mattered to him that they’d had sex at all. Papa. She’d put Alex in literal danger, and he should have known all the facts.
She supposed.
It wasn’t fair. At all.
She hadn’t even seen her father yet since she’d come home. He’d been out late last night and had left early this morning. Lia, with literally nothing to do, had slept in. Why not?
Over dinner last night, Mamma had peppered her with suggestions about things to do—how about joining her for yoga in the morning? Or maybe calling Aunt Katrynn and seeing if there were some hours she could work at the bookshop? Or several other dumb ideas meant to make Lia forget her whole life had been swiped out from under her.
She’d said no to it all and instead remained in bed until noon. Now, she and Snuggles wandered aimlessly around the big house. Ren and Carina were in school, of course. Mamma was doing her Pillar of the Community routine, no doubt. Even Emilia was out, running errands for the family. Lia was alone.
But there was a black SUV on the street, of course.
Her stomach growled. For the most part it had stopped doing that, so when it did, she heeded its call. Lia let the living room curtains fall back and went to the kitchen.
She had half a carton of plain yogurt mixed with six blueberries and a tall glass of water. After she rinsed her dishes, she went to the cellar, where her father had installed—had paid to have installed—a little dance studio.
At least she could pretend to have her dream.
~oOo~
Lia danced for an hour, until she was wringing wet and shaking, then went upstairs and showered. As she stepped out and toweled off, she heard her phone vibrating on her desk, so she went dripping into her room and took a look, trying not to hope it was Alex.
It was Harriet. Both Harriet and Kayla had texted her multiple times, but Lia left them on read. She wasn’t ready to figure out how to talk to them about why she’d left, and how she didn’t know if she’d ever be back.
It didn’t matter, anyway. Kayla and Harriet would move on, continuing their progress toward graduation and then onto their lives, which they would control themselves.
That, apparently, would never be Lia’s destiny.
So she meant to swipe Harriet’s latest text away like she’d swiped all the others, but this one caught her attention. It was in all caps. Harriet loved emojis and exclamation points, but she only used all-caps for the most outrageous news.
OMG CALL ME NOW YOU WILL
NEVER BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENED
LEAH DON’T TEXT CALL ME CALL
MECALLMECALLMEEEEEE!!!!!
Leah. On the off chance that she’d forgotten that her own best friends didn’t even know her real name. Which she had not.
But Lia picked up her phone and called.
Harriet answered on the first ring. “Hey! How are you? Where are you? Omigod did Kayla call you? Do you know?”
Despite the general bleakness of her mood, Lia couldn’t help but chuckle at Harriet’s breathless enthusiasm. “Kayla didn’t call. What’s going on, Harrie?”
“They shut down Sig Rho!”
“Please?”
“Yeah! There was a raid in the middle of the night and like almost all of the brothers were arrested. For rape and a bunch of other stuff! There was some kind of rape ring thing going on. The whole frat was in on it. There are like three crime scene vans parked on the Sig Rho lot and the whole street around the house is blocked off. There’s still press everywhere around campus—it’s gonna be all over the news, I guess.”
Trying to process all those rushed words, Lia dropped to the chair beside her desk. “You mean Jack—”
“YES! I guess he really is a rapist! Him and all the rest of them! Omigod! I bet this is gonna be a story on SVU soon!”
Lia felt sick. She’d narrowly avoided that fate, thanks to Alex, but it was a ring? That meant other girls had not been as fortunate. Guilt washed over her. She remembered wondering that night if other girls might be in trouble, but Alex had gotten the ‘bad guy’—he’d said it and she’d believed it. They’d walked away and let it happen.
Harriet’s tone-deaf enthusiasm for the scandal only made Lia feel worse.
“I have to go,” she said and ended the call, just barely catching Harriet’s Wait! before the phone went quiet.
A second or two later, a text buzzed. From Harriet, of course.