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“Don’t play dumb with me.” I took a step toward her, and she flinched. “I’m the tech guy, Wren. I see everything.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You and your boyfriend.” The words tore out of me, loud enough to echo off the walls. “On camera. Naked. Fucking. I saw it.”
She stared at me, then shook her head once. “That’s not… I would never… Seb, please, there has to be some mistake.”
“The only mistake was me thinking you were different.”
“I’ve never cheated on you. I’ve never even looked at another man since we got together!”
“Then explain the video.”
“I can’t, because I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
The shouting had drawn attention.
Brothers filtered into the common room, pulled from the kitchen and the hallway by raised voices. Handful, already close, straightening off the wall. Dutch, Maya balanced on one hip. Colt. Holden. One by one they filled the doorways, their faces shifting from curious to alarmed as they took in the scene.
Wren by the door, crying. Me in the middle of the room, shaking.
“What the hell is going on?” Dutch’s voice was calm but commanding. The President voice.
“This bitch,” I spat the word, and watched her flinch like I’d hit her, “has been fucking someone else. And I have proof.”
“That’s not true!” Her voice cracked. “I don’t know what he saw, but it wasn’t me!”
“Glitch.” Dutch settled Maya higher on his hip, his expression careful. “What proof?”
I grabbed the remote off the coffee table. The one that ran the big screen we used for the occasional movie night. “See for yourself.”
“Brother, hold on—” Handful took a step. “You don’t want to—”
I pulled up the video. Hit play. And Wren’s voice filled the room. Breathy. Intimate. The sounds she made when she was lost in it, sounds I knew as well as my own heartbeat. The woman on the screen was unmistakably Wren. Her face. Her body.
But I wasn’t watching the screen. I was watching Wren. Her reaction was instant. The blood drained out of her face and her hands flew to her mouth.
“Turn it off!” Her eyes were squeezed shut, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Seb, turn it off!”
“Why? Don’t want everyone to see what you did?”
“Please, please turn it off, that’s not…” She opened her eyes and looked at me. “That’s us, Seb.”
I heard the words but they didn’t make sense. How could it be us when there was clearly another man in that video?
“Eyes off that screen.” Dutch’s roar snapped my head around. The brothers moved as one, turning their backs on the screen, giving Wren the only cover they could. Dutch passed Maya to Betty, and I watched as Betty pressed the girl’s face into her shoulder and hurried her down the hall. Then Dutch was in my face. “Turn it off, Glitch. Now.”
I paused it. The damage was done. The frame froze on the screen—Wren’s face, another man’s hand on her.
“Look at it.” I jabbed a finger at the screen without turning around. “Her face. Her body. It’s her.”
Nobody was looking at the screen. They were looking at Wren, at the way she’d folded in on herself.
“Glitch.” Handful’s voice, low, almost gentle—the voice he used on Jacks, his rescue dog, when he was coaxing him into something the dog didn’t want to do. “That—”
“Don’t.” I rounded on him. “Don’t you dare defend her.”
“Glitch, man, just—look at her face—”
