He’s furious about the dress. A few months ago, I would have cringed away under the heat of his gaze, but now, I force myself to look him full-on in the eyes.
“I can wear what I want. We’re not together.” I raise my chin confidently; unfortunately, my voice comes out as a pitiful croak, so it loses all its authority.
Lucas’s mouth crashes against mine so hard that my head bumps the wall and my lips mash against my teeth. It’s an angry kiss. I can almost taste his fury. I can also taste blood … and that’s familiar too.
This is wrong. I don’t want this.
Forcing my arms up between our bodies, I shove him a couple of feet away from me and forcefully shake my head. “Stop it! You don’t get to just decide we’re back together. You cheated on me. You can’t just kiss me and make everything okay again!”
“Lucie, sweetheart, let me make it up to you. I already said I’m sorry. What else do you want me to do?” His voice is suddenly soft and loving. His bottom lip juts out in a pout as his eyes meet mine.
His sudden one-eighty turn has me instantly on edge. I should be used to this, his mood swings and him twisting and turning like this to keep me off guard, but I’m not.
We’re both breathing heavily as we stare at each other in silence. My mind is still whirling, but it finally settles on something that’s niggling away at me.
“How did you know I was in Scotland?” I cock my head and look at him quizzically.
“What?”
“Scotland. How did you know I was there last weekend with Theo?” I didn’t tell anyone. The only ones who knew were Aubrey and Theo’s family.
His jaw tightens. “I saw it on Instagram. You, dressed like a hooker, acting ridiculous with him.” He practically growls the word him as he jerks his thumb over his shoulder towards the door. “The location was tagged as some hotel in Scotland.”
I frown. Something is clawing at me, a thought in the back of my mind, just out of reach. “But … but how did you see that? I didn’t repost it. You can’t see it on my account. I was just tagged.”
I know this is true because Aubrey couldn’t see it when she was looking for the videos when I got home and told her about them. She hadn’t known about them until that moment, and when she checked, it turned out, you couldn’t see them from her account because Theo had only added my username in the description of the posts, not added an official tag. In the end, she had to resort to watching them on my phone, clicking on my notifications so she could see it.
Lucas shrugs and rakes a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. I just saw it.” His tone is defensive, and his eyes dart away from me.
My back straightens as I realise the only way he could have seen it. “Are you signed into my Instagram account?”
He doesn’t deny it.
My heart clenches as the truth clangs in my stomach like a lead balloon. “You are.” More truth hits me, and my brain is now reeling. “And my Twitter too. You just said you knew Theo and I were stuck in the lift and that you saw it on Twitter.” I gulp noisily. “But I didn’t like or comment on Theo’s tweet, so no one else could have seen it, apart from his followers. The only way it’s linked to me is that notification. So, you must be signed in there too?”
His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. His jaw tightens, and he folds his arms over his chest and shrugs. “Maybe I am. You were always on my phone; maybe it’s still signed in from you going on there. How should I know?”
But that’s a lie. I was never on his phone. He was the one who liked access to my phone, but he always hid his phone away from me with passcodes that I wasn’t allowed to know.
That means that he deliberately signed into my social accounts to keep tabs on me. It wasn’t an accident.
The conniving little bastard!
I blink, and it’s like everything hits me at once.
Small hints that Aubrey dropped for years, which I ignored because they didn’t fit the narrative I had. When she brought up shady things Lucas said or did, I would defend him and make excuses—even to myself. Although some of the