The Pretend Boyfriend novel Chapter 44

She frowns. She can't yet put her finger on it, but something about this whole scenario feels forced.

Call it a woman's intuition.

Scratch that. Call it the intuition of someone who loves Brian.

"Want us to help you clean up?" Caleb says.

"No. Leave it. I want to ... remember." Brian flattens his mouth.

"But you can't remember what happened. That's unusual in itself," Caleb argues. "When you're drunk, you pass out. But you're never drunk after just two drinks. You sure you didn't have a couple more?"

"No. I'm pretty sure." Brian scrunches his forehead. "It's just too convenient ... why can't I remember anything?"

From the look on his face, Sam can tell that they are not moving in the same thought lines. She's suspicious for different reasons. This whole scenario seems premeditated. But Brian is distracted by something else.

Something a whole lot deeper and darker.

A strange frisson slides down her spine. Oh, Brian. She hates to see him like this - all cut up and confused and damaged. He seems to have lost his trademark confidence, and that pains her more than anything. A subdued Brian is cause for alarm.

Caleb says, "I've got to go pick up my Mom from the clinic."

The Mom whose home you helped to save from being repossessed, he doesn't add, but Sam knows the whole story. It was the night she rekindled their friendship after all, only they both didn't know it yet.

"Thanks." Brian thumps his best friend on the back.

Sam watches them, a little envious. Brian and Caleb are so good together. It would be criminal of Cassie to want to destroy those years of camaraderie. Not that she could, of course. Sam suspects that if push comes to shove and Cassie made Caleb choose between her and Brian, Caleb would drop her like a hot sack of guano.

Caleb leaves, and they are all alone in Brian's apartment. Correction: not apartment, but palace. She has never really been comfortable in this place. It's too big. Too cavernous. Too modern. They have made love in it many times, but the place still spooks her a little. As if the walls had eyes.

Maybe it had been premonition.

"You want me to stay with you tonight?" she says softly.

"No. I'll be all right alone." He stares at the ruins of his lounge's seating area. She can sense he wants to desperately remember.

"But I want to stay with you," she repeats.

He looks up. His eyes are weary and turbulent. He closes them momentarily and then opens them again. Even in his state, he's beautiful. What sort of woman would claim that he would rape her? Of course, she knows that isn't intellectually the case. Beautiful, successful men are perfectly capable of raping women. But she just can't believe it of Brian.

She just can't. And won't.

She hears the sharp intake of his breath.

"Sam, you don't have to stay with me if you don't really want to," he says guardedly. "You should be ... more careful."

"I'm not leaving."

"Get out," he says with finality.

She winces. "No."

"This is my house and I'm telling you to go. So go."

He strides over to her and grabs her arm.

She shrugs off his grip, and he lets go, clenching his own fist as though he isn't sure what he will do with it. Then he takes a step back. His entire body is trembling with something he can barely contain.

He says in a low voice, "Please, Samantha, leave before I do something both of us may regret."

She wonders why she is standing her ground. Why is she so sure of him when he doesn't seem to be as certain of himself? But her heart is beating fast and ponderously against her ribs, and all that is coursing through her now is her absolute conviction in this man - the man she loves.

Oh yes.

She knows what he has done for her in regards to Henry Moody, though he would never admit it. She knows all his faults. Everything that Cassie has mentioned is true. Brian can be self-absorbed, egoistical, snarky, vainglorious, irreverent, manipulative.

But he is also generous - in a way that he doesn't want you to know he can be. And caring. And loving. And giving. And honest to the point of brutality, because he tells you what you need to hear ... not what you want to hear. And everything else that he tries to hide under that veneer of sarcasm and fuck-them-all attitude.