Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 102079 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 510(@200wpm)___ 408(@250wpm)___ 340(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102079 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 510(@200wpm)___ 408(@250wpm)___ 340(@300wpm)
She shrugged. “Sorry. But Erin thinks you’ll end up pregnant since you’ve been dating Matt for so long, and sex is forbidden, but everyone gravitates toward the forbidden.”
“I’m not pregnant.”
She widened her brown eyes. “But are you having sex? I won’t tell anyone. I promise.” Her nose wrinkled. “I want to have it.” Eve didn’t have a boyfriend, so I wasn’t sure who she wanted to have sex with.
I shook my head. “Eve, just ... focus. I need to tell someone what I saw, but I can’t tell Matt or Mom and Dad. And I don’t know if I can tell Heather since she might have a crush on Matt’s brother, but I’m losing my mind. I have to tell someone.”
“What?” Eve whispered, leaning forward, eyes unblinking.
“The guitar,” I nodded toward it, “is Isaac’s. He let me borrow it. And when I went up to his room to get it from his closet, I heard something.” I covered my face with my hands, feeling second-hand embarrassment. “Wesley Cory was having sex with another woman,” I mumbled behind my hands.
“What?” Eve said, grabbing my wrists to pull my hands away from my face.
Pressing my lips together, I bobbed my head. “Matt’s dad is cheating on his mom,” I whispered.
Eve’s eyes tried to pop out of their sockets while her jaw unhinged.
“I don’t know what to do.”
“You have to tell Matt,” she said.
I shook my head. “I can’t do that. It would ruin their family. And Wesley would find out it was me who ratted him out. We live on his land, in a house he owns, and there have been so many times that I know Mom and Dad haven’t had the full amount of rent, but Wesley overlooks it because Dad is his pastor and I’m dating Matt.”
“I don’t know.” She ran her hands through her hair. “I don’t know what to tell you to do. This is awful. But you have to tell someone.”
I chewed on my thumbnail. “What if I don’t have to tell anyone? It’s not my job to be the moral police. You know? Thou shalt not judge. I should leave that to God. We’ve all done things we wished we wouldn’t have done. How would you like it if someone called you out every time you made a mistake? If Wesley feels guilty, then he’ll confess. But it’s not like he’s breaking the law. Had I found a dead body in their house, I would say something.”
“Sarah,” Eve rolled her eyes. “You have to say something. If Matt finds out you knew and said nothing, he’ll break up with you. And he may never forgive you.”
“Well, I’ve only told you, so if he finds out I knew, I’ll know who told him.” I crossed my arms and eyed her with a hard gaze.
“If Matt knew Dad was cheating on Mom, would you want him to tell you?”
Had she asked me that a week earlier, I would have said yes. But I was no longer a doe-eyed virgin. “No.” I tipped up my chin.
Eve scoffed. “You can’t be serious.”
“There are some things nobody should want to know. Mom should want to know if Dad is cheating on her, but I don’t think she’d want us to know. I believe Violet would feel the same way. I think she’d be mortified if she found out I saw him in bed with another woman. So you can’t say anything. I just had to tell someone. Can you be a grownup about this and keep it between us?”
“Duh.” She rolled her eyes again. “Yes. I can keep your secret. But it doesn’t mean I agree with your decision. And if you tell anyone that you told me, I will deny it.”
I sat on the end of my bed and picked up the guitar. “I’m not telling anyone.” I plucked the strings. “It’s sad when the feelings you have for someone change and you don’t know why.” I closed my eyes and envisioned Isaac’s fingers, their placement, and their even-caressing of each string.
“You think Matt’s dad doesn’t love his mom anymore?”
I opened my eyes while my fingers kept playing. “No. I think he loves her. I just think he loves her differently.”
“What if she never finds out? What if she wastes the rest of her life with him, thinking he’s being loyal to her?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Which is more important, honesty or kindness?”
“I think you should be both kind and honest.”
I grinned. “Yes, in a perfect world. But we don’t live in a perfect world, so is one always the right answer? If the kind answer to something is not the honest one, which do you want?”
“Which do you want?” she asked.
I thought of all the things Isaac said to me and how they made me feel, especially the things he said that made me feel good and I questioned his sincerity. I felt such a high that I didn’t want to know if he was being honest with me. “Depends,” I said. “But I can’t ask Violet if she wants to know if Wesley is cheating on her. And nobody’s going to ask me, so it’s not like I’m lying. I didn’t want to see that. I don’t want this responsibility.”