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He blinked at me, glanced around the room, and then returned his attention to me before exploding, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!”
I bit my lip. “Please don’t be mad at her.”
“Don’t be mad at her?” he cried incredulously. “She’s been snooping in my personal life and publishing my private, embarrassing, most awful moments, and you don’t think I should be mad at her? I’m going to slaughter the brat. Holy shit.” He gripped his head. “And all three of them know about this?”
I grasped his forearm. “I want to know what parts of the story are true.”
His face drained of color. “Haven. My God. No, you do not.”
“Was it true you were about to approach me and finally introduce yourself that night but he beat you to the punch and talked to me first? He did kiss me the first moment we met, so I’m guessing the rest is true too. You were there. And you saw it.”
Wick opened his mouth, but no words came.
“So he must’ve bragged to you constantly about us, telling you intimate details about our relationship?”
Wick closed his eyes and whispered my name.
But I shook my head. “What about when he recorded our first time together in the story and then locked you in a room, forcing you to watch it? That can’t be true.”
When he glanced at me sharply and went sheet white, my stomach roiled.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “They locked me in the locker room and left a cell phone on, playing the video. I punched so many lockers afterward that I broke my hand and got suspended from the team for a month. When I returned, he was the quarterback.”
“Oh my God.” I hugged myself and began to rock. “Oh… Holy shit. No. I can’t believe he would… But why…? Son of a bitch!” I lurched to my feet, feeling dazed and off-balance. “I’m going to be sick.”
Wick was there, waiting patiently.
He was always there, keeping watch, protecting me, loving me. The realization was staggering. I looked at him and swallowed, overwhelmed.
Only to remember all over again why we were here in this bathroom to begin with.
The blood drained from my face. “So there’s a… There’s a video—a sex video—of… Oh God.”
I squeezed my eyes closed, hung my head over the toilet and threw up some more.
“Haven.” Warm, steady fingers gathered my hair back and more stroked their way down my spine.
As all kinds of nasty dripped from my face, I sobbed, “I can’t believe there’s a sex tape of me out there.”
“There’s not,” Wick reassured, handing me toilet paper to wipe my face. “Not anymore. I destroyed his phone and made sure of it.”
A vague memory filled my head from freshman year, near the beginning of my relationship with Topher. He’d had to purchase a new phone because his had been smashed. He’d said he’d accidentally run it over with his car. And he’d also had a black eye at that time, which he’d told me he’d gotten during football practice. But now… Now I knew it had all been Wick. Wick had hit Topher and given him a black eye for what he’d done to me. Wick had destroyed Topher’s phone because of what he’d recorded of me.
Wick had always been trying to protect me, from the very beginning.
“But the cloud…” I started, shaking my head as panic filled my veins. Just because he’d ruined the phone didn’t mean the video had been destroyed completely.
“I made him delete it from the cloud, too,” Wick said, holding out a cup of water for me to rinse my mouth. “I stood over his shoulder and watched as he did it. Then I threatened to go to the coach with everything and get him kicked off the team if it somehow ever got out.”
“So that’s why Topher was never reprimanded for anything he did to you,” I realized. “You promised your silence for my privacy? Is that also why you never fought back to get your quarterback spot once you returned from your suspension?”
He looked sad and regretful as he nodded. Tears filled my eyes. When I whirled aggressively toward the sink to focus on brushing my teeth and pulling myself together, he moved back to give me space.
As soon as I finished, I turned back to him, where he bowed his head and closed his eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
Forgetting my anger at Topher, I sighed in sympathy for Wick and reached up to slide my hand across his cheek. “What’re you apologizing for? You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”
