Page 76 of Ruthless Game

This is your fucking fault.

Manwhore.

Weak. You’re weak.

My father’s voice. My voice. It didn’t matter. The scene changed back to Emma being fucked by that asshole, then flipped back to me as the girls groped my chest and my dick. I could remember that night, the drunken confusion, the nausea. Fuck remembering it, I was back there, barely able to stand upright as two strangers touched me in ways that I hadn’t⁠—

You wanted it.

It’s your fault.

Be a fucking man. Men can’t be taken advantage of.

Don’t be a weak, pathetic bitch.

I threw my phone against the locker, and just like that night in my bedroom, the crunch and shatter didn’t satisfy me at all.

Other guys were staring at me, phones in their hands. They must have seen it, too. Seen how pathetic I was. That I couldn’t keep my girl, that I couldn’t⁠—

I ran to one of the bathroom stalls, puking up my breakfast—the breakfast Emma and I had made together that morning—into the toilet. I felt rancid, trembling, weak.

Fucking weak.

I was fucking weak.

I refused to feel weak.

And even though a voice in my head warned me not to do what I was going to do next, that this was my shit to work out, not hers, it was impossible to not blame her for what had happened that night. For the choices I made.

Did you make a choice? Was what happened your choice?

I dismissed that goddamn fucking voice, not my father’s, my own, because that way led to even more weakness.

Forget moving past this shit. She was going to goddamn pay for what she’d done to me, because she hadn’t paid enough.

Hasn’t she?

But the rage roaring in my ears, like an ocean wave about to come crashing down over my head, drowned out that inner voice that was warning me to take a breath before I left the locker room and confronted that bitch for what she’d done to me.

I wasn’t about to take a breath. Not when I’d lost the ability to breathe. Not when the locker room was spinning around me, and when I shut my eyes to steady my brain, all I could see were those hands on me, those unfamiliar nails, touching me when I didn’t want to be touched …

Whore.

You’re a whore.

You’re a weak whore, Lawson.

I burst out of the locker room and into the pool area, trying to leave those words behind, but they followed right behind me.

28

Emma

Something was wrong.

Nobody was in the locker room when I walked in. Glancing at the clock, I realized we were a few minutes late and hurriedly changed into my swimsuit. Where was everyone? Maya must have started class without me.

Whispering greeted me when I entered the natatorium, but the second everyone saw me, they went quiet. Silent. Eerily so.