“Yeah. Not cool,” someone else murmurs.
It’s on the tip of my tongue to out my girlfriend, but the more I think about it, the less I believe it was Savannah. Even if she’s pissed at me for keeping secrets from her, there’s no way she’d do this. None. She’d never betray the anonymity of my pen name to the public like this. I know in my gut she wouldn’t. But that begs the question how someone who isn’t my girlfriend has information that I only gave to my girlfriend.
I scan the faces in front of me, landing on the twins. Is this a de la Peña problem? Girls talk, and I bet my girl told her best friend. Did Athena do this? Did the guys? What reason would they have to stab me in the back like this?
I scrub my jaw. I can’t see it, but that doesn’t mean she wouldn’t if she thought she was protecting Vannah.
Ugh. I need to slow my roll. I can’t afford to let this incident plant seeds of mistrust between me and my brothers. Like Raffi said, it’s not what we do. We’re ride or die. I don’t think it’s anyone on the team, I don’t think it’s Savannah or Athena, so the burning question of whodunit fizzles deep in my stomach. Who would do this to me…and why?
CHAPTER27
Savannah
My hand trembles as my phone threatens to tumble from my hand onto Athena’s fancy kitchen tiles.
I live here nowmight be a common pop culture reference but in this case, it also happens to be true. Hen made me move in with her. In fact, I’m pretty sure she kidnapped me.
She paid up my dorm room for the rest of the year and asked the university to gift the room to someone who needs it and can’t afford it. Then she had her minions haul my shit across town to her apartment while I was happily buzzed on narcotics.
I didn’t stand a chance.
And while this is technically my home now, I can’t afford to replace her shiny black floor tiles, so I grip my phone-holding hand with my free hand and urge it to stop trembling.
I want to throat punch Tabitha. Whoever the fuck she, or indeed he is. In fact, I want to junk punch them. Vag or peen, I don’t care. I want to make them hurt like they’re hurting me right now.
I’m sweating so much my shirt has stuck to my back. I might puke.
There’s no way my relationship with Justin will survive this huge breach of trust. Even if I didn’t do any of the breaching. There I was being all “yadda yadda…I can’t trust you…yadda yadda…you cheated on my friend…” to him and now look. Someone took his story and printed it in black and white. Okay, hunter green and white, right there on The Internet for everyone in the whole universe to see.
Do aliens have The Internet?
Fuck. This really isn’t funny. But maybe the aliens would let me join them in outer space and escape my life, even just for a little while until I get all my ducks back in a row.
Dammit. They outed his pen name in the article, too.
I don’t care so much about the rest of it. Tabitha can print a retraction for publishing bullshit about his high school life. But the pen name… It’s out there now, and it can’t be taken back. He might not be a big deal right now, but when he gets big—and I have every belief he’ll be the next Pippa Grant or Lucy Score level big in the indie world—it might be a big deal. He has kept it a secret for a reason, and now it’s just…out there.
He’s going to think I did this, right? He’s totally going to think this was me. I mean, it was me. I spoke about it to Athena over Mexican food.
I’m one of only a few people who know his pen name, and he’d just talked to me about what happened with Molly and the test in school. My chest rises and falls faster and faster. I haven’t spoken to my parents since our huge blow up on the phone but I was starting to work on my trust issues with Justin so we could move forward.
And now this.
Shit. Fuck. Fuckety fucking fuck.
This isn’t good.
“You’re making me dizzy, walking in circles.” Athena stares at me from the dining room table. Her concern is radiating from her as she kicks out another chair and jerks her chin at it for me to sit down.
I can’t sit. Now isn’t the time to sit. I need to act. I need to fix this.
“Do you know who Tabitha is?” I jab my phone toward my best friend.
She throws her hands up with a derisive smile. “Nope. I already told you, I don’t.”
“And you swear it’s not you?”
Her brows shoot up before smashing down over her eyes. “You think I’d do this to him? Toyou? Betray your trust like this?”
