One Big Mistake
Whitney Barbetti
Contents
ONE BIG MISTAKE by Whitney Barbetti
Also by Whitney Barbetti
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Coming Soon
Read Chapter One of One Little Lie
Acknowledgments
More Books by Whitney Barbetti
About the Author
ONE BIG MISTAKE by Whitney Barbetti
One night together could ruin everything...
Keane Colburn was my best friend. Ever since childhood, we could always count on each other to be there no matter what—though when I confessed my love to him, things didn’t turn out as planned.
Thankfully, my little crush didn’t ruin our friendship. I shoved those feelings to the back of my mind, watching him chase after other girls and silently wishing it was me. I resigned us to friendship—that was more important than anything else.
But a drunken one-night stand changed everything. Because even though we vowed to forget about it, I couldn’t get it out of my head. And as old memories began to rise to the surface, our lives collided in ways we had never imagined.
One Big Mistake by Whitney Barbetti
Copyright © 2020 by Whitney Barbetti
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Najla Qamber
Editing by KP Curtiss
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, actual events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The use of any real company and/or product names is for literary effect only. All other trademarks and copyrights are the property of their respective owners.
Also by Whitney Barbetti
One Little Lie
Hooked
Ten Below Zero
The Mad Love Duet
Six Feet Under
Pieces of Eight
Love in London Series
The Weight of Life
The Sounds of Secrets
The Bleeding Hearts Duet
Into the Tomorrows
Back to Yesterday
He Found Me Series
He Found Me
He Saved Me
For my kids—
My love for you both inspired so much of this story. But please, don’t read it until you’ve grown up.
“A friend is one to whom one may pour out the contents of one's heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that gentle hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.”
George Eliot
1
KEANE
I fucked my best friend.
That was the only logical explanation. But still, it was not logical.
I stared at my reflection in the mirror, taking in the scruff I’d neglected and the hair that looked wild, like it’d been pulled in a dozen directions. In the mirror, I could clearly see the very female, very naked body in my bed.
I didn’t remember it actually happening, though. Which meant it didn’t, right?
You fucking liar. You remember.
Technically, it was still coming back to me in pieces. I didn’t remember the actual moment of naked contact between us.
Jesus, I was having conversations with myself. What the fuck happened last night?
Dragging a hand down my face, I made my way to the toilet.
It was entirely plausible that we’d just happened to fall asleep naked together. It was entirely possible that I lost my clothes en route to the bed, not paying any mind to my company. People slept naked all the time. It didn’t mean they had sex.
I half-heartedly chuckled at that. Sure, I told myself, you always sleep naked next to women, in a totally platonic way.
There was a first time for everything, though.
Yeah, like having sex with your best friend.
Waving that thought away like it was merely an annoying fly, I nodded to myself, convinced that this was all just a big misunderstanding. It had to be.
But after flushing, my eyes caught on the circle of shame in the trash can. I didn’t need to pick it up to examine it, because I knew precisely what that little piece of latex protection meant. It certainly looked used. And the gold foil wrapper that lay outside the toilet wasn’t exactly absolving my guilt.
I glared down at my dick, as if it’d acted alone in whatever had transpired the night before. Maybe the shots had helped too.
A small, feminine-sounding noise forced me still. That sound. It sent a quiver through me, a memory bursting through like a starburst.
Oh, I remembered what happened, all right.
Fuck.
Shuffling across the tile, I glanced back at the bed. The mass of dark hair hadn’t moved, and neither had the one tanned limb that poked out from the end of the sheets. I washed my hands quickly, trying to work out how this had happened. I mean, I knew the step-by-step, the mechanics. But I couldn’t remember where we’d crossed the line. Or who had first. And those details mattered.
“Fuck, fuck, fuckity mother fuck,” I murmured, once again dragging my hand over my face as if this was all some kind of fucked up mirage that I could will away.
I remembered the shots she’d ordered. Then the sea breezes. Had I moved onto whiskey after? I could still feel a slight burn in the back of my throat and the fog in my head it had left me with. Squeezing my eyes tight, I tried to summon every memory of the night before.
Fucking blank.
I fucked my best friend. And now I would have to deal with the consequences.
2
The Day Before
NAVY
“Are you sure you’ll be okay?” my Aunt Isabel asked after she dropped her suitcases off with baggage agents.
Giving a meaningful look at the bags, I said, “I think it’s a little late for that, don’t you? The bags are well on their way to Greece, with or without you.”
My aunt’s dark eyes widened dramatically, as if the gravity of what she was doing was finally setting in. “Oh, would they, really? Go without me?”
I wasn’t positive, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. “Definitely.” I put an arm around her, guiding her toward the security area. She was small like her sister, my mother, and I had to bend to speak directly into her one good ear. “You deserve this, Auntie. You know you do.”
“Delilah knows she has to be there on the weekend, right?”
“Let me handle it,” I assured her, as I had a dozen times already. “I’ve got Delilah and Roger figured out.”
“If Delilah calls you to offer you
a coffee on her way in—”
“Tell her no,” I finished. “I know. She’ll drive across town to the Starbucks where Brad works.” Delilah, one of my aunt’s employees, was competent at her job—when she showed up on time. And I knew her “Can I pick you up a coffee?” schtick like the back of my hand. She liked to drive to her ex’s coffee shop—even though there was a coffee shop right next door—and flirt with Brad at the window until the cars behind her honked impatiently. Which made her at least thirty minutes late for her shift. “Sorry, it was so busy there!” is what she always said.
I knew, because she’d done it multiple times. And had admitted to it when my best friend Keane called her out on it once—since he’d been one of the impatient drivers stuck behind her.
“I just feel bad, leaving you in charge of everything.”
“And I feel bad that you feel bad. You’re supposed to be enjoying your trip and you’re already stressed before it’s begun.” We stopped outside the roped off areas for security. “Besides, when have you ever known me to screw up something with the store?”
She angled her head so that she looked up at me, reaching a hand to brush one of my curls away from my face. “Yes, my baby, my responsible one. If it were Violet, or the twins—”
“You wouldn’t go if it were them.” I loved my sisters, all three of them, but they weren’t known for being the most… responsible young adults. Thinking of my sisters made guilt wash over me, though, because I hadn’t told her about the message Violet had left for me at work, providing a number I didn’t recognize and an explicit request to call that number. That meant something was wrong. Violet was just as flighty as our mother so if she was the first to toss out a line, I knew it wouldn’t be good. But the last thing my aunt needed before her well-deserved trip was another thing to worry about. “I got this,” I told her with a reassuring shoulder squeeze. I held up my pinky. “Pinky promise.”
Aunt Isabel smiled at me, the only woman who had never broken a promise to me. She hooked our pinkies and said, “I believe you. I trust you.”
“Good. Now, you need to get going. You’re going to go to Greece and sip tropical drinks and feast upon all the man candy your eyes can take. And three weeks from now, you’ll be waltzing right back through those doors with your yummy boy toy on your arm.”
She humored me with a laugh and a playful swat. “Boy toy. How foolish.”
I knew it was. My aunt was just like me, which is how I knew just how to distract her. “Come on; there’s a restaurant just past security that serves the best gin and tonics you’ve ever had in your life. You don’t want to waste your time reminding me of all the things I already know how to do, do you?”
She placed a warm hand on my cheek, her eyes taking on more lightness than they had in the last four months leading up to this trip. “What would I do without you?”
Blowing out a breath, I said, “Not get drunk before flights. Now, go.” I picked up her carryon and handed it to her. “I’ve got this, Auntie. I promise you.”
“I know.” The hand slipped from my cheek. “I do know. I’m very lucky to have my little girl.” I was the oldest of four, but she always called me her little girl.
“Go,” I said once more, almost as if I was impatient for her to take off. In a way, I was. I hated long, lingering goodbyes. I’d had enough of those in my childhood to last me the rest of my life. I didn’t want my aunt to see the shake of my hands, so I clasped them together instead of waving. I was confident that I had the chops to take over for my aunt in her absence, but it was the unknown that worried me. Just like long, lingering goodbyes, unknowns were a plague from my childhood that I couldn’t shake.
My early childhood was filled with memories of temporary living—hotels and rest areas and campgrounds, of bedrooms I had for only a few months at a time, of staying with Aunt Isabel when my parents were sick of being tied down by their kids. Memories of birthdays and lies that led to broken promises went hand in hand whenever I thought too long about my mom and dad.
After one particularly traumatic tenth birthday, where I’d spent nearly my entire party in my bed, crying from a wish that hadn’t come true, Aunt Isabel had laid the law down with my mom and dad. I overheard the call to them, admonishing them for their behavior and explaining in no uncertain terms to never make another promise. We’d already lived with my aunt consistently for a few years at that point, but that solidified it—from age ten on, our aunt was our sole guardian.
The phone calls on holidays from them since then had all but disappeared. The visits, even less so.
That was why pinky promises—while juvenile—were so important to me. And why those who knew me made them to me.
She mouthed I love you before she disappeared beyond the machines.
Once I was out of the parking garage, I hit the speakerphone button on my aunt’s car and initiated a call to my sister Violet via the weird number she’d given me. She was only three years younger than me, but sometimes speaking to her made me feel like I was speaking to someone from another generation entirely. Maybe it was the big sister in me—the oldest of four girls—but sometimes I felt more like my sisters’ mom than the sister I was supposed to be.
“Hey,” she said, curtly and without emotion.
“Violet?” I turned onto the exit to leave the airport; not entirely sure I was talking to my sister. Violet hardly ever answered the phone without a long, drawn out, “Naaaaavy Jaaaaaane.”
“Yup. It’s me.” I heard her blow out a breath on the other end, like she had just completed a run.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” she said, and I could hear the sounds of skateboards on the other end. “I mean. No. No, of course I’m not okay.”
My stomach sank as I mentally ran through as many possibilities as I could in a span of three seconds.
She’s hurt.
She’s in trouble with the police.
She killed someone.
I could thank the late-night murder documentary I’d watched with my roommate, Hollis, and her friend Tori, for that last one. Violet was many things—impulsive, wild—but she wasn’t reckless. “Whose number is this?”
“It’s my friend’s number.”
“Is your phone broken?”
“No,” she said with an edge of impatience on her voice.
I stopped my interrogation and simply asked, “What do you need?” I knew it wasn’t money; whenever Violet needed money she’d send me a Venmo request with a half dozen heart emojis. I knew my sister, but this version of her was foreign to me.
“I need a bus ticket.” I heard her sniffle and my heart pattered nervously in my chest.
“Of course. I’m driving, but text me the departure and arrival cities and the day.”
“Do you think there are buses I could get on tonight?”
“Do you need to?”
“I…” The sound of skates became quieter, and I sensed she was moving away from the noise. “I think so.”
“Would a plane ticket be better?”
“That’s expensive.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, feeling the desperation in my voice. “I can pull off the road right now and get it.” I hadn’t asked yet why she needed it or where she needed to go. Because the fact that she was asking was reason enough, besides the fact that she was my sister.
“No. No, that’s not a good idea. Those can be tracked, right? Like, someone could see if I was on a flight?”
“Someone like the police?” I didn’t want to ask it, because I was so afraid the answer would be yes. Already, my brain was working a mile a second, trying to figure out what I would do if the answer were yes.
“I’m not in trouble with the police.” It was firmly said.
“Okay.” I racked my brain. “I’m not sure if they can be tracked. Maybe? But if they can, maybe a bus ticket can too?”
“Well, I have a fake ID. I know it wouldn’t pass for airport security, but I bet a bus driver wouldn’t stare a
t it too long if I used it for my ticket.”
I wanted to delve into the fake ID part, but that wasn’t really the focus. She was twenty years old and living in Los Angeles. I supposed a fake ID wasn’t too shocking. Certainly, our younger sisters had surprised us with wilder shenanigans. “Okay.” I pulled off the road anyway, wanting to start looking up tickets as I spoke with her. “What’s the departure city?”
“The Barstow bus station is closest to me.”
“I thought you were in LA?”
“I was… I am. I’m just in Barstow at the moment.”
“Where are you traveling to?”
“What’s the closest bus station to home?”
“Amber Lake?” I asked, pausing my search.
“Yeah.”
“Probably Twin Falls.”
“Close enough. Right?” Her voice got muffled for a moment. “You wouldn’t mind picking me up?”
“There’s one tomorrow morning. Leaves just before eight in the morning.” I scrolled down. “You’ll have a long layover in Salt Lake, but you’ll get here at one in the morning on Monday. I know that’s not ideal. Let me keep looking.”
“No, that’s fine. I can make that work.”
One Big Mistake: a friends to lovers rom-com Page 1