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“Wow,” Tucker mutters. He shoves his phone in front of my face for me to read. “You need to see this.”
Dethroned
January Edition
New Year’s resolutions… everyone makes them, and few people stick to them. Take Jamie O’Connor’s promise to be faithful, for example. He’s been playing house with his Kappa Delta sorostitute for the last two months, and yet he was spotted with another girl. The newspapers don’t lie, Jamie. Fess up and tell her what you did, you dirty boy. A picture is worth a thousand words…
You, Jamie O’Connor, have been dethroned.
XO,
The Queen
Irritated, I take the phone from his hand, reading it several times in horror. Shannon will kill me. She may never speak to me again.
Letting out the breath of air I hadn’t realized I was holding, I hand the phone back to Tucker. “I have to narrow down her location. The signal is somewhere in the city, but that doesn’t help. She could be anyone working from anywhere.”
“You’ll find her,” he says, more confident than me. “Or maybe we need to give her a new target.”
I shake my head. “We need to shut her down, not feed her ego. She wants power over us. We have to take it away from her.”
“How do you suggest we do that?”
“I’ll find out who she is, and when I do, we’re taking her down.”
He smirks. “I like the way you think.”
I wink and then go back to texting Shannon, hoping she’ll meet me later for coffee. I have to explain this post before she breaks up with me. Nothing happened with Cece. But the pictures on the Dethroned website prove otherwise.
Me: Meet me at Broad Street Beans at 4
Shannon: Not sure if I can leave the chapter house. We’re working on decorations for the date party.
Me: I need to tell you something
Shannon: Tell me
Me: In person
A few minutes pass without a response from Shannon, and then the message bubble appears on my screen.
Shannon: Why would you do this to me?
I stare at the picture she sends where my lips are pressed to Cece’s wondering how I’ll talk my way out of this situation.
“Fuck,” I mutter.
“What’s up?” Tucker asks, leaning over the arm of my chair.
“Shannon just sent me the picture of Cece kissing me over Christmas break.”
“Fuuuck…” he whispers. “What are you gonna do?”
I roll my shoulders against the wooden chair. “Hell if I know. She has a pic of me kissing another woman. What can I say?”
“She kissed you,” Tucker challenges. “Not the other way around. Just explain to Shannon that Cece’s a jealous bitch, and that she has nothing to worry about.”
“Shannon won’t see it that way.”
My phone buzzes in my hand, and I’m afraid to look at the message from Shannon. But I do. Because I need to salvage our relationship and repair whatever damage Cece has done.
Shannon: You have a lot of explaining to do…
Me: Give me 5 mins. Meet me at Broad Street Beans. Please.
Shannon: Fine. Don’t be late.
I snicker at her text. When am I ever late for anything? Five minutes isn’t enough to state my case, but I have to try. I don’t want to lose Shannon. Not when I finally found someone who’s good for my life. Someone I’m starting not to want to live without.
Chapter Fourteen
Shannon
My eyes must be tricking me. There’s no way Jamie would do this to me. I stare down at my cell phone, confused where I went wrong. Where we went wrong.
“Maybe it’s a misunderstanding,” Jordan says, rubbing my arm. “Jamie’s one of the good ones.”
I glance up from the screen, my mouth still open wide in shock. “I thought so, too.” Holding the phone in front of Jordan’s face, I say, “Who’s this? Do you know her? I’ve never seen her before.”
“It says her name is Cecelia Carmichael.” Jordan shrugs against the headboard we’re leaning against. “Never heard of her.”
This morning Jamie stopped by the house, and I pushed him away for no reason. He’s been acting differently since we came back from the Christmas break. There’s awkwardness between us that I didn’t understand until now. Jamie has been standoffish, and the feeling of closeness we had before the holidays is no longer there. At least now I know why.
Cecelia Carmichael is to blame.
I screen capture the picture of Jamie kissing her and send it to him as a text. We go back and forth, my anger seething through me until I agree to meet him this afternoon at Broad Street Beans. I don’t even want to give him the five minutes I agree to. But I might as well hear him out.
A single tear falls from my eye, and I swat it away. Jordan notices and pulls me into her arms, running her fingernails down my back to soothe me.
“It’ll be okay,” she assures me. “For your sake, I want to believe Jamie is a good guy. I’ve always liked him.”
