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“Look, I appreciate you being honest. I wish you’d filled me in sooner. We could’ve maybe headed this off. I don’t know how, but…”
“I’m really sorry, sir.”
“I know. I believe you. I don’t know if I can protect you personally. My obligation is to the school.”
“I know.”
“As we speak, we’ve got data investigators combing through our servers for anything that smells fishy. Tell me there’s nothing on our servers.”
“Nothing I’m aware of…” I say, though my voice trails off at the end, as if there’s something in the back of my head waving like mad, trying to get my attention.
“What?” His voice is stern. “It could be anything. Something on the cloud from your phones? Laptops? Anything you can think of? We should head them off if we can help it.”
My head spins. I grip the countertop and squeeze my eyes shut.
“Fuck.”
“Derek, so help me, what are we dealing with?”
“I’m sorry. My phone.”
“What’s on your phone?”
My stomach churns. I hadn’t thought about it. What it would mean to take a picture of Megan on my phone. The phone that the university pays for. To receive a video while we were on the road.
“I had some personal images.”
He’s quiet for a long moment.
“Are they going to be able to identify the woman in them?”
“They’re my… my Megan,” I say, stumbling over the label we’ve never discussed and I’ve never felt any right when it comes to her. “No, her face isn’t in them.”
He lets out a heavy sigh, and I can picture him rubbing at his lined forehead with his thumb and forefinger.
“Please,” I say, realizing I’m hedging into begging territory and not giving a fuck about it. “This pregnancy has been really stressful. I can’t do this to her. If there’s anything you can do…”
He sighs again. “I don’t know if I can protect you,” he says. “But I recommend you talk to her, prep her as much as you can. Maybe she can go away for a bit? To her parents’? Or a friend’s?”
I shake my head. She has nowhere to go. This is going to come out and it’s going to destroy her. It’s going to destroy everything. And it could hurt her. Really hurt her.
“I need to go.”
“Yeah. No reason to rush in today. Take care of your own.”
“Thanks, Michael,” I say.
“Good luck.”
I stare at the phone for a long moment, unable to get my head around anything. I have to be the one to tell her. I need to get to her before anyone else does. It’s my own damn fault for not telling her everything sooner.
She knew something was wrong. I should have just told her. The other day when I went over there and she was bumbling through that mess of a bedroom and we made love—who am I kidding? There was nothing loving about the way I fucked her. I even fucked that up.
I should have done what I said I would and told her everything when we woke up. Instead, I left like a coward. I told myself I wanted to let her rest, that I needed to make sure everything was taken care of before I worried her with anything that might not turn into anything.
I dial her number. I have it committed to memory. There’s something comforting about punching in the numbers instead of choosing her contact to call. The phone rings. And rings. And then it goes to voice mail.
“Fuck.” I throw the phone down on my bed and get dressed quickly. I need to head this off before it gets any worse. Because knowing my luck, it could still get so much worse.
