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“What…?”
“Man, you fucked up. You fucked up so bad, Hilliard. I can’t, I mean, I knew you were going on a downward spiral, but this is bad. You went off the deep end this time.”
I knew that voice. It was my best friend from our fraternity. Max.
After an extreme effort of will, I turned my head toward him and tilted my face enough to see a somewhat blurry view of him through my better eye. “What happened?” I rasped, barely able to talk.
It felt as if I’d just been hit by a freight train.
“Dude.” He shook his head and took a step away from me. “You fucked up. You fucked up big time. I mean, Melody Fairfield? Do you know what her brother’s going to do when he finds out about this?”
I groaned and reclosed my eye, beginning to remember fragments. Melody on top of me, riding me, coming with me inside her. Then the puking and the boyfriend and him beating me unconscious. Oh yeah, and her accusing me of rape. Couldn’t forget that part.
Christ on a crutch. This was fucked up.
“University police is here,” Thomas—the president of my fraternity—announced, appearing in the doorway of the room. He sent me a contemptuous glance that confused me since Thomas and I had always gotten along. Then he returned his attention to Max and added, “Lucky for him since Melody’s brother just showed up too.”
I closed my eyes and groaned.
This was all too much. A girl crying rape against me, her brother and university police showing up, my body feeling like a used battering ram, and the alcohol I still hadn’t completely flushed from my system still wanting to vacate me. Curling onto my side, despite how much it hurt, I hugged my sore ribs and vomited some more.
Chapter 4
BAILEY
I woke up well before my alarm went off, my mind still reeling and the words “Oh my God, what did I watch?” still spinning through my head.
I felt vile and strange for so avidly having observed something so base and primal. I’d never even seen porn before.
Well, I had now, I guess. A real live version, though I hadn’t exactly seen genitals or anything revealing. But I’d known exactly what they’d been doing, and my eyes had been plastered to the crack in that door, because I’d wanted to see what would happen next.
I was such a bad, depraved girl.
Needing to shower and wash the bad off, I hurried into my private bath, but as I stripped, I found myself covering body parts as if someone were watching me.
Then I stepped into the tub and started the water, turning it to scorching.
I tried to reason the guilt away. I mean, it wasn’t as if I’d had a choice in the matter after I’d gotten stuck in the bathroom while they’d been just outside in the bedroom, doing what they’d been doing. Okay, sure, if I hadn’t been a big weenie and hidden from the drunk guy in the first place, I probably wouldn’t have found myself in this mess at all, and I certainly hadn’t needed to watch everything. I could’ve stayed in a back corner and patiently waited until they were done. Or hey, I could’ve announced my presence at any time. That would’ve stopped them. Why the heck hadn’t I just done that? Why had I stayed quiet and watched?
Because I was a filthy little creeper, that’s why.
I stayed under the spray of the water for longer than I needed to, cleaning everything twice. But I still felt vile afterward. I’d made plenty of wrong decisions in my life, but this one kind of felt worse than the others. If I’d been Tess or Paige, I never would’ve been caught in that predicament. Why the hell couldn’t I just be more like Tess or Paige?
Why did I have to be stuck as loser Bailey of all people? Gah, life was no fair. Why did I always have to be so me? It sucked. This entire situation just sucked!
Suddenly mad at the world for making me the way I was so I wouldn’t have to be mad at myself for simply being the way I was, I frowned and turned the water off, then jerked open the curtain. But that only reminded me of another curtain I’d opened less than ten hours ago, and that memory cracked open another: the expression on Beckett’s face when he’d come inside Melody. Which made me throb in the most inappropriate places.
Shuddering, I scrubbed dry and jerked my underwear on before opening the door and finding an outfit to wear in my huge closet. By the time I made my way to the kitchen, it was still early, even too early for anyone else in the apartment to be awake. It was a Sunday morning, so they were probably all going to sleep in anyway, unless they had to work today, the same as I did.
Regardless, I kept the light off as not to wake anyone, though all their room doors had been closed when I’d stepped into the hall. I found the refrigerator by feel and rubbed my eyes again
st the blare of the interior light as I opened the door. Shivering when chilly air wafted out to greet me, I stared inside stupidly, trying to wake my brain enough to decide what I wanted for breakfast. All the while, it felt so surreal that I was going to eat breakfast like everything was normal when nothing felt normal at all.
Every resident of the apartment marked their food with a black sharpie, except for Tess. Being her usual perky self, Tess used a bright green marker to scrawl her name across her things in her bubbly penmanship, and then she dashed a smiley face underneath. Miss Optimism herself.
Why couldn’t I be more like her?
I scanned the items in Jonah’s corner. He always stocked the best munchies. But when I saw a chocolate caramel swirled snack pack, which I would’ve nabbed on any other morning, I didn’t reach for it. Already feeling bad enough today as it was, I just couldn’t add thievery to my list of crimes, though I’d stolen from him plenty in the past and never felt bad about it before.
