With Every Heartbeat

Across from me, Cora actually did laugh.

My gaze shot to her.

Still smirking at whatever she was reading, she began to answer her text. Curious what was pulling her attention away from our date, I asked, “What’s so funny?”

Her head zipped up, her eyes wide. “What?”

I tipped my attention to her phone. “Who’re you texting?”

“Oh. Uh...Zoey.”

I glanced toward Zoey. She was most definitely not texting Cora. I looked back at my girlfriend. And it hit me.

Oh...hell.

“You’re lying.” The words seemed to echo from my mouth and reverberate inside my head. Why would she lie about who she was texting?

Cora looked up again, and I saw the flash of panic in her gaze. “Excuse me?”

“Who...are you texting?” I said with a little bit more force.

Cora scowled. “I just told you. Zoey.”

“No.” I shook my head slowly. “You’re not texting Zoey.”

I glanced toward Zoey again just as a new text chimed from Cora’s phone. Zoey’s phone was still sitting on the bar behind her. She frowned at me, looking concerned, and motioned with her hands as if to ask what was wrong.

I turned back to Cora. Busy trying to open the new message, she didn’t notice me stand up and lean across the table until I’d snagged the phone from her hand.

“Hey,” she yelped, glaring at me and trying to retrieve it. But I’d already read enough.

She wasn’t just texting some other guy, she was texting lewd, sexual things to some other guy, telling him she’d try to sneak out to him tonight because her mouth was watering for his dick.

My pussy is so wet for you right now. As soon as I’m done with this stupid dinner, your cock better be hard, because I’m climbing on it as soon as you open your door and I’m riding you until dawn.

I kept reading, and everything in my chest just kept sinking lower and lower. Cora ran around the table and once again tried to take her phone back. I held out my hand, keeping her away. She hit my shoulder and started to curse me. But I didn’t feel her fists or hear her words. I was still reading, unable to look away.

“Damn it, Quinn.” She started to cry. “It’s not what you think. Just give me my phone back…now.”

“Not what I think?” I murmured, looking up at her. “So…you’re not having sex with this guy who…” I glanced down and starting reading her text aloud, “made me come so hard the last time you were in me I almost orgasm just thinking about it?”

“I…” She had no words to talk herself out of the truth.

An uncontrollable, hard laugh left my lungs. “Oh my God. Oh my God, Cora.” My ears began to ring. “I cannot believe you.”

This was impossible to process. My girlfriend had cheated on me.

“Quinn,” Cora started, but I held up my hand.

“No. Don’t even...just, no.”

“No. Please...just listen to me...”

I shook my head and threw her revolting phone on the table. “I think I’ve had enough of reading what you have to say, I don’t want to listen to any of it.”

“Damn it.” She stomped her foot in a pout. “How the hell did you know it wasn’t Zoey?”

My mouth fell open in shock. She was upset because she’d gotten caught, not because she was breaking my heart all over Jenny’s Crab Shack? I couldn’t freaking believe her.

“Because she’s sitting right there!” I helpfully pointed Zoey’s way.

Cora spun around and gaped at Zoey. Zoey jumped off her barstool, clearly startled. She hurried toward us, but I couldn’t handle her right now either. She knew; she had to know. How could she live with Cora and not know? How could she go with me to pick out a ring and not tell me?

Oh God, why had she let me do that and let me make a complete fool of myself?

I felt doubly betrayed.

Just then, the server, wearing a huge smile, approached our table. “I hope you guys have a big appetite tonight.”

The blood drained from my face. Life could not possibly get any more humiliating than it was in this second. Actually it could, because I was half a second away from puking my misery all over the floor.

But Zoey plowed into the server, sending the bucket full of crabs flying everywhere. I watched in a daze as she apologized to the waiter as if she totally hadn’t meant to tackle him.

“I should’ve watched where I was going,” she said as she crawled through butter sauce and crabs and shrimp until she curled her fingers around something she picked up and cradled to her chest. When she looked up, her eyes met mine.