“Because I saw you two in his car. I saw the way he grabbed you. And you were so far out of town that I just knew he was holding something over your head. Your grades, the clinic you’d get into, something.” He sounds deranged. Like, there couldn’t possibly be any other reason that I would ever consider being with Asher unless he was blackmailing me somehow.
“It wasn’t like that,” I mutter, still attempting to think through everything.
It was Matt. Matt had been the one to follow us and take compromising photos of us, and then he printed them out and dropped them off in the dean’s office. How long had he watched Asher and me having sex? How much of my body was Matt now privy to? Did he follow us from my apartment, or did he see us while he was out doing something else? How long did it take him before he pulled out his phone? Or before he decided to give the photos over to the dean?
I’m going to be sick.
“What?” Matt’s voice broke through my quickly derailing thoughts. He sounded like he didn’t believe me. Like he refused to believe me.
“It was completely consensual,” I snap. “There was nothing abusive about it.”
“But…” he trails off, dumbfounded. He shakes his head. “No, it’s the reason you didn’t follow up about our date, because you couldn’t.”
I let out a harsh laugh. “I said no to the date because I didn’t want to go. I didn’t lie when I said I’d gotten together with someone unexpectedly over break. I did. Asher and I?—”
“Asher?” he scoffs.
“You took pictures of me, Matt,” I murmur. “Pictures of me at my most vulnerable. You documented me during an intimate, private moment… and then you shared those photos with others.”
“I didn’t print any of the… more explicit photos,” he explains defensively.
Anger and mortification wash over me, heating my face and making me grit my teeth in fury. “Oh, that’s so kind of you,” I say with heavy sarcasm. “Thank you so much for not printing out any of the photos where my tits were on full display.” I turn on my heel and start to stomp away from him.
There is nothing he can say to make this better. He knowingly ruined my relationship. My career. My education. There’s no coming back from this.
You’re the one who ruined everything. You knew what could happen. What might happen to you. To Asher. And you didn’t care, a nasty voice hisses in my brain.
Fine. That’s all true, but it doesn’t mean I have to forgive Matt for what he’s done.
“Summer!” he calls after me. I can hear his footsteps as he chases after me, but I pick up my pace. I won’t forgive him for this. I can’t. “Summer, please!” Matt grabs my arm and spins me around to face him.
“Do not fucking touch me,” I snarl.
He takes a startled step backward. “Summer, I’m just trying to explain myself,” he pleads.
“I don’t care, Matt,” I say, letting out an exasperated laugh. “I really don’t give a shit what you have to say. Nothing you say is going to make any of this better. You can’t undo what you did.”
“I thought?—”
“No,” I cut him off. “You were butt-hurt that I didn’t want to go out with you, and you thought the only possible explanation was that someone was preventing me from doing so. Newsflash, Matt, I never wanted to go out with you. I only agreed initially because I knew I shouldn’t want Asher. So I said yes to you even though I didn’t want to.” Hurt flashes in his eyes, but I don’t care. “So you watched me fuck the man I love, and you took pictures, and you sent themanonymouslyto his boss and the dean of my school, like a coward. You didn’t consider approaching me about the situation first to see if I needed any help. You knew exactly what you were doing, and you didn’t care, because your fragile male ego took a beating by the idea that a woman wouldn’t want you.”
He opens and closes his mouth, shock and shame warring across his face.
I turn and don’t look back. I hope that’s the last time I see Matt fucking Edgewood.
Unfortunately,I have one last difficult stop to make before I can leave this god-awful chapter behind me. Everything is packed and loaded into my car, all the paperwork signed, and I’ve given myself a couple of days to cool down after Matt’s confession.
This is the last thing I have to do.
I knock on Asher’s door with a sickening lead weight in my stomach.
When he opens the door, his shoulders drop with a sigh of relief, and guilt hits me so hard in the chest that I almost take a physical step back.
He pulls me into his arms, crushing me to him. I let myself inhale deeply, not wanting to forget his pine and sandalwood scent. I wish I could bottle up his scent and take it with me, so that when I’m missing him, I’d still have something to remind me of him. To remind me that what we had was real.
I have never loved anyone the way I love Asher Stirling.
He steps away to look me over, and I take a steadying breath. “I’m sorry I haven’t been responding to your messages,” I start, wanting to get this conversation over with as fast as possible.
