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“You know,” I say, hearing my voice come as if from far away, somewhere inside me that is numb and in shock.
“Of course, I know!” she yells, furious tears following her words. “The whole town knows. Pretty soon, the whole art world is going to know – and you! You couldn’t even tell me – you had to do this behind my back.”
“What?” I ask, struggling to keep up. I hold the sheets of my bed against my chest, feeling totally vulnerable alone here in bed as she yells at me. If I’d had the time to wake up and get dressed, maybe I might feel better equipped to deal with this conversation. As it is, I’m on the back foot, trying to catch up.
“Here,” Alex screams, thrusting her phone towards my face. I only have a moment to take it in, to see that it’s a photograph of Finn and me together that she’s showing me before she whips it around again and pulls it back.
“Wait,” I say, scrambling after the phone, my hand dropping to the sheets when I realize I can’t reach it. “Who sent you that?”
“No one sent it to me,” she says, raging, her hands making sharp motions in the air. “It’s on the local newspaper’s site. Online. For everyone to see. They’re saying my Dad’s with an underage girl because of you! This will ruin his reputation!”
Oh, god. Everyone can see it. Everyone, with his hands on my body, and my skirt hiked up so high like that. And she hates me now – I can see it. It’s in her face, in her eyes, as they fix on me with such pain and loathing I can’t quantify it. She hates me so much, I’m surprised she hasn’t already tried to throw me out on the street.
Right now, the only thing that I can think of is that I want my best friend’s comfort. But that’s the one person right now who is definitely not going to be there for me at all. And it’s not even like I can blame her.
This is all my own fault. I should have come clean from the beginning that I was seeing Finn. I shouldn’t have avoided her all day yesterday so I didn’t need to lie – I shouldn’t have agreed with him to keep it quiet. I couldn’t help myself – but that’s no excuse.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her, but Alex just makes a disgusted noise and storms out.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Finn
I throw the car into park and jump out, too busy to worry about anything else. I still haven’t been able to get a hold of Candy, and I’m not going to wait. I have to go to her.
But now I’m faced with a problem. The fact that Candy shares a room with my daughter means I can’t see one without seeing the other. And if Lexie sees me there, she’s going to wonder what on earth I’m doing visiting her roommate instead of her.
It’s all out in the open now, and it’s only a matter of time before I will have to talk to Lexie about this. I’ll have to come clean. But if I can talk to Candy first… I have to. She needs to know. I’ll have to make some kind of excuse, tell Lexie I can explain everything later, and get Candy out of there. Then we can talk it over first before coming to Lexie as a united front.
It’s the only thing I can do. Since Candy isn’t answering her phone, I just have to go over there. It’s the only choice.
I stride over to the place where I know her dorm is – I’ve always known, I just didn’t realize who she shared it with – and hesitate one more time outside the building. This is it. My last chance to back out.
But I can’t back out. I’m not letting go of Candy, and if I’m going to be with her, then I will also make a commitment to look after her, protect her, do the right thing by her. That means I can’t leave her to deal with this – or even find out about it – on her own.
I have to do this.
I grip my hands into fists and head inside, jogging up the stairs to where I know I will find their shared dorm room.
I hear them before I see them, which isn’t a good sign. Students are gathered around the halls, some peering out of doorways and some just openly standing around to listen. A few of them nudge one another and whisper as I pass by, none too subtly. I grit my teeth. The news is out here, then. I was hoping to avoid this, but it sounds like the damage is already done. Now I just need to do absolutely everything that I can to mitigate it.
