, torturing his poor keyboard with his angry thoughts.

For the space of two seconds, I wallowed in guilt. It had never been my intent to play two friends against each other. An awful, creeping, sick acid swirled through my gut, making me feel dirty and wish for the million and second time that I could start over fresh.

But the moment passed as I waded through the guilt and realized I hadn’t invited Todd to kiss me; I hadn’t even wanted him to. And besides, even if I had, that really didn’t give Ryder the right to yell at me. Just because a boy talked to a girl one time at a basketball game weeks ago by no means meant she was forever after forbidden to kiss his friends. Geesh. The nerve.

Stiffening my back, I began to persecute my own keyboard with righteous indignation. “You shouldn’t be going through anything. YOU have a girlfriend.”

Within moments, he shot back, “What does she have to do with it?”

With a roll of my eyes, I answered. “If you flirt with one girl while you’re dating another, you forfeit all rights to feel jealous when the first girl moves on.”

“Okay, stop right there. What makes you think I was dating Kiera the night of that game?”