Blindsided

Prologue

PROLOGUE  

University of Colorado Boulder, March 13, 1999

Ethan woke with a pained groan. The sound of the kitchen cabinets banging closed seemed to reverberate off the inner contours of his aching skull, and he wondered what he'd done to piss off Sarah this time. Why else would she be banging around in the kitchen? 

"What are you doing, babe?" he called, and even the sound of his own voice was too loud. Christ, how much had he had to drink?! He pressed his fingertips to his temples, hoping to still the throbbing ache.  

"I'm looking for coffee filters!" 

Not Sarah. -And yet he knew that voice almost as well as he knew his sister's voice, for its owner had tagged around with Molly since the two girls had been in kindergarten. A swamping wave of nausea, unrelated to his hangover, had him sipping shallow breaths as the wrongness of what he'd done sunk in. Memories from the previous night flooded his pickled brain.  

Mae in a tight green velvet dress that made her look like a leprechaun's wet dream: mischievous and sexy and way, way too grown up to be his little sister's tagalong best friend. Her coppery hair appearing to throw off sparks under the spinning club lights while she danced, and he'd been fascinated, half-wondering if it would burn him if he touched it. Huge green eyes that looked at him as if he hung the moon, and his wounded ego had been starved for the attention, hungry with the need to be wanted in the wake of Sarah's rejection.  

Sarah. Oh, God, Sarah... Ethan dragged his pillow over his face to suppress a moan. His long-time girlfriend had dumped him not even twenty-four hours ago, and the pain was still fresh. Sarah was the first girl he'd ever loved, and losing her felt like losing a necessary part of himself. -His lungs, maybe, since he couldn't seem to breathe whenever he thought of her.  

And yet how stupid was he, how stereotypical and petty and weak, that instead of groveling, instead of doing whatever it took to win Sarah back, he'd gotten plastered and fallen into bed with another girl? Shame churned in his belly until he had to abandon the rumpled bed and dash for the bathroom to puke.  

He barely made it. He retched and retched, grimly aware of the noise he was making as his guts turned inside out, loud, barking, choking grunts he couldn't hope to smother.  

He was slumped between the sink and the toilet, his hot face pressed to the damp chill of the porcelain tank, gasping for breath and praying that the worst was over, when Mae tapped lightly on the bathroom door.  

"Are you okay?" she called. 

He heaved again, but managed to hold it. He didn't want her to open the door, and he knew concern would override her respect for his privacy if he didn't answer her.  

"Yeah," he managed to croak. "Sorry. I drank too much." 

Surely she must know that. He remembered leaning heavily against her slim shoulders as they'd walked home from the party. He'd been afraid he'd hurt her, but he hadn't been able to stand up straight. At the door, he'd kept dropping his keys, until finally she'd taken them and opened the door herself.  

"Do you need help?" she asked through the door. 

No, no, God, no, he thought desperately. He wished she would just go away, not only from the other side of the door, but from his whole apartment. He wished she'd leave so that he could go back to bed and pretend the last twenty-four hours had never happened, but he wasn't about to say so. He wasn't a total douchebag: he'd taken Mae to bed, and she deserved decency and respect. His regrets were his own problem.