Blurred Lines (Love Unexpectedly 1)

It will be better tomorrow, I tell myself.

Tomorrow I’ll be back to normal and I won’t care that Ben’s about to take that blond girl up to his bedroom and touch her the way he touches me….

I let out a scream through gritted teeth and dig the heels of my palms into my eyes, wishing I could scrape away the painful mental images.

Ben and my no-strings-attached relationship?

Yeah. Turns out that there are suddenly strings after all.

And I’m completely tangled in them.

Chapter 18

Ben

Something is wrong.

No, everything is wrong.

Not just with the scene, although, if I’m honest, the scene definitely isn’t doing it for me.

Which makes no sense. The girl in my lap is hot, and even if she wasn’t, the four others in the room are good-looking. She’s not even totally annoying, although for the life of me I can’t remember one damn thing we talked about.

The beer’s free-flowing, the music’s good…

And I can’t get into it. Any of it.

But I’m less worried about me and the fact that I’m suddenly indifferent to something that used to work like a charm, and more worried about my best friend.

I feel eyes on me and look over to see John giving me a weird look. He holds up the drink Parker shoved at him and lifts his eyebrows in question.

I shake my head. Dunno.

Then his gaze shifts to Cora—the girl in my lap—and his brows lift again. I realize way too late that Cora’s kissing my neck, and not only am I not getting into it—

Hell, I didn’t even notice it.

This is not a good sign.

There’s no good way to do this, so I grit my teeth and put both hands on Cora’s waist, shifting her to the right as I ease to the left.

She gives me a startled look, but an apologetic smile is all I can manage. It’s on the tip of my tongue to say I’ll be right back, except…

I don’t know that I will.

I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, only that I need to find Parker. Figure out why she’s home instead of getting laid by Brendon or Brandon or whatever.

I pause by Jason on my way toward the stairs. “Get rid of them. But nicely. Send the booze with them to ease the blow.”

“You got it,” he says, pushing to his feet.

I feel kind of crappy about the fact that I’m going to throw, like, ten people’s Friday night off its game, but hell…they’re all mostly drunk anyway. They can always relocate to Joe’s house; he’s a three-minute walk away.

I take the stairs two at a time, not surprised to see that Parker’s door is shut.

I am surprised to find it locked.

I didn’t even know she had a lock.