CHAPTER TEN
Iwalk toward the door, intent on leaving since I’ve said my piece and I’m spent. Reliving all those memories hurts more than I admit, even to myself. Losing my dad was hard enough for me, but it nearly killed my mom. Watching her at his funeral broke my heart all over again, and sealed Wyatt’s fate in my mind. I wanted to annihilate him the way he destroyed my family.
“You can unlock the door and let me go now. Like I said before, it’s over. I’m done with wasting my time on anything to do with you. Start another company. Start over somewhere new. Whatever makes you happy. You won’t find me there.”
“I may know everything about what happened to you, but you don’t know everything, Megan. You need to hear it, and I need to tell you.”
With my hand on the doorknob, I close my eyes and lower my head. “Wyatt, it won’t change anything. We can’t change the past. We can’t change anything that happened. There’s no excuse you can give me for videoing us without asking me then texting it to your friends. It’s unforgivable, Wyatt.”
“You always have been the most stubborn woman.” He stomps over to me, easily lifts me off the floor, and places me in the center of the couch. “If I’m forced to hold you down and make you listen to me, that’s exactly what I’ll do. Or, you can sit here like an adult and hear me out.”
“All right, Wyatt. I promised, so I’ll listen to what you have to say.”
He sits on the coffee table in front of me, his hands rubbing up and down my thighs. The intimate contact takes me back to a time when I welcomed it…when I welcomed his affections.
“I have so many thoughts running through my mind now I don’t even know where to start.” Wyatt looks at me expectantly, no doubt sure I’d bolt away from him at any second.
“Start with when you lied to Billy and said it wasn’t you.”
“Okay, let’s settle that part first. Before you walked out of the bathroom, Billy was taunting me with that video. I hadn’t seen the whole thing, so I didn’t know it showed your face. The short clip I’d seen before he yanked his phone away didn’t show anyone’s face. I thought I could deny it was both of us and stop the rumors right there.”
“What? You took the video and sent it to him!”
“No, I didn’t, babe. Let me explain everything, okay?”
I nod and fold my arms across me.
“I didn’t video us, and I sure as hell didn’t send it to anyone. I didn’t know anything about it until Billy showed me not sixty seconds before you walked out and heard me denying any involvement. Not only was I hit with seeing my girlfriend’s naked body on Billy Brown’s phone, but also knowing our lovemaking was the whole school’s entertainment.
“Then when I saw your face, I knew you’d already seen it. I didn’t know Billy had gotten to you before he did me. I wanted to spare you from it. After you threw your phone and ran away, I pushed past Billy and tried to stop you, but the principal caught me and took me to his office. I was beside myself with worry about you. I couldn’t wait to get out of there and find you. The principal already called my father, who was on his way to the school, and explained that a couple of students had shown him the text came from me.
“When my dad arrived, he was livid. I thought he’d beat me to death on the spot. I swore up and down I didn’t send the video to anyone—that I didn’t even have it to send. My dad took my phone from me and, sure enough, there was the text with the video, sent to most of my contact list. I had no explanation, and I looked guilty as hell. But I was adamant—so much so, the principal was hesitant to expel me until my father looked into it further. Both my father and our principal threatened to press charges against me if I was the one behind it.
“The school faculty walked around every room, took every student’s phone, and deleted the text and the video from it. They warned everyone about the criminal charges for sharing sexually explicit images of a minor.”
Wyatt stands and walks around the living room, deep in thought as he relives that awful time.
“My dad took me home, and I racked my brain on how that could’ve happened. I asked a couple of my close friends, and they both confirmed the texts they received were from me. They thought it was strange, knowing how I felt about you, but they didn’t realize it was me in the video too. They thought it was you with someone else…they assumed we’d broken up and I was lashing out at you.
“That didn’t help my argument with my father and the principal, so I was expelled. The principal called the police to report the video. He said I was facing jail time and being forced to register as a sex offender. Megan, the worst part was, I couldn’t find you anywhere. I went by your house every hour. Knocked on the door. Called your name. I had no way to find you…no way to get in touch with you. It killed me. Not knowing where you were or your state of mind nearly drove me crazy. I called every hospital anywhere near Savannah but I couldn’t get any information out of them.
“The police chief was friends with my dad, so he called and gave my dad a heads up about my impending charges. After three days of no word from you and no leads on how that video was sent from my phone, I went back to the beach house and tore my bedroom apart. I mean, in a fit of anger, I demolished that room. That’s when I found it…”
“Found what?”
“A mole camera was hidden in my entertainment center.”
“Directly in front of your bed…” I feel like I’m going to be sick all over again.
“Yes, exactly. So I took it to my dad and showed him what I’d found. The police traced it and found it had been bought online by one Billy Brown. My dad knew before I did but didn’t tell me…I found out when the police came to the school to arrest Billy. That’s when part of the puzzle started to fall into place.”
“What do you mean?”
“Blair and her limo full of friends were already at the beach house when we arrived after the prom. That video of us was from that night—that was our first and only time in that position if you remember.” He stops and looks at me, heat and desire burning in his eyes. He remembers that night as well as I do.
“Anyway, Blair had been especially quiet during this whole ordeal. About the video. About my expulsion. About my imminent arrest. About Billy’s arrest. So I confronted her. She broke down, sobbing, begging for forgiveness. She swore she had no idea Billy had videoed us.
“He came over to the house to see her late that Sunday night. She snuck him in and didn’t want our parents to find out, or she’d get in a lot of trouble. She said Billy left her room for a little while, and she thought he was in the bathroom. But he snuck into my room and got my phone while I was in the shower, accessed the mole camera via the Internet, and downloaded a portion of the video he’d recorded. Then he sent it from my phone, so it looked like I did it.”
