Page 159 of His Good Girl

For a moment, all I could hear was the city outside and my own blood rushing in my ears. I set the water glass down carefully because if I did not, I would throw it. Not at her. Maybe at the wall. Maybe at the whole world, if the world had been kind enough to present one breakable surface.

“What did you tell them?” I asked.

Jules flinched.

“What did you tell them?”

“They already knew so much,” she said quickly, desperately. “That’s how they did it. They would say something, and I thought they were confirming, not asking. They knew about dinner. They knew about him picking you up. They knew you were going to work at Rowe. They knew you’d been hired after emailing him. They knew—God, Avery, they knew things I didn’t even tell them.”

“What did you tell them?” I asked a third time.

Her hands were shaking now. “I told them you were stressed about him. That you liked him. That you were worried about the boss thing and the godfather thing. I told them about the first dinner, not details, just that it happened. I told them you had gone to his office after hours that day because they already knew you had, and they said they needed to understand whether someone inside Rowe was setting him up.”

I stared at her.

“I know,” she whispered. “I know.”

“Did you tell them about the skirt?”

She closed her eyes and my heart cracked in a new place.

“Jules.”

“I told them you were deciding whether to wear it,” she whimpered, crying openly now. “I didn’t tell them the other part. I swear to God, Avery, I didn’t tell them that. I didn’t know they had cameras. I thought they were watching the building. I thought they were trying to identify who was watching the building. They made it sound like they were trying to protect everyone.”

“Everyone.”

“I know how it sounds.”

“No, I don’t think you do.” My voice rose, then broke. “I don’t think you understand what it felt like to have Callum tell me there werethingsout there, details they shouldn’t know, and then to sit here with you and realize those details came from you.”

She sobbed once and bent forward, both hands over her face. I stood because if I stayed sitting beside her, I might punch her or shove her or crumble entirely, and I did not know which one would happen first. I paced the small living room. Three steps to the desk. Turn. Three steps to the couch. Turn. The apartment had never felt smaller than in that moment.

“You were my person,” I cried.

Jules looked up, devastated. “I know.”

“You were the one I told everything to because I didn’t know how to deal with it alone. I trusted you!”

“I know.”

“You made jokes about him. You told me wanting him didn’t make me bad. You asked if I felt safe.” My voice cracked hard on that one. “And then you gave them pieces of me.”

“I thought I was keeping the pieces from getting worse.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“No, it doesn’t.” She pressed her palms to her eyes. “It doesn’t make sensenow. It made sense when I was scared. They said if I cooperated, the photos of me would go away. They said if I didn’t, they would send them to my clients, my landlord, and my mother. They had her email, Avery. They had my mother’s email in the subject line of a message with one of those photos attached. They told me they weren’t interested in hurting you. They said Callum’s enemies were going to use you worse if they didn’t understand the scope first. They said they could bury it. They said nobody would ever know.”

“And you believed them?”

“Iwantedto.” Jules lowered her hands. Her mascara had smudged beneath her eyes, making her look younger and more wrecked than I had ever seen her. “I wanted to tell you. Every time. I would pick up my phone and think, tell her, tell her now. But then I thought if I told you, you’d tell Callum, and he’d do something huge and terrifying because he’s Callum Rowe, and then whoever had my pictures would release them and yours too, and I just—” She choked on the rest. “I kept thinking I could make it stop before it touched you.”

“It touched me.”

“I know.”

“It didn’t just touch me, Jules. It put my naked body on a table in a room full of lawyers.”