Deeper (Caroline & West #1)(2)

Because who expects that?

I sank down into the desk chair and thumbed through the first few screens of comments. Then the next few. Screen after screen.

She has nice tits.

I’d hit that.

fap fap fap fap thx Carolina, you hoor!

What an ugly slut. I want more vag!

Every word I read—every filthy thing some basement-dwelling Internet creep said about me—I thought, This is my fault.

My fault, my fault, my fault.

I never should have let Nate take the pictures. I knew it. I knew it when he took them, I knew it after, I knew it when we broke up and I had this fleeting, urgent impulse to beg him to let me delete every single photo of me off his phone. An impulse I shrugged off because I didn’t want to offend him.

I didn’t want to be rude.

I sat there for a long time, scrolling and reading, wiping tears from my eyes with the back of my free hand. I was panting more than breathing, panicking more than thinking, too disoriented to have anything like a coherent plan.

I think I was mourning the end of something without even knowing it had ended. My youth, maybe. The sunny, perfect part of my life.

It wasn’t until Bridget messaged me again—R u ok?—that I really understood. I thought about how she would come back to the room and she would have seen. She would know, and I would have to face her.

I thought about how it wouldn’t be just Bridget. It would be everybody.

That’s when it hit me that I would never be okay again.





SEPTEMBER

Caroline




Two and a half weeks after the photos appear online, I have everything under control. Right up until I walk out of Latin and into West Leavitt’s elbow.

I’m walking with my head down, my mind on the upcoming student-senate election. I thought I would run this year to represent my dorm, but now I don’t see how I can. The girl who is running is … Well, I’m trying not to be uncharitable. She’s not my top choice.

I’m my top choice.

My feet are moving out the door and steering me to the right, away from most of the other students. I used to go to the left, but Nate has Macroeconomics in the classroom next to mine, and I don’t want to run into him. I’ve started going right instead and then walking around the outside of the building to head toward the dining hall for lunch.

Today, though, my path isn’t empty—the hallway is crowded, heaving and alive. But since I’ve got my head down, I don’t notice until I walk directly into some random person’s back. The bag I’m carrying gets knocked out of my arms and onto the floor. I go to pick it up, saying sorry, noticing just how many legs are in this hall, starting to wonder what’s going on. I’m still trying to figure it out when I stand back up and get nailed in the nose.

I’m not aware, in the moment, that it’s a body part that strikes me, or who it belongs to. I only know that there’s a lot of flailing movement happening right in front of me and that the bridge of my nose has connected with something that’s in motion and deeply unforgiving.

It hurts.

Oh, holy mother of God, it hurts.

Cupping my nose protectively, I crumple, ducking my head and folding my body over the pain. My eyes fill with tears. Warm liquid slips over my lip. My tongue pokes out to lick it before I understand that—ugh, blood—I’m bleeding. Then it’s coating my mouth, warm all over my chin, and I don’t even care because my nose won’t stop exploding.

I’ve never been hit in the face before.

It is distressingly AWFUL.

I know there’s something I should be doing other than bleeding on my own fingers, which I’ve pushed firmly up beneath my nose as though they have the power to do … anything at all. Which they don’t. Blinking, confused, I look around for what I’ve collided with and why it hates me. Considering the state of my nose, I’m expecting a brick wall, or perhaps a monster with cinder blocks for hands.

Instead, I see big male bodies shoving and grunting. There’s space all around them, but I’ve breached it, which is probably why I got nailed in the face, and which also puts me in a perfect position to see the punch coming.

I don’t see it land. The man who gets hit is standing with his back to me, directly between me and the fist. But the taut smack of skin against bone sours my stomach.

The guy goes down, right in front of me. The other guy straddles his waist, chest heaving, leaning over so I only see the top of his head. He looks like he’s ready to take another swing, and I really don’t want him to, because this is all so primitive and brutal that I’m not sure I can stand it.

Then there’s this terrible noise—this high-pitched, reedy gasping noise—and the guy on top looks right at me.

Oh, God. I made the noise. That was me, that wheezy scream, and now I can’t breathe at all, because the guy on top is West, and the face he punched so hard belongs to Nate.

West’s eyes go wide. “Jesus, Caroline, did I hit you?”

He stands, stepping close, reaching out. It’s as if he completely forgets he’s beating the shit out of Nate, and he just comes after me. The look in his eyes, the outstretched hand—it’s so much like the first time West reached for me, more than a year ago, that I have a moment of déjà vu. My knees buckle, which annoys me. My body is the enemy right now—my incompetent knees, that noise my throat decided to make, my leaking nose, and the pounding pain in my face.