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“What the hell ever!” I leapt after him and snagged his arm, needing to put all my strength in it before he finally paused and scowled back at me. “You’ll only cause more trouble,” I insisted. “It’s over. Let it be.” He began to shake his head until I added, “Please.”
His jaw bunched and eye twitched as he stared straight into me. Then he growled, “You at least called campus police, right?” When I didn’t answer, he looked pointedly at Tess. “Right?”
She gulped and shook her head. “Bailey didn’t want to tell anyone else about the vid—”
At the shriek of distress that came from my throat, Tess broke off and glanced at me. When she realized she’d been about to reveal my big secret, she clamped her mouth shut.
Beck scowled between us. “About the what?” he demanded, but he was already running other things Tess had said through his head. “What video was on your phone?” he asked me.
No way on God’s green earth could I tell him that. But he read the guilt and humiliation clearly on my face.
His mouth fell open. “Holy shit. You took a video? Of me and Melody?”
Every time I’d felt embarrassed lately, it had seemed like the worst, most mortifying moment ever, but all those times were nothing compared to this one. I could barely breathe as I took in the shock on Beck’s face.
I wanted to explode into a million pieces and cease to exist. Except I didn’t go anywhere.
I slowly peered around us. Paige and Logan were exchanging glances, and I could read their unsaid conversation clearly. “Who else has she filmed doing it?”
Oh, God. I couldn’t do this. Whirling away from all of them, I raced from the kitchen.
Chapter 24
BECKETT
I was too shocked to do much else than gape after her as Bailey charged from the kitchen. I just wasn’t expecting to learn she’d filmed me.
Finally, I shook my head, trying to come to grips with this new development, but, yeah, this one caught me off guard.
“I’ll go talk to her,” Tess murmured, starting from the kitchen, but I said, “No.”
When they all turned to gape at me, I said, “I’ve got this one.”
I didn’t feel as if I could trust any of them to make this better. Bailey had looked devastated when she’d fled the room. I didn’t want anyone to accidentally make it worse. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say to fix it, but I still felt the need to be the one to help her.
It hadn’t sounded as if she’d left the apartment, so I went to her room because I was sure I’d heard an interior door slam seconds after she’d left the kitchen.
Worried she might have locked me out, I held my breath as I tried to handle, but it was open. She wasn’t in the room when I stepped inside, so I went to her private bath.
“Bailey?” I blinked as I poked my head through the opened doorway into the bathroom, because she wasn’t in there, either. Strange. I swore she’d gone to her room.
Starting to retreat, I paused suddenly and squinted suspiciously at the shower curtain. Instead of leaving, I stepped forward and pulled it open.
Bailey sniffed and wiped the back of her hand across the underside of nose. Hugging herself where she sat on the lip of the bathtub, she looked up at me, revealing two wet trails running under each eye.
“Hey, act impressed,” I said, stepping into the tub with her and sitting next to her. “I was sober enough to check behind the shower curtain this
time.”
Bailey didn’t answer, just kept sniffing and wiping her face.
I had to say, I’d never sat fully dressed in a bathtub that wasn’t running water before. After glancing down at our shoe-clad feet side by side in the bottom of the tub, I gave a long, tired sigh.
“You know, if I’d been trapped with no alternate way out while a couple in the next room was having sex and the door was open between us, I would’ve looked too.” I gave a negligent shrug. “It’s just human nature.”
Bailey brushed more tears off her cheeks. “And you would’ve taken a picture that accidentally turned out to be a video of it too, huh?”
I winced. Yeah, I probably wouldn’t have done that. But I shrugged anyway, mumbling, “I don’t know. Maybe.”
