“Fine by me,” he mumbles. “You aren’t worth the headache, and I’d rather catch a bad case of syphilis than sample Landon’s leftovers.”
With those ice-cold words, he leaves me standing there alone. Shame swells like a storm surge inside me. This kind of filth, you can’t wash away. I blink away the sting, convincing myself it’s just the chlorine. I can’t possibly have any feelings left.
But it’s my feelings that lure me to drag out my phone and pull up the anonymous texting app. I programmed every BMA contact into it at the beginning of the year. My righteous indignation insists Jared just made himself another casualty in this war, and he knew what was at stake. My fingers fly over the keyboard, typing out the details of his treasonous relationship with Jacob Ellis, Maple Grove’s beloved quarterback. The message is written hastily without time to contemplate the fallout.
This isn’t me. I’m not this person. There’s a faint voice whispering inside my head, but I ignore it, focusing on Jared’s hurtful words.
Leftovers.
He called me fucking leftovers.
He threw those words in my face, and now I’m going to throw everything I have at him. If they hit me with a bullet, I fire back with a grenade. That’s how it is now, and it’s the only permission I need to attach the photo I’ve been holding ransom until the school year was over. It’s Jared lip-locked with Jacob at a park in a neighboring town. The proof is undeniable. And so is the urge to shrivel up and die after I hit send.
But this is what he deserves, right? He hurt me. He broke the agreement we had. I can’t let him say those things and just walk away. I told myself I’d never let them screw me over again. And when I see him across the yard, talking to Carson as if he didn’t just verbally eviscerate me, I know I made the right decision.
The sound of chiming phones all over the backyard makes my muscles knot with tension. I watch as, one by one, they start to check them. Slowly, their gazes slip to Jared. He shifts, his entire body tightening, and Carson glances around in confusion before he reaches for his phone too. Whatever happens next is lost on me. There isn’t time to see because someone is heading this way. At the sound of approaching footsteps, I dart behind the gazebo just in time.
“Shh…” Someone purrs as the footsteps stumble into the gazebo. “We don’t need the whole party to see.”
“They didn’t,” the other voice growls.
Curiosity draws me closer, and I know I shouldn’t look, but that first voice sounds so familiar. When I peek through the slotted lattice, the lighting is dim, but I’d recognize that hair anywhere.
Audrey Rothschild.
My stomach lurches violently. The first thought I have is that I don’t want to see her and Landon together. But moving requires coordination, and right now, I seem to have none. Their silhouettes are like a gory movie I can’t look away from.
Audrey wedges her body between a pair of masculine thighs, and his hands wrap around her tiny waist, plucking at the strings holding her flimsy bikini in place. I can’t see his face because she’s grinding her body all over his.
“Get your phone ready,” she orders.
“It is.” He grabs a fistful of her hair as she tries to climb on top of him. “Suck my dick first.”
“Mmm,” she moans. “So bossy.”
“Less talk, more face fucking. Come on. I don’t have all night.”
I try to take a step back before witnessing anything I can’t unsee, but something about the whole scenario feels off. Part of me wants confirmation that it’s Landon so I can hate him even more. But there’s also a nagging sense of hope that it isn’t. A thought I don’t want to examine too closely.
Then an idea strikes me. A terrible, filthy, awful idea. Something straight from the BMA playbook on humiliation. It isn’t difficult to recall how none of them hesitated to take photos of me. How they all shared them around the entire school.
I reach for my phone in a daze, silencing it before I pull up the same texting app. Only this time, instead of photos, I turn on a live stream of the show, inviting the same contacts to watch. Viewers from the party are already flooding in when Audrey sinks to her knees and exposes the guy behind her. My bombastic heart beats wildly as I suck in