Just One Night (The Kingston Family 1)

Nobody but family and trusted people inside the office knew about Kenneth’s dementia. Clearly Linc had made wrong choices there. But with his father’s more fragile mental state, it would have been easy for Beck to swoop in. But Wallace was supposed to protect them all. Shit. Linc scrubbed his face with his hand. What had Wallace gotten out of the deal?

Jordan’s soft hand rested on his arm. “Linc? What is it?”

He didn’t know how to tell her. She was his best friend and the person he trusted most, yet he’d kept this from her. Not even his brothers knew. He blew out a long breath, reminding himself if he could trust anyone, it was Jordan.

He just hoped she looked at him the same way after he told her his deepest secret. “It’s about Beck. We have history.”

She met his gaze. “I know. You went to college together.” Bending one leg, she rested her knee on the sofa, settling in.

He let out a groan and decided to get the truth out there and over with. “Okay, here goes. Beck and I were best friends, and late sophomore year, his room was next door to mine.”

She raised her eyebrows. “I didn’t know you were once close.”

Linc nodded. “He was one of the first guys I met. And when you finally get away from your parents and their rules, you go a little crazy. Drinking, parties. Fun. Anyway, by sophomore year I had a girlfriend.”

“Lacey,” she said. “I remember.”

“And Beck had one, too. Her name was Jenna. The four of us hung out together when we could, but Beck was on scholarship and he had to work. A lot.”

“I know what that’s like,” she murmured.

His gut churned but he continued. “Jenna resented the time Beck spent working, but there wasn’t anything he could do.”

He hesitated and Jordan gave him an encouraging nod. “Go on.”

“One weekend, Lacey went home to see her parents. Beck had to work Saturday night and I went to a frat party. I got drunk. I mean completely shit-faced, typical college, lucky-to-remember-anything wasted. When I made it back to my bed, the room was spinning, and I really thought I was going to hurl.”

She let out a light laugh. “I can relate more to Beck’s working than your partying, but I saw it all the time around me and I understand. What happened?”

He shrugged. “To this day I’m not one-hundred-percent sure. I remember a woman crawling into my bed, telling me she was back and she’d missed me, and then she kissed me. I swear to God I thought it was Lacey and she was home early, that is, if I was thinking at all. What I didn’t know or even sense was Jenna had crawled into my bed.”

“Oh, no.” A horrified expression crossed Jordan’s face, and he wanted to die. “You have to know that, sober, I would never cheat. I grew up with my father fucking around. I wouldn’t do it. And I sure as hell wouldn’t sleep with my friend’s girl. But I was so far gone I was still half drunk the next morning. When Beck walked in and Jenna popped up in bed, crying, telling Beck she was sorry, it just happened, I could barely lift my head.”

“But he didn’t want to hear it,” Jordan guessed.

Linc shook his head. “She wanted his attention, and oh, boy, did she get it. Meanwhile, I got a punch in the jaw and would have had a black eye if one of the other guys didn’t come in and pull Beck off me. Then, I finally threw up.” Linc drew a deep breath and leaned back against the couch. “Needless to say, I lost my best friend and my girlfriend. Beck ditched both me and Jenna, who tried to play the martyr for him, and when that didn’t work, she had the gall to attempt to convince me to go out with her.” The woman was a psycho.

“Linc, I’m sorry. Why didn’t you ever tell me any of this?” Jordan asked.

“Nobody knows and I mean nobody. Would you admit you screwed over your best friend?” He could barely look at her now.

She sighed. “Let me ask you a question to put this into perspective. If a man climbed into bed with a completely drunk woman, pretended to be someone he wasn’t, and slept with her, would there be any actual consent? If someone did that to Chloe, would you blame her for sleeping with someone she thought was her boyfriend?”

He lifted his head. “Hell no.”

“Right.” She pinned him with a determined stare, the one she used when she wanted him to think the same way she did.

And when he thought about his sister in his position, he could look at things differently. “I would consider it rape and I’d beat the shit out of the guy.” His hands were already clenched into fists.