in it look like me. It’s an obvious fake if you know I don’t have a tattoo and my body looks different than hers.” She sucked in a ragged breath and tried to get through another wave of humiliation and rage. “They thought it was real.” She still couldn’t believe some of the women she’d worked with for so long believed it was her. Even for a moment. “I sent it to Detective Valdez. I’m sure he’ll investigate, but . . .” She let that but hang because they both knew how hard it was to pin anything on Clint. And in this instance with the videos the laws hadn’t quite caught up to technology and what smarmy individuals did with it.
Tate swore. “I don’t know what to do here. I want to fucking kill him.”
“Anything you do, he’ll use against you. More than likely, you’ll end up in more trouble than he’s in right now.”
“I’ll let Valdez know I got a video, too. Maybe I won’t have to send it to him—I’m hoping Clint only sent the real one to me.”
Clint sent him the real one to taunt him, because Tate knew all the intimate details about her and would spot a fake.
Her coworkers got the fake version because the real thing was a lot more boring than the doctored video.
“How much of it did you watch?”
“Enough.”
She wiped her hands over her face and stared down at her hands in her lap. “It’s not the same with us, Tate.”
He placed his hand on her jaw and made her turn to him. “I know that, Liz.” He huffed out a frustrated breath. “I’ve been with other women. You know that. But you don’t want to see it. I don’t ever want you to see it, or have it thrown in your face.” He shrugged and pressed his mouth tight. “I wasn’t your first. Neither was he. All of that is beside the point. He recorded you. He violated a rule that shouldn’t have to be spoken. You sleep with someone, that’s between you two. What happens is private unless you both consent to something else. And that’s not you, Liz. You have to care to sleep with someone.”
She pressed her fingers to his lips and shook her head. “You have no idea how much I regret sleeping with him. I was trying to make something out of nothing. After . . . well, I knew there wasn’t enough there to be what I wanted it to be, but I was still deluding myself into thinking it could be if only I gave it a chance. Now I know. I mean, I really know that when it’s right with someone you don’t have to give it a chance or make it happen. It just comes together. Like us.”
He kissed her forehead. “Like it’s meant to be.”
“Exactly.” She brushed her hands over his hair. “I wish I could scrub that from your mind.”
“Me too, but I’m over it. I’m furious that he has the video and sent it. I can’t hold it against you for sleeping with him. I do question your judgment,” he teased even if the smirk didn’t quite light his eyes.
“You slept with Marianne.” Liz had warned him junior year that Marianne only wanted to use him to get back at her boyfriend for standing her up for a school dance.
“Enough said. We’ve both made mistakes.” Tate paid for that mistake when Marianne made sure Jordan caught them after a football game going at it in his truck. Tate ended up with a bashed-in window, a black eye, and two cracked ribs.
Jordan didn’t fare much better. Tate broke his nose, gave him a matching black eye, and roughed him up so bad he peed blood for three days. Jordan ended up forgiving Marianne, but they split when he caught her with a senior and gave her up without a fight.
Marianne hadn’t been worth the fight.
She leaned her head back and stared up at the truck top. “Take me home.”
“I guess going out to eat isn’t such a great idea now.”
She rolled her head to look at him. “Is that why you’re all dressed up?”
“Kinda.” That didn’t really answer her question.
Before she asked him to clarify, his phone dinged with a text.
Tate swore, drawing her gaze right back to him. He stared at his phone, then searched the lot with a sweeping look.
“What’s wrong?”
Tate turned the phone to her and showed her the video of her throwing up, crying, and